A growing number of students are being ripped-off by employers who hire them for part-time jobs during the university summer vacation, officials with the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau revealed Tuesday.

About 20 students a day have phoned the bureau's telephone consulting center to complain about employers since vacation began last month. The biggest grievances have been employers failing to pay students wages and pocketing a proportion of the agreed wage.

Complaint numbers have almost doubled over the same period last year, consulting center officials said.

"The surging number of complaints reflects the fact more and more students are working part time during their summer holidays," said Chen Ran, vice director of the telephone consulting center.

In one example, four students from the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Foreign Language College lost 80 percent of their agreed salary to a local job agency.

The students had been working as salesmen for an electronic manufacturer and had been told by the job agency they would be paid 100 yuan (US$12) a day. But the students were furious to discover they were only paid 20 yuan a day at the end of their first week.

"We were told by the agency that the 80 yuan was the so-called intermediate fee, which should be deducted from our salary," said Wang Lijie, one of the four underpaid students.

Wang said there was nothing the group could do but complain about the alleged rip-off.

Most students pay job agencies a registration fee of between 100 and 200 yuan to find them part-time work.

Agencies refuse to sign contracts with the students laying down set hours, wages and other working conditions. The agency fee is not set, and is decided on a case-by-case basis, according to the labor and social security bureau.

"The absence of a working contract is where the biggest problem lies, because students have nothing to protect their rights, and are at the mercy of their employers and the job agency," Chen said.

Labor laws only protect full-time employees, not students, he added.

Freshman Zhou Fei said companies relished the cheap labor provided by students. "If there were contracts, and proper labor laws applied, companies would simply not sign students."

Ling Yuan from the Shanghai Education Commission's student affairs division, said it was important to look for job opportunities through school-sponsored career centers.

(Shanghai Daily August 11, 2004)