Govt vows to ensure bosses pay full benefits

A senior official from the top human resources authority pledged on Friday it will strengthen its supervision of employers to ensure that they pay their full social security benefits, as a massive strike at a shoe manufacturer in Guangdong province entered its second week.

Li Zhong, spokesman for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a news conference in Beijing on Friday that Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings in Dongguan, a contract manufacturer for brands such as Nike and Adidas, falsely declared that it had made sufficient financial contributions to workers' social insurance funds.

Since April 14, tens of thousands of Yue Yuen workers have been on strike because they claim that the company had underpaid payments to workers' social insurance benefits that are mandated by the State.

Adidas spokeswoman Katja Schreiber said by e-mail on Wednesday that the sportswear brand has shifted some of its future orders originally allocated to Yue Yuen to other suppliers, Bloomberg reported.

The social security bureau of Dongguan ordered the company to find a solution on Friday, Li said. The ministry will watch over the case closely and ask the Guangdong provincial government to "earnestly protect labor rights", he said.

Li added that the ministry urges workers to defend their rights through legal channels such as trade unions.

Peng Xiaohui, a 24-year-old employee from Yue Yuen, said he and some other workers returned to work on Thursday even though the problems have not been resolved.

Peng said the local social security bureau has asked Yue Yuen to fulfill its social insurance debts to workers but denied the workers' request for the company to pay for employees' individual contributions to social insurance funds.

Under the city's social security regulations, an employer must pay 11 percent of a worker's monthly income into his or her social insurance account as the pension fund; the employee must contribute 8 percent of his or her monthly salary to the fund.

"Most workers like me don't have a lot of savings so we cannot afford to pay off what we owe to our social security funds at once," he said. He said he earns 3,500 yuan ($560) a month and has to pay more than 10,000 yuan into his social security and housing funds that Yue Yuen said it had paid over the past six years.

"Why do we workers now have to pay the price for the company's wrongdoing?" he asked.

Zhang Ye, a lawyer specializing in labor disputes from Shanghai Haishang Law Firm, said the social security law states that employers and workers should share the responsibility of contributing to pension funds. Dongguan authorities are entitled to ask both Yue Yuen and its employees to both pay off the arrears.

"Given the accelerated aging of China's society, our workers have become more concerned of their social insurance benefits, especially pension funds," he said.

"Underpaying social insurance benefits exists in many industries and companies. The strike (in Yue Yuen) should impel the government to improve its management and supervision of employers."