As China’s economy continues to boom, Chinese eastern provinces are facing a labor shortage after the Lunar New Year holidays.Coastal and inland cities are fiercely competing to attract migrant workers as China’s labor shortage spreads to less-developed central and western regions.
At Guangzhou Railway Station in South China’s Guangdong province, many company representatives held placards to grab the attention of arriving workers.In Southwest China’s Chongqing, many firms have set up booths at railway and bus stations to persuade workers to stay home instead of returning to the coast. The city’s labor bureau on its website posted an open letter urging workers to find jobs close to home.
Many migrant workers who returned to their hometowns for the holidays decided to stay there for a variety of reasons, including wanting to be with children for more time,new prospects closer to home and the lower cost of living.
Many migrant workers can just return to home one time in Chinese lunar new year, so they can only see their children once for a year.Thus,Many migrant workers say not wanting to leave their children,which should be a main reason that they decided stay their hometowns.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there are 150 million migrant workers in China.And there are about 58 million left-behind children in China, and 40 million are under 14 years old. Some 40 million of the children cared for by relatives are under 14.Nearly 30 percent of the parents of the “left behind” children have worked away from their hometowns for more than five years.
But according to a commentary by Yu Fenghui for Xinhua News Agency,The battle for hiring migrant workers is a good phenomenon and symbolizes the start of workers’ domination in the labor market. As is known, salary of migrant workers is kept low and not paid on time in the factory of the coastal areas,although the government has made efforts to improve the situation with policies to ensure workers’ rights and an increased minimum salary, but it is far from enough to solve the problem
The battle for labor will raise the low salary level to some degree and migrant workers’ social security needs such as pensions, medical care and work accident compensation will be gradually met.