Ok ok, I'll calm down now. EVERYTIME I even think about MVF (Montgomery Village Foundation), our homeowner association where we live, I see red! Anyway, instead of getting all into the details of our saga with MVF, you should just read Eric's blog about it. I have to let Eric deal with them, or I'd chew off some serious heads there, which I have already done. It sucks. TRULY sucks. Nothing more to it. It's a F&%@ing Nazi organization.
Ok breathe.
Now onto the other half of the titled blog.
I found out that China, or at least Shanghai government, is doing a good job at making sure construction workers are getting their pay. It's not working as well outside of Shanghai yet, but one step at a time. This is what's happening:
Most of the construction workers in Shanghai (if not all) are from outside of Shanghai. Mostly nearby provinces. And big construction bids are done by big construction companies that don't actually have their own man power to do with work. So they get what's called Min Gong (literally translated people worker) to do the work. There are always at least 20 million people from outside Shanghai coming to Shanghai to look for a living. Most of Shanghai's low pay jobs are filled by these people, from nannies to maids, to construction workers, to street sweepers. They are everywhere. The ones that have a higher education, however, does pretty well in Shanghai, just like native Shanghaiese. But these are not the ones I'm talking about here.
Anyway, so the companies that hires the Min Gong gets their pay from the company they got the bid from and is supposed to pay the Min Gong's from that money. They don't always though, apparently! So these poor Min Gong work their tails off and get no pay! So the government stepped in. They are making sure that companies are paying their workers right away. And sometimes when money is tight with the companies because of some accounting reasons (no more details than that unfortunately, cuz it's complicated), the government will actually loan the company money to pay the workers first. Pretty good, eh?!
Another thing that companies do now is to organize trips home for their Min Gong during holidays. And for the ones that can't make it home, they will set up "husband-wife" hotel rooms for them. That's pretty damned decent, I'll say!
So maybe there's hope for China after all. Slowly people are getting the respect they deserve. One step in the right direction, that's for sure.
Better than the damn MVF! Shame!
1 comment:
Hey the paying the workers thingy sounded like John's old job. That was what he did, he went to different sites to investigate to make sure all the workers get paid fairly. See? This problem doesn't only exist in CHina.
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