Three times a day: from the new energy workshops of central enterprises to the county city schools, who has turned the wages of Chinese workers into engineering funds?

On September 12, Fujian, Henan, Sichuan followed up with workers in the field of engineering construction to discuss wages. The public picture showed that the participants came from different projects: there are new energy projects built by the central enterprise system, there are county-level secondary construction projects, there are local construction projects. Different locations, different owners, different engineering uses, but point to the same problem: the project can be advanced, the project can be held, the funds can be allocated, but the people who really work must rely on the door, pull the banner, and even sleep in the project site to discuss the wages already paid for labor.

In Fujian, engineers associated with the "Six Segments of Xinjiang Tiananmen North Pine 6.1 million kilowatt New Energy Project" gathered to collect wages; workers appeared at the gate of the senior secondary school in Hanoi, Zhejiang Prefecture; and in Sichuan, Daiichi, construction workers appeared to ask for a wage for staying and laying the ground.

“When wage-raising turns from an incident to a ‘settlement procedure’ for workers to obtain normal wages, the problem is not just a contractor’s account, but the institutional rupture between engineering funds and labor remuneration.”

* New energy projects have also failed to bypass old problems.

New energy is officially packaged in China as an important engine for industrial upgrading and investment growth. Large-scale wind, photovoltaic and auxiliary projects often have huge investments, state-owned enterprise background and policy support.But at the end of the project, construction still relies on multi-layer structures such as total contracts, professional subcontracts, labor subcontracts and group groups.

The biggest danger of this structure is the upstream more than one layer of contractual relationships, the wages of the downstream workers are more and more at risk of being suspended, delayed or tied to the settlement of the project. The size of the project investment is bigger, and it is not equal to the wage will automatically enter the worker's account on time.

Therefore, when central enterprises or large state-owned enterprises appear in the project construction chain, it can not only emphasize "work is responsible for the subcontractors". who chooses the subcontractor, who controls the project amount, who accepts the project volume, who masters the payment nodes, should answer why the wages are delayed.

The school is built, the people who build the school are standing at the school door to ask for money

In particular, there are contradictions in the field of high school in Hanoi: educational projects should have been part of public construction, while workers who participate in the construction need to seek remuneration at the school door.

This scenario exposes a long-standing paradox in local engineering management: the government, school, or project unit can obtain a public facility that has been built or is under construction, but the workers’ wages may be left in the last mile of the contract chain.

If the construction fee has not been settled, it is necessary to disclose who owes whom; if the total has been paid, it is necessary to indicate which layer of funds has been withheld; if there is a so-called construction dispute, the wages of the workers cannot be converted into a mortgage for negotiation between enterprises.

Why do workers always put things in public space?

From the public appearance of the salary platform, the common approach of workers is highly similar:

• gathering in the project department;
• drawing banners or publicly disclosing payroll information;
• going to government departments, schools or construction units to request coordination;
• staying in the workspace, project department or even landing;
• uploading on-site videos to the network, hoping that the public opinion will force the responsible party to pay.

These approaches in themselves demonstrate that normal wage payments and labour dispute settlement mechanisms didn’t work at first. A worker would not choose to sleep on the cement floor to ask for money if he believed that his wage bills would come on time.

China has regulations that guarantee the payment of farmers' wages and salary-specific accounts, real-name system, total package distribution and other system designs, but whether the system really falls on each engineering project, ultimately depends on one of the simplest indicators: whether the workers get their wages on time, not how many system signs hang on the wall.

“Project funds have not fallen” is not an indefinitely paid license

The engineering industry often explains wages as “no pay,” “audit is not over,” “projects are disputed,” “the total package is not settled,” but workers are selling the work they have done, rather than providing interest-free financing to developers, schools or contractors.

The transfer of business risks between enterprises to the lowest-wage and weakest-commercial workers is essentially the financing of the whole project by workers.

If a project has to rely on delayed wages to maintain cash flow, then its so-called construction progress itself is based on the laborers being forced to pay.

Three places occur simultaneously and should no longer be treated as three isolated disputes.

The Fujian New Energy Project, the Henan School Project, and the Sichuan Construction Project have no direct links to each other, but similar pay scenarios occur on the same day and provide a window to observe China’s engineering labor relationships.

The question to be asked is not only “has the money been sent in the end?” but rather:

1. how many layers of wages have passed between construction units and workers' accounts;
2. whether the overall package implements the wage special and transfer system;
3. when local people's companies, housing and other departments intervened after the loss of pay;
4. whether there is a situation where wages are bound by construction settlement, audit or contract disputes;
5. whether there is no practical role for repeatedly missing pay contractors, credit punishment and market access mechanisms.

Wages are not a "negative public opinion", the lack of pay itself is the problem. If wages start flowing every time workers send live videos to the network, then the real proof of effectiveness is not the wage guarantee system, but public exposure.

For the three-tier workers, what they demand is not additional benefits, but the most basic account: Work is done and wages should be paid. A engineering system that requires workers to constantly protest in exchange for labor remuneration, be it the brand of new energy, education or urban construction, cannot be called normal.