China saw a minor miracle, from January to June, during which
time it created job posts for 6.29 million new additions to the
workforce and 2.79 million laid-off workers, said Ying Shuji, a
spokesman with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security on
Friday.
Another 740,000 people who had?difficulties?in finding
jobs got employed during that period. By the end of June, the
nation had accomplished 70 percent of its employment targets for
the year, with an increase of 210,000 more people employed
year-on-year.
By the end of June, the nation's registered urban unemployed
head count stood at 8.38 million. The nationwide unemployment rate
stood at 4.1 percent, a 0.1 percent fall over last year.
China's ambitious aims include securing labor contracts for 90
percent by the end of the year. Fulfilling these aims will require
stricter management of the contracts and the widespread enforcing
of regulations to fully protect workers' rights.
Li added that all enterprises with trade unions would be covered
by the umbrella labor contract scheme by 2012, and that help would
come to workers laid off by state-owned enterprises to secure
reemployment.
The nation will also enforce a greater wage increase rate for
workers in the business sector through measures such as
prioritizing the minimum wage system, he said, for which special
investigations will be carried out to ensure workers nationwide are
being paid.
The ministry will further increase controls on all small brick
kilns, coal mines and workshops, to prevent repeats of the recent
forced labor scandals.
A further urgent matter was the widening of the insurance net to
cover industrial injuries and personal medicare, a move seen as
benefiting over 30 million rural laborers, he said, as well as
creating a pension system for retired rural laborers.
(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2007)