Local governments across mainland China have been raising their minimum-wage levels, this year, in response to growing labour shortages. In Shenzhen, the government passed a regulation on July 1 empowering Labour Department officials to impose fines of up to 50,000 yuan on companies that fail to pay the minimum wage.
There's no question that government action is needed to raise the minimum wage and strengthen enforcement in this area. But such steps fail to address several other key problems that contribute to excessively low wages - and hence to workers' inability to earn a decent livelihood.
For example, there are enterprises that withhold workers' wages for months on end, impose unlawful wage deductions and fail to pay legally specified overtime rates.
According to a report issued by the National People's Congress this year, cases of non-payment of wages and unlawful wage deductions accounted for as much as 41 per cent of all cases investigated by provincial labour departments around the country in 2004. In the 16 months before October last year, in one coastal city alone, there were 156 such cases in which the employers concerned went into hiding to avoid investigators.
As many as 76 per cent of migrant workers from the countryside receive no overtime pay for working on public holidays, or on rest and vacation days, according to a recent research report issued by the State Council. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions found this year that around 70 per cent of the country's 100 million or so migrant workers had experience of being paid either late or not at all.
The problem has clearly gone beyond the stage where it can be solved merely by raising minimum wages and strengthening law enforcement.
