The weeklong 14th National Congress of Chinese Trade Unions concluded Friday in Beijing. It has finished with an amended constitution, highlighting the role of the organization in protecting workers' rights and interests, and adding new clauses to ensure the membership of transient workers.

Trade union members have their new leaders sitting on the presidium. The newly-elected trade union body will face even bigger challenges in the next five years, both in terms of protecting the rights and interests of the employees and adjusting the role of the trade union itself. At the closing session, some local trade unions and union members were cited for their good performance in helping the employees. The newly-elected president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, Wang Zhaoguo delivered the closing remarks.

"Trade unions will perform their social functions and will protect the interests and rights of the employees," Wang said in the closing remarks.

As China has at least 94 million migrant workers now, a new clause was added into the amended constitution allowing trade union members to keep and transfer their union membership when they move to another place. Some analysts believed that China's accession into the WTO will make more farmers leave the countryside to work in cities, which will make trade union's work even harder.

Wu Yaping, director of Workers Union Office of the Chinese Workers' Movement Institute, said, "Approximately 150 million farmers will move to big cities for jobs. It will pose a big challenge to the union in terms of salary negotiation and workers protection."

To cope with this change, many local trade unions have made efforts to accommodate these new laborers to protect them from being abused. But this has proved to be a difficult task as most migrant workers don't have permanent, stable employment. Henan Province in central China has the largest population of farmer-workers in the country and they have to deal with loads of labor problems as a result.

Chen Min, chairman of Xinyang City Trade Union, said, "The trade union has established over 40 centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang to help over 300,000 migrant workers deal with employers in contract signing, work safety and salary negotiations."

Chen says the weeklong Trade Union Congress has ended on a strong note with increased protection for workers' interests and rights. But he said it's a job that will require the efforts of union members like him for a long time to come.

The need to safeguard the rights and interests of employees persists into the twenty-first century. Some say the task is getting even harder. Whatever the case, the newly-elected union leaders at this Congress have to face up to the challenge for the next five years.

(CCTV.com September 26, 2003)