In recent years, all parts of the country have given full play to the functional role of legal aid in eradicating wage arrears for migrant workers. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Justice, in 2023, legal aid institutions across the country handled a total of 480,000 legal aid cases for migrant workers, recovering 6.8 billion yuan in labor compensation for 540,000 migrant workers. Recently, the reporter went deep into Heilongjiang and Jiangsu provinces to understand and discuss how to improve the legal aid service network based on the legal issues that migrant workers are anxious and anxious about, so as to effectively escort migrant workers to seek wages and protect their rights.
Jiangning District, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, launched an open day to promote legal aid. Courtesy of Jiangning District Bureau of Justice.
Can Legal Aid Really Help Migrant Workers?
Duty lawyers at the Heilongjiang Provincial Public Legal Service Center are answering the hotline to answer legal questions for the public. Photo by Li Jing, a reporter from Farmer's Daily and China Rural Net
According to statistics from the Ministry of Justice, legal aid institutions in various regions have used 590,000 public legal service entity platforms, 70,000 legal aid workstations, and 330,000 legal aid contact points to provide legal aid to migrant workers in the nearest place, and a "half-hour service circle" has basically taken shape.
However, many migrant workers have this question: Can ordinary migrant workers apply for legal aid, and will the application procedures be cumbersome?
According to the law, migrant workers who apply for payment of labor remuneration or compensation for personal injuries caused by work-related accidents are exempt from verification of their financial hardship when applying for legal aid. In other words, migrant workers who apply for legal aid for wage and work-related injury compensation only need to provide their household registration book and ID card, and do not need to provide proof of financial hardship. If the person concerned does not have the household registration book at the time of application, it is also possible to provide other materials to prove that he or she is a migrant worker in the city.
How do legal aid lawyers help migrant workers in need?
A staff member of the Legal Aid Center in Lindian County, Heilongjiang Province (first from left) instructs migrant workers to fill out legal aid application materials. Photo by Jiang Yuhang
"It is more difficult to represent migrant workers in legal aid cases for wages than in other cases. The legal aid lawyer told reporters that there are two major difficulties in representing migrant workers in legal aid cases for wages: the first difficulty is that the applicant cannot tell who the person in arrears is. The second difficulty is that the evidence in the hands of migrant workers is weak.
In order to help migrant workers get paid, lawyers have come up with various methods. If the construction worker does not know who the owner is, the legal aid lawyer will assist him in suing the contractor of the project first. At the same time, in order to supplement the evidence, the lawyers taught the migrant workers various methods of collecting evidence: how to call and send text messages to the boss who owes wages so that the other party can answer and reply, how to talk to the other party to guide him to tell the truth about the arrears of wages, and how to fix the evidence of arrears of wages in WeChat...... In the words of the lawyers, it is really "hard work" to supplement the evidence and supplement the litigation materials!
More efforts are still needed to explore the path to eradicate wage arrears
Lawyers say that almost all of the migrant workers who come to apply for legal aid do not have contracts. The absence of a contract means that the two parties have an employment relationship or a labor relationship, and there is no written agreement on the salary standard, working hours, and the way of paying wages. When wage arrears occur, migrant workers have little evidence to come up with. The most common evidence found by legal aid lawyers is WeChat chat records, call recordings, handwritten attendance sheets, work photos, etc., which are far from sufficient to prove the fact of wage arrears.
If migrant workers do not have a contract, their labor rights and interests are not guaranteed, how to solve such a problem from the institutional perspective? The gig market may be a feasible path.
It is understood that the gig market in Jiangsu Province covers an area of about 1,200 square meters, providing free employment services such as job recruitment, policy consultation, and rights and interests protection for migrant workers. The original intention of the establishment of this market is to meet the willingness of gig workers to find jobs and the employment needs of employers to "recruit immediately".
At present, the gig market in Jiangsu Province has maintained labor cooperation with more than 50 local enterprises all year round, and receives an average of 30,000 job seekers every year.
In addition, migrant workers who seek wages are often trapped in the rights protection process, and do not know which department to find first, and how convenient it would be if the relevant functional departments were all working together!
In Jiangning District, there is such an institution, the Jiangning District Labor Dispute Mediation Center, where almost all departments related to labor relations are concentrated in one place, so that "only one door can be entered and all claims can be resolved".
Free legal counsel is also important for migrant workers. The Heilongjiang Provincial Public Legal Service Center shouted the slogan of "creating free legal counsel around the people". Local people can call the 12348 hotline to communicate directly with the professional lawyers on duty in the center and get professional answers.
Recently, the Ministry of Justice issued a notice requiring legal aid institutions across the country to provide "one-time" legal aid services for migrant workers, including unblocking the "green channel" for legal aid, and giving priority to the acceptance, review, and assignment of legal aid cases for migrant workers.
Although the central and local governments have taken corresponding measures to eradicate the arrears of wages of migrant workers and safeguard the rights and interests of workers, how to solve the problems of difficult implementation and long time for rights protection still requires more efforts from relevant departments.