Labour disputes threaten China's stability--report
Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Jan 30 (Reuters) - China's stability could be threatened if a growing wave of labour disputes is not addressed, state media reported on Tuesday. "Labour disputes have become more frequent nationwide in recent years," the official China Daily quoted Liu Jichen, a director in the legal department of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, as saying. Causes of disputes included employers failing to honour labour contracts, wage delays, illegal demands for overtime and docking overtime wages, the newspaper said. "These problems, if not solved properly, often lead to labour dispute cases or radical action by some workers," Liu was quoted as saying. China has seen a series of suicides and violent attacks in recent years by desperate and unpaid migrant workers, who largely eke out a meagre existence in cities, and have little or no access to social benefits such as health care and education. Legal cases concerning labour disputes reached 314,000 across the country in 2005, up 20 percent on the previous year, the China Daily said, citing the federation. "He warned that some hostile forces in Western countries have tried to take advantage of labour disputes to divide the Chinese workers," the newspaper said, without elaborating. Over 45 percent of the workers said they had to work extra hours, and about 10 percent of them had not signed labour contracts with their employers, it added. Many workers could not pay high lawsuit costs, and had to wait a long time for a verdict, Liu was quoted as saying. China has been grappling with outbreaks of unrest for several years after three decades of market reforms that have lifted living standards but also widened the rich-poor, urban-rural gap. Resentment over the loss of farmland, corruption, worsening pollution in the countryside, arbitrary evictions by property developers and lay-offs by state enterprises have galvanised some Chinese to take drastic action.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
