Chinese trade unions have vowed to increase efforts to press employers who fail to pay wages to their workers.

"We will mobilize trade unions at all levels to help the workers deal with the unpaid wages in the new year," said Dong Li, director of the Financial Auditing Committee of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), at a press conference here Monday.

The emphasis would be on helping migrant workers in the construction and catering industries, where the problem of unpaid wages was especially serious, said Dong.

Statistics from the ACFTU show China has 94 million migrant rural laborers, whose employers are in arrears totaling 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion). Construction firms account for over 70 per cent of wage defaults, followed by the catering industry.

The present Labor Law, passed in 1994, required the prompt payment of wages unless there are reasonable delays, but these were difficult to define, said Dong, adding that there were no effective penalties to prevent defaulting.

Investigations by trade unions show that overdue wages were one of the three major causes of poverty among workers, the other two being long-term unemployment and serious illness.

Some local practices had proved effective in preventing defaulting, said Dong. In Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, the local government had clearly limited the period of delay to two weeks and the delay had to be approved by the local authorities.

In Nanhai, also in Guangdong, an electronic credit system had been established to supervise wage payments. People would avoid working for companies with records of delayed payment, said Dong.

Many workers in state enterprises that were in financial difficulty also suffered from overdue wages, Dong said.

Every year, migrant and state enterprise workers were subject to a total of 40 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) in delayed payments.

The problem was easier to resolve in state enterprises, which were legally obliged to give priority to paying overdue wages before they announced bankruptcy, Dong said. 

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