No wages for workers, no New Year

Migrant worker Liu Xinglun has been in self-exile during the past two Lunar New Year holidays - too ashamed to go home to face the 53 construction workers waiting for him to return with their salaries. The 41-year-old construction worker from Anhui province will have to spend his third holiday in Beijing alone - away from his wife and two children - if he does not receive the back wages from his former employer. 'As long as I cannot get the wages for the workers, they will come swearing and yelling at my house during the Lunar New Year. Sometimes they stay at my home for a whole day and refuse to leave if I cannot pay them,' Mr Liu said. 'I am very afraid. I am worried that I cannot go home again this year if I cannot get the money.' As a team leader, Mr Liu was responsible for ensuring his fellow workers were paid because he recruited them from among his relatives, friends and acquaintances in his home town of Fuyang and took them to Beijing to work on construction sites. Mr Liu started working on sites in the capital 12 years ago. A secondary school graduate, he was better educated than most construction workers and was soon promoted to team leader, responsible for recruiting his own team members and distributing work to them on sites. All went well until 2001. Although subcontractors used many excuses to impose penalties on construction workers and deduct money from their salaries, Mr Liu at least managed to pay his fellow team members the bulk of their salaries. His ordeal began when he and his team worked for Luo Xidong on a construction site for a subsidiary under the state-owned Beijing City Construction Group, which was the principle contractor. 'I remember it was snowing heavily in the winter in 2001. We had not received one cent for the three months we worked there and it was close to the Lunar New Year. Luo said we must finish the work before he paid us because he said we could walk away with the money,' Mr Liu said. 'But he did not pay us even after we finished the work. 'Our 50 workers protested and he finally paid us half of our salaries. But he then disappeared.' Mr Liu lost credibility among his friends and relatives and his team members left him to work for others. He was forced to embark on a long and difficult journey to claim around 20,000 yuan in back wages. Like most construction workers, no contract was signed between Mr Liu and Mr Luo. The sub-contractor which hired Mr Luo - the Sichuan Suining Wanfang Company - said it had nothing to do with Mr Luo when Mr Liu went to its office in 2002. 'They told me to go and ask Luo for the money because the IOU was signed by Luo, not them,' Mr Liu said. The principle contractor, Beijing City Construction Group, which is under the Beijing municipal government, said they were not responsible for the wages either. Xie Junqing was one of the few workers in the team who did not bear a grudge against Mr Liu. An old classmate of Mr Liu's at secondary school, Mr Xie said he understood the difficulties he had gone through because he has suffered similar ordeals. Mr Xie was a team leader in 2002 and he only went home on the second day of the Lunar New Year last year because his sub-contractor had also refused to pay his back wages. As pressure from his relatives and friends mounted, Mr Liu spent 1,800 yuan - a large amount for a construction worker who earns 30 yuan to 50 yuan for eight to 12 hours' work a day - to file a lawsuit against Mr Luo. Although a court ruled in July last year that Mr Luo should pay Mr Liu the money, the verdict has no effect because Mr Luo did not attend the hearing. 'I paid 1,000 yuan for the lawyer's fee and 800 yuan for the court fee. But still that did not work,' Mr Liu said. But last week Mr Liu saw some light at the end of the tunnel when he sought help from the Beijing City Construction Bureau again. 'They referred me to the legal aid centre. I went there eight times and they said it was not within their scope of services. 'I really don't understand why they referred me to the centre if it is not their job to help me. But last week I went and queued up in the back-wages office in the construction bureau for several hours to lodge a complaint. The official there rang up the manager of the subsidiary of the Beijing City Construction Group and he promised to pay. 'The manager did not give a date for the payment. Will he keep his promise? Will he pay before the Lunar New Year so that I can go home?' As time slips by, the chances of Mr Liu being reunited with his family for the holiday grow slimmer. The manager has not answered his calls since late last week and officials from the city construction bureau say he must simply wait. To make matters even worse, the sub-contractor he worked for last year only paid two-thirds of the 60,000 yuan of wages he owed to Mr Liu's team. Mr Liu used the 40,000 yuan he received to pay the 40 workers under him. 'He said he would pay me and he does not give me a date. I am more optimistic with this one because we have signed a contract. But if I don't get the money, I will have no money to pay my children's school fees and I may have to borrow money for my children's tuition again,' Mr Liu said. 'At least I paid my workers last year. Now I really want the overdue salaries in 2001 so that I can go home to see my family.' He would rather not consider spending the Lunar New Year alone in a cold Beijing room for a third year.