The Chinese government has issued new rules aimed at protecting workers, including ordering employers to pay owed wages and encouraging people to report labour rights violations, state media said Thursday. The regulations, which come into effect on December 1, order employers to pay employees not only salary in arrears but compensate them for late payment, the Xinhua news agency said.
Employers are also forbidden from assigning women to hazardous posts, such as work in mine shafts or assigning night shifts to women who are more than seven months pregnant. The rules also encourage people to report violations to labour and social security departments, noting that informers of major cases would be rewarded.
Labour activists, however, said that while China's labour laws look good on paper they mean little, as government officials seldom enforce the rules, favouring employers over workers.
Company officials, especially those in large state-owned firms, are generally well-connected to the government and only need to pay a bribe to have officials turn a blind eye to violations. Increasing workers' protests, however, have alarmed the Chinese government and the new rules appear to be an attempt to prevent social unrest, activists said.
China's migrant workers - believed to number as many as 120 million - are among the worst exploited and have staged protests.
They are owed a staggering 360 billion yuan (43 billion dollars) by their employers, with some still waiting to get paid for jobs they did 10 years ago, according to a nation-wide investigation earlier this year.
The probe found 124,000 construction sites where workers were being paid late or not at all.
In an indication of the government's reluctance to give workers real rights, China bans independent labour unions.
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