Five and a half months without pay, the roadmen who moved west to pick the place to collect their wages in front of the traffic agency.

Roads are maintained daily, while those responsible for road maintenance say that they have not been paid for five and a half months. On 15 October, dozens of road maintenance workers from the city of Tangshan in Hebei moved to West County came to a meeting in front of the Transport Department of the Relocation County to demand their return to their labour pay. Yesterday's platform, which documented the collective protests in China, published videos and notes stating that workers had been paid several times without results and that they had finally taken their claims to the front of the government.

The location of the operation was not accidental. The Platform cited public information that road maintenance work in the relocated western district had been outsourced to Hunan Jin Jie Group. The attendance is clear and the work is visible to workers who clean and maintain roads on a daily basis; However, in the event of a pay chain problem, they may face a complex liability relationship between the hiring company, the contractor and the public project provider.

Outsourcing systems can reduce the workload of local sector direct hiring and managing workers, but should not allow the most basic wage guarantees to disappear in the contractual chain. Public roads are the infrastructure used by the population on a daily basis and the workers who provide services should not lose their subjects when they are paid for, because the employer has changed from government to a contractor. The Transport Department is not necessarily a direct employer of each worker ' s labour contract, but it is directly related to the procurement, performance and supervision of road maintenance projects, which explains why workers come to assemble at their offices.

What does five and a half months mean? For ordinary families that depend on monthly wages for rent, for old-age maintenance and for the education of their children, wages are not a paper accountancy item. Every month of arrears, workers are required to use savings, borrowing or reducing their living expenses to cover the financial pressure on businesses and public projects. The most acute contradiction is the asymmetry between the individual pay for the unpaid and the public service, which continues to demand that workers perform their duties.

The public video and publisher's text are not currently credited with the total amount of unpaid salaries, all the contractual relationships involved and the specific payment obligations, nor are there reliable information that the salaries paid after the live gatherings have been paid off. The report does not pretend that workers ' claims are judicial conclusions; However, the fact that they had come to the transport department as a group had shown themselves that the regular pay-out channels had not provided them with sufficient effective relief.

The relocation of roads in Western County requires maintenance as usual, while road support workers have to stop working and collect their salaries collectively. For outsourcing public services, Governments can hand over jobs to enterprises, but cannot outsource responsibility for those who perform them.