Starting from next month, Shenzhen will launch a three-month campaign against unpaid wages with more rigorous measures following last year's successful crackdown on back pay owed by employers, according to the labor and insurance bureau Saturday.

A revised regulation on the payment of wages will come into effect by the end of the year requiring certain enterprises, starting from construction companies in the first phase, to set aside wages under special accounts.

Other measures targeting the construction industry, the industry with the worst record in unpaid wages, include improved subcontracting procedures for government projects and disqualification from contracting projects for companies with a poor back-pay record.

The bureau will set up an "express channel" to expedite arbitrations on cases related to unpaid wages. It will also form a special arbitration team to serve migrant workers and reduce or even exempt legal fees incurred by migrant workers.

In 2005, about half of the 9,570 cases relating to violations of labor and insurance regulations in the city dealt with unpaid wages by enterprises. The trend was curbed in the first half of this year thanks to the "zero back pay" campaign kicked off by the bureau in October 2005.

From January to June, the back pay insurance fund under the bureau paid 1.96 million yuan (US$245,000) to victimized workers, a huge drop compared to last year's 29.9 million yuan.

Zhang Ming, head of the supervising team of the wage payment watchdog bureau, contributed the decrease in back pay cases to last year's "zero back pay" campaign and imprisonment of eight company owners for withholding wages earlier this year.

To protect themselves better, the migrant workers should learn more about their rights, said Xu Shaoying, vice director general of the bureau, in a talk with migrant workers in Xincheng Building on Saturday.

The talk was held in eight spots citywide Saturday. A large number of questions were raised about payment for overtime work, according to the bureau.

Some enterprises failed to pay the workers 1.5 times the basic salary for overtime work on weekdays and two times for weekends while some calculated the overtime payment wrongly on basic salaries lower than the city's minimum salary standard.

(Shenzhen Daily August 7, 2006)