Young Workers Lead Growing Labor Unrest in China
17 June 2010
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.
Factory labor built China into the world's third largest economy, after the United States and Japan. Now something else is building: labor tensions.
China bars labor unions independent of the Communist Party. But George Haley at the University of New Haven in Connecticut says labor unrest is common.
GEORGE HALEY: "This really isn’t new. There has been a tremendous amount of agitation among workers for higher pay for years."
Disputes are especially common in the Pearl River manufacturing area in southeastern China. Companies there have resisted raising wages.
For years, millions of Chinese from inland provinces have flooded into eastern industrial centers. But young workers are increasingly dissatisfied with the pay and working conditions.
Inflation hurts, too. China's export-driven economy has been recovering from the worldwide downturn. The growth rate in the first three months of this year was nearly twelve percent. But China could raise interest rates to control growth and inflation. Prices roses in May at the highest rate in a year and a half.
Migrants also face added costs for services that were free in the past, like medical care and education.
The government does not report on migrant unemployment. But media reports say an estimated twenty million migrant workers returned home last year after losing their jobs.
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