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China migrant labourers learn the law to win rights
(Agencies) Updated: 2008-03-02 16:56 Businesses sometimes bristle, too. In Shenzhen late last year, two knife-wielding assailants attacked campaigner Huang Qingnan, whose Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre had been offering education on the labour contract law. Huang was in hospital for weeks with deep wounds in his leg. This week, his organisation said police had arrested a factory landlord who they said was behind the attack because he thought Huang was to blame for his company's bankruptcy. Qi says men have come to his office to threaten him and he's received several menacing phone calls. SUE NOW, PAY LATER The factory-studded Pearl River Delta, an engine of economic growth, now has hundreds of "citizens' agents", Qi estimates, and nationwide there are several thousand. Most, like Qi, learned the law on their own through personal quests to get back pay. The business model is simple. While most lawyers demand retainers and charge high fees, "citizens' agents" work for a modest contingency, which means it costs little for workers to initiate proceedings. Lawyer Zhou operates that way, too, taking a cut of the compensation awarded if he wins a case. In the coastal areas, like Shenzhen, where factories are clustered together, word of mouth spreads quickest and the rights consciousness among workers is highest, experts say. But all over the country, knowledge of rights -- and a willingness to go to the courts to defend them -- is on the rise. Zhou, 51, who was born into a peasant family in Kaixian, now a rural part of western Chongqing, became interested in the law during his own stint as a migrant worker at a brick kiln, after the kiln's manager failed to pay agreed wages. In his more than 20 years as a lawyer, his offices have handled some 8,000 migrant worker cases, most of them over compensation claims for workplace injuries or unpaid wages. |
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