Mainland Media

Wages: The false debate over earning power of migrants and graduates

In late October 2006, a newspaper from Hunan Province made a controversial claim with the headline “University students earn less than migrant workers.” The newspaper based its assertion on a study it performed in which it interviewed approximately 100 university students about their expectation on wages when they graduate in 2007. Although 60% thought they would earn 1,000-1,500 Yuan and 20% predicted they would earn 2,000 Yuan, more than half of the interviewees said 800 Yuan is the minimum they would accept [NOTE 1] . They compared these results with a parallel survey by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MOLSS) in March 2006 which found that, for migrant workers who intend to find jobs in the cities after Chinese New Year, expected wages were 1,189 Yuan.[NOTE 2]

Issues of income, university students and migrant workers are indeed sensitive in China, and while a university student in the Chinese context is something prestigious, migrant workers are seen as the urban underclass. Therefore, this news story successfully stirred a heated discussion among forums and newspapers, which asked misdirected questions about what was wrong with the educational system and why university students had such low self-esteem. Some insightful questions were also raised, and these are the issues this article attempts to discuss.

Expectations and reality

While the migrant workers told MOLSS that they expected to earn 1,189 Yuan per month, the enterprises representing employers told MOLSS in the same survey that they expected to pay 949 Yuan, creating a gap between the takers and givers. In fact, as evidenced by everyday news reports on wages arrears and unannounced shutdown of factories, many workers often do not get the pay they are entitled to, which is often lower than the minimum wages required by law anyway.

In the autumn of 2006, an IHLO researcher visited a factory in China. Despite good marketing skills and shiny new machines, the factory managers admitted that they would deliberately not tell migrant workers the legal minimum wages and would only offer them meager piece rates. The researcher calculated that a worker who only works the legal working hours (40 hours a week and not more than 36 hours of overtime per month), is not able to earn the minimum wages set up by the local government. Only with long working hours (more than 66 hours a week) and a stressful work schedule, could workers earn close to 1,000 Yuan. So when MOLSS asked how much the migrant workers expect to earn, they should have also asked how many hours they expected to work. Furthermore, MOLSS itself should have done follow-up research on the difference between their expectations and the wages slip.

Other benefits and differences

While the university students say that 1,000 Yuan is the minimum wages they would accept, they assume that other benefits such as paid annual leave, paid sick leave, social security insurance, medical insurance, pension and unemployment insurance would be included in the employment contract. Even though most of the migrant workers are theoretically entitled to these benefits, in practice only a few are lucky enough to enjoy them.

In labour-intensive industries, such as garment, toy and electronic factories, workers are paid by the quantity they produce, which means they only get paid on days they go to work and they are expected to complete a high quota to make a reasonable income. In many newly developed industrial zones the local labour department turns a blind eye to regulations on insurance in order to attract investments. Very often, the higher levels of authority issue regulations and even laws to ensure that migrant workers enjoy the same benefits as urban workers. Yet, at the same time, the labour departments at the district level issue their own regulations to allow factories to have double standards, or they simply do not check if the factories provide the migrant workers the same treatment. Many migrant workers in these sectors are employed without labour contracts and sometimes find it difficult to prove a labour relationship actually exists in order to claim back wages, let alone the ability to claim work related insurance and other benefits

University students are privileged to transform their rural hukou to urban hukou when they enroll at a university. Thus, when they seek jobs, they are far better protected than their migrant counterparts. Therefore, comparing migrant workers and university graduates is irrelevant, as they are positioned at different starting points.

Putting migrant workers on the same scale as university graduates may also imply that university students quoting similar wage expectations should be news headlines, since it is common knowledge that migrant workers are considered the lowest-income group. It has become an interesting yet sad phenomenon that on one hand the media, the central government and NGOs are supposedly striving to improve the living standard of migrant workers, but on the other hand they are taken by surprise when they see university students compare themselves to migrant workers. In their idea of social hierarchy, migrant workers are still perceived as a defenseless group, so it is inconceivable that they should be compared to prestigious university graduates. Therefore the core debate after the release of the news report should rest on how to ensure more decent wages and how to improve the self-esteem of graduates, rather than reviewing the working conditions of migrant workers.

IHLO

July 2007

Notes