Unpaid construction workers protest in Beijing

Unpaid construction workers protest in Beijing Beijing - More than twenty construction workers occupied a 17-storey apartment block in Beijing, demanding their unpaid wages, state media said Saturday. The workers occupied a residential building of real estate project Zhujiang Augusta in Beijing's Tongzhou district for three hours on Friday afternoon, the official news agency Xinhua reported.

Guo Yanjun, the workers' leader, was quoted as saying that they had not received any payment even though the project was almost complete.

Workers were owed 400,000 yuan (59,000 dollars) by the project owner, the report said.

Problems with unpaid wages are common in China's construction industry, which is staffed largely by migrant workers.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 5.8 per cent of the country's migrant workers had been affected by wage arrears as of the end of 2008.

The global economic crisis has raised concerns that more companies could default on wage payments.

"As the financial crisis bites deeper, some small enterprises that are struck the most try to reduce their economic losses by laying off migrant workers or refusing to pay them," the state-run China Daily said in an earlier opinion piece.

"Those employers who deliberately rip off workers by refusing them their payments should be punished in accordance with the law," the paper said.

In this latest case, Xinhua reported that the local government will help workers negotiate a solution. (dpa)

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