The Sichuan Provincial Government recently issued a notice, deciding to carry out a special rectification action against the problem of migrant worker wage arrears throughout the province. It requires a comprehensive inspection to ascertain the wage payment situation for migrant workers, concentrate on resolving arrears, and ensure that migrant workers who have worked hard for a year get their money and can go home.
This rectification will cover all types of employers in the province with wage arrears to migrant workers, with a focus on construction projects under construction, especially government-invested projects. At the same time, the action will also supervise and inspect the situation of general contracting enterprises directly or entrusted to directly pay migrant workers' wages, the establishment of special accounts for migrant workers' wages, as well as the investigation and handling of wage arrears cases and the legal crackdown on refusal to pay labor remuneration in various places.
This rectification action will last from December 10, 2017, to February 14, 2018, and will be divided into three stages: organization and publicity, inspection and rectification, and supervision and accountability. Key tasks include comprehensive investigation and mapping, establishing work ledgers; increasing law enforcement efforts to strictly investigate wage arrears cases; highlighting key areas and clearing wage arrears within a time limit; improving emergency mechanisms to maintain social stability.
The notice requires that all localities, on the basis of ensuring full coverage, focus on the engineering construction field and labor-intensive processing and manufacturing, catering services and other industries, increase the investigation of hidden dangers of migrant worker wage arrears, and ensure that no enterprise or project within the jurisdiction is missed.
The notice also requires government-invested engineering projects to play a demonstrative and leading role. For such projects where wage arrears are caused by arrears in project payments, the government at the same level must clear them within a time limit before the end of 2017, and no new projects may be arranged to start before the problem is resolved. For wage arrears in other engineering projects, enterprises must be ordered to resolve them within a time limit before the 2018 Spring Festival. Those who fail to rectify within the time limit will be severely punished according to law.
At the same time, for dishonest enterprises that meet the circumstances stipulated in the "Interim Measures for the Management of the 'Blacklist' of Migrant Worker Wage Arrears," they must be included in the "blacklist" according to regulations, and the joint disciplinary mechanism must be implemented. Restrictions will be imposed according to laws and regulations in areas such as government funding support, government procurement, bidding, production licenses, and awards and honors, so that dishonest enterprises are "restricted everywhere once they become dishonest."