Sun Baoshu, vice minister of China's Ministry of Labor and Social Security, disclosed at a recent meeting that China is drafting a Salary Rule to solve such social problems as low salaries, slow increase of salaries, problems of collecting back pay for workers and establishing a normal salary increase and payment mechanism.
Sun says that to protect workers' rights in getting paid, the Chinese government at various levels are working to clear unpaid salary and improve their salary payment mechanisms. Sun says that by the end of 2007, most provinces in China will finish solving the unsolved salary problem and a few provinces that had more of such problems will finish the task in the first half of 2008.
According to Sun, 12 Chinese provinces have already worked out a regional salary regulation and 27 provinces have set up a salary deposit system for industries where salary deferring is most likely to occur. In addition, the minimum salary system has been implemented and the provinces have been asked to raise the minimum salary standard at least once every two years.
Despite the above efforts, there are still many problems remaining, such as salary deferring, unreasonable minimum salary standards in some regions and slow increase of workers' salaries. Sun says the Salary Rule will bring salary issues under the control of the judicial system.