The contractor owes three years of labor fees The court mediated before the lawsuit to help the migrant workers recover

Lanzhou Evening News This Spring Festival may be the best Spring Festival for Ma, Zhang and Wang, who live in Hekou Town, Xigu District, because just recently, the Xigu Court and the Hekou Town Judicial Office helped them recover a labor remuneration that had been owed for nearly three years.

The contractor does not pay for labor for three years

Ma, Zhang and Wang are villagers in the same village, and since 2019, they have worked together in a vegetable greenhouse contracted by Li. Due to the limited educational level of the three people, they did not conclude a written labor contract with Li, but only verbally agreed on the amount of salary and settlement time. After working for less than a year, the contractor Li often defaulted on wages, and the three of them did not have any source of income for a long time, so they left the greenhouse. In the following two years, Ma, Zhang and Wang repeatedly approached the contractor Li to ask for labor fees, but Li always delayed the deadline for paying wages for various reasons. In this way, the three spent two Spring Festivals in a bitter wait.

At the end of 2021, the three people came to the door again to find Li, but they did not expect That Li to repeat the same technique and continue to delay. Ma and others could not bear it, and a fierce conflict occurred with Li, who simply refused to pay wages on the grounds that the three people had not concluded a written labor contract, and threatened that they had no basis and no basis, even if they made trouble in the court themselves. The three decided to jointly sue Li to the court.

Pre-litigation mediation reduces the cost of migrant workers' rights protection

Due to the long trial period of the case and the need for the plaintiff to pay a lawsuit fee in advance, the Xigu court took into account the economic situation of the three plaintiffs and transferred the case to the pre-litigation mediation room from the perspective of reducing the cost of rights protection, hoping to resolve the contradiction and dispute before the case was filed and accepted. In the process of pre-litigation mediation, Ma and the other three were very emotional and claimed: If they can't get money during the Spring Festival this year, they will forcibly break into Li's home to ask for a salary, so that Li's whole family will have a bad year. In order to prevent the contradiction from further intensifying, the court staff and the mediators stationed in the pre-litigation mediation room of the Hekou Town Judicial Institute tried their best to appease the emotions of the three people, guide them to solve the problem of wage arrears through legal channels, and not let the original legitimate demands evolve into illegal crimes on impulse.

After calming the mood of the three people, the mediator got in touch with the contractor Li, who said that he did not intend to default on wages, but the past two years were not good, and he could not come up with so much money for a while. Since Li admitted the fact that he was in arrears of wages, the mediator notified the two parties to meet and negotiate.

On the day of the mediation, the mediator explained to Li the serious legal consequences of refusing to pay wages, and advised Li to understand the hardships and difficulties of the three migrant workers in supporting their families, and calmly consulted with them. Li said on the spot that he would pay part of the wages of Ma and others within the scope of his ability, and the remaining wages would be settled in one lump sum after the Spring Festival.

The plan proposed by Li mou was agreed by Ma and the other three people, but because the two sides had a deep contradiction before and Li had repeatedly reneged on his word, Ma and others did not fully believe Li. In order to dispel the concerns of the three people, after the successful pre-litigation mediation, the Xigu court immediately conducted judicial confirmation of the content of the agreement in accordance with the application of the parties, and made a ruling on the same day, giving the legal effect of the enforcement of the mediation agreement. Li also handed over part of his wages to three migrant workers on the second day after the mediation was completed, according to the content of the agreement, and an originally fierce salary negotiation storm ended peacefully.

Xu Peijie, all-media reporter of Lanzhou Daily