China's national trade union federation yesterday vowed to better protect
migrant workers' rights and absorb more of them into trade unions.
"Trade
unions in China have always been devoted to protecting migrant workers' rights,"
said Chen Rongshu, an official with the All China Federation of Trade Unions, at
the 2006 International Forum on Economic Globalization and Trade Unions yesterday in Beijing.
Chen said the federation encourages migrant
workers to join trade unions in various forms, such as project unions, market
unions, street unions, community unions, regional and industrial
unions.
By the end of 2005 China had 151 million trade union members,
23.6 million of whom were migrant workers. In the first half of this year,
another 6.5 million migrant workers joined.
In 2005, trade unions across
the country helped recover delayed wages of 1.31 billion yuan (164 million) for
2.79 million migrant workers.
They also provided instructions for migrant
workers to sign work contracts with their employers.
So far, 9.18
million migrant workers have signed contracts with their employers, accounting
for 40 per cent of the migrant workers who have joined trade unions.
"The
most pressing task is to protect migrant workers' employment rights through
introduction and implementation of active labour market policies," Chen said.
Sun Chunlan, vice-chairman of the federation, said violation of migrant
workers' rights, such as low or delayed wages, long working hours, harsh working
conditions and hurting workers' self-esteem are still common in some
places.
For example, 80 per cent of the migrant workers nationwide are
working over 10 hours per day.
Sun said the federation would strive to
absorb 8 million migrant workers into trade unions annually in the coming three
years.
China now has 240 million migrant workers, or nearly half of the
total rural workforce.
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