Overworked, underpaid workers build new China

Construction work continues through the night; wages paid once a year - if even then

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By Sami Sillanpää in Beijing
     
      The sparks fly in the Beijing night. It is half past three on a Sunday morning, but the welders are still busy. So are the concrete crews.
      The sounds of the construction site are heard throughout the nouveau riche district of Chaoyang, as they are every hour of every day and every single night.
      It is the sound of the new China being built.
     
"Certain jobs are done 24 hours a day. I worked until one in the morning, then I got up again at five, went to the the site, and worked all day", says Yao Jiahai, a 30-year-old labourer during an evening break before starting his night shift.
      Yao says that sometimes the work day is just 11-12 hours, but often the boss orders them to stay for overtime, even though it does not mean any extra pay. He has not had a day off in three months.
      Yao earns about 9,000 yuan, or 900 euros. A year.
     
Today China celebrates the First of May, a workers’ celebration. It was 55 years ago that the Communist Party made a revolution and freed the workers from the yoke of oppression - according to the official history.
      Yao’s story, and those of many others like him, reveal that modern China is a country where workers do not live lives of dignity.
      A muddy alley starts from the side of Cahoyang Park. On the side there is an abandoned factory, in whose yard sweaty men line up with aluminium bowls in their hands. It is dinner time for the workers at the construction site.
      It happens to be one of the days when there is meat in the rice. Ren Gang looks happily into his bowl and shuffles off to eat in the factory that has been turned into a dormitory.
      It smells bad inside. Fifteen other men live with Ren in the small stuffy room. They scoop up their food, sitting on their bunk beds, which have no mattresses to cover the splintery boards.
      The floor is concrete. The toilet is outside.
      Ren and the other construction workers spend all of their time either at work or in this room.
      "We cannot do much else", Ren says.
     
The men in the room are far away from home. They are part of the 100 million migrant workers who have been forced by the poverty of rural China to seek work in the cities. The families have stayed behind in their home villages.
      Ren’s wife, two children, and parents are a two-day train journey away in Sichuan Province. Ren goes home whenever he has money, which usually means once a year.
      "I would offer you a drink, but I don’t get paid until the end of the year."
      It is common practice in China that a construction company is not paid until the building is finished. After that the company pays its subcontractors, and it is only then that they pay the workers. Sometimes the middlemen take the money and run.
     
So ordinary construction workers get paid once a year, if even then.
      "If an employee is not paid, he will stay at work, hoping to get his money next month. The longer he stays at work, the more he is owed, and the less he is motivated to leave", says Mao Yushi, a researcher in economics.
      Some have waited in vain to be paid for as long as two years. The total sum of unpaid construction wages is more than EUR 10 billion, according to Chinese government figures.
      A vast number of people suffer from the problem. China, which is undergoing great changes, is hungry for new high-rise buildings, shopping malls, and factories, and therefore as many as 40 million people are working in the construction industry.
     
Construction workers usually do not have written contracts with their employers. If there is an accident at the building site, or if wages are left unpaid, it is hard for the employee to prove that he has worked on the building in question.
      "Usually they do not have the money, time, or energy to pursue lawsuits", says lawyer Gao Zhisheng.
      On the workers’ holiday, Huan Zengkun is working hard. After that he will be unemployed.
      Huan and seven friends from the village of Zhoukou in Henan Province were given the task of setting up 400 square metres of shuttering for concrete.
      The work will be done on Sunday and Huan and his friends will be on the street. They hope to find a new job and a new shed to sleep in. More rice in a metal bowl. One more month to live.
      There is plenty of work to be done; the Chaoyang district of Beijing alone has about 200 building sites. But the city also has 850,000 officially registered construction workers, and a large number who have not been registered. Every day new arrivals come from the countryside looking for work. The large number of applicants make them easy to exploit.
     
"I have no other possibility", Huan says, referring to his whole life.
      He simply had to leave the poverty of his home village. In the city, an unskilled labourer will only find construction work, and cannot turn down the starvation wages and inhuman treatment, because otherwise someone else would get it.
      As Huan is being interviewed at the corner of the construction site, a German sports car drives past and turns into the parking garage of a luxury apartment house nearby.
      Both the owner of the car and Huan are children of China’s astonishing economic growth. The simple fact is that only one of the two has been able to enjoy the benefits.
      It probably takes the driver of the car about two weeks to earn what Huan gets in a whole year. He is enjoying life, living out his dreams, with a home in a building that was built by people like Huan.
      Huan is 39 years old. The best that he can hope is to live about another 20 years. He has no alternatives, no way to change his life.
      Or does he?
      Huan thinks for a moment and then says: "I have heard that some have earned money by collecting trash."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.5.2004

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: The darker side of the economic miracle

SAMI SILLANPÄÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
sami.sillanpaa@hs.fi