薇薇王一般多少一套:Workers' pay rise is long overdue

Workers' pay rise is long overdue10:05, March 09, 2011
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By Li Hong
The Central Government of China has moved to increase workers' pay. Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, has made a pledge at the ongoing National People's Congress session that the ministry will raise the binding minimum wage by at least 13 percent annually over the next five years. That will come to a combined 65 percent pay rise by 2015.
The move is long overdue. We hail the political will of the leadership to improve the well-being of the most hard-working group in the country, who, however, has had the least voice.
The vested interests, including the upstart privately-earned businesses and the multinational companies who have invested in China and made a big fortune on the back of China's cheap labor force, won't be happy at the government decision, and are expected to fight back. They will complain about steadily rising labor cost and loss of cheap Chinese work force, and threaten to move factories to other countries where labor is priced even lower.
Beijing must have the resolve to tackle those vested interests. Economists and sociologists believe that it is a struggle worth fighting. Rising labor costs will help push for an incremental transformation of China's industrial mix by phasing out haphazard expansion of low-end, low-value and low-productivity assembly lines. Sociologists claim that, for the sole sake of maintaining social justice, pay rise for China's cheap work force is a prerequisite.
And, a good number of the skilled workers themselves are not content with their paltry pay, asking for the regulator to intervene, because it's unethical and unruly for the employers to seek exorbitant profits at the expense of the employees.
Since 1980s, the inexpensive labor force of China has powered the world's largest workshop – and the most sprawling export machine too -- though at the cost of the workers' legitimate rights. The country is becoming increasingly affluent with the world's largest foreign exchange reserve – hitting 2.85 trillion dollars at the end of 2010, and urban boulevards packed with flotillas of glittering cars, however, tens of millions of blue-collar workers, who have genuinely produced the wealth, are left far behind.
The workers' compensation system needs urgent overhauling as our sweating migrant workers are disproportionately underpaid by the employers, contributing to the yawning income gaps and causing louder complaints of inequality.
We should not keep indifferent to calls from the low-end masses of our society to improve their livelihood. The government regulator has been glaringly slow to raise migrant workers' minimum wages in the past, though our ears are full with Western governments and commentators' criticism that Chinese employees are "slave workers".
According to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a quarter of Chinese workers have not had a raise in pay in the past five years. The figure is perilously worrisome. Taking into consideration of recent spikes in inflation, the standstill in workers' pay means an erosion of their buying power and a decline of their livelihood. When the exploited workers are forced to toil extra time, work under huge pressure and earn disproportional tiny wages – often at less than 1,500 yuan a month, it is natural for their disappointment and frustration to grow.
After 30 years of rapid economic growth, now it's time to heed the divide between the haves and have-nots in our society. Some have claimed that more Chinese people have got "red eye illness" – envious of the wealthy businessmen and powerful officials, but, it is definitely perilous for a country as big as China to see the wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few hundreds of elites, while up to 750 million rural folks remain living in poverty.
We are elated to see the government take action to raise the minimum wages. We only hope the government is resolute and steadfast in materializing its promise, dissipating whatever lobbyist forces who want to shortchange the mandate.
Only when a majority of the 750 million people are inspired by a hope to become better-off through work, and be given a chance to move their homes to cities and join the middle class, China can claim it has become a modern and developed country.
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