China's migrant workers give city life thumbs down
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[By Liu Rui/Global Times] |
China's migrant workers are showing what they really think of city life by the millions after this Spring Festival.
Over 100 million people traveled back to their hometowns during the traditional 15-day break, but millions have decided to stay home.
Recruiters are reporting they are only getting 10 applications for every 100 jobs that need filling. Employers are again this year offering 20 percent pay raises, and still no takers.
It must be a delicious moment when a migrant decides to abandon a city job. It's as if they're saying: You want cake? Serve it yourself.
Migrant workers from the countryside have been on the bottom rung of urban society for years and yet cities continue to rub salt into their calloused knuckles.
Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have all issued a spate of new policies restricting the rights of migrant workers to buy property, license a vehicle and apply for the best jobs.
In the city, countryside migrants live in virtual segregation in low-rent urban villages that provide cramped, substandard housing that is purposefully left to deteriorate. Many are little more than a warren of dark alleys with few of the services the other half take for granted. Some of these migrant neighborhoods are decades-old communities, yet vast tracks of them can be razed on a couple of months notice.
When this happens the lucky land-right holders make headlines for their windfall compensation packages, while their tenants are uprooted once again and forced to make camp in some other urban sprawl on the outskirts.
