National-level agencies are now sending investigators to Guangdong Province (where
Dongguan is located) and Sichuan.
For companies willing to take the jump into blatant non-compliance with
China's most basic labor laws, using children is an attractive cost-saving
measure. As an article
in China's Legal Times notes, "Because hiring children is illegal, the
employer does not need to pay different kinds of legally mandated social
benefits." Contracts and consultation are, needless to say, off
the table. And local minimum wages, which have been rising
steadily to keep pace with the country's CPI inflation, can go out the window.
Factories can hide abuses by maintaining secondary plants, where working
conditions are not what their multinational clients might wish or, at least,
publicly say they wish (Alexandra Harney describes this process brilliantly in
her new
book The China
Price). Subcontractors can pass things on to
subcontractors-of-subcontractors. And
subcontractors-of-subcontractors-of-subcontractors.
Equally importantly, private labor recruitment agencies, while circumscribed
by new rules like the Regulations on Employment Services and Employment
Management issued by the Ministry of
Labor and Social Security, can manage a shadowy world of deferred wages and
tangled responsibility on behalf of employers.
These dangers may be exacerbated in the future by companies' push inland.
To escape enforcement of the Labor Contract Law (and rising prices
generally), some bosses are looking to Jiangxi, Hunan and elsewhere. These provinces are rural, struggling and eager for investment. And their government inspectors, I fear, may have less experience and
Province's Emergency Management Office now says it will launch a massive drive
to uncover child labor: "Not a single business, not a single employee should be
missed in the general inspection." Dongguan police have begun investigating
3,629 businesses, involving 450,000 employees, according to Li Xiaomei, the
city's vice mayor.
Interestingly, Li is now using language associated
with China's anti-crime drives of the past: "(We) will strike hard against the
underground employment agencies that exploited children, factories that
illegally used child labor, and possible human smugglers."
For more
details see the
Macau Daily Times (English).
Comments
re: Child Labor in China
Great post -- employment agencies will continue to make a profit from desperate people, desperate for work -- unless laws are enforced regularly and strongly.