Legal aid service in Jilin plays critical role in safeguarding migrant workers’ interests

The legal aid service system in Northeast China's Jilin province has been on the provincial government's priority list since 2011, helping address legal disputes for 138,120 people in more than 125,000 lawsuits and providing legal consulting service for around 650,000 people over the past nine years.

This year, with its focus on migrant workers' legitimate rights and interests, the legal aid service is expected to assist its clients in solving issues on compensation and work-related injuries.

Protecting migrant workers' legitimate interests

In August 2017, Guo, a resident of the county of Changling in Jilin, came to Changchun, capital of the province, and found a job at a local clothing store where the boss promised Guo a monthly salary of 2,880 yuan ($407) plus 1.5 percent of the total monthly sales.

The employer neither signed a labor contract with Guo nor paid for her social insurance.

As a result of sluggish sales between January and April last year, the store ended up owing Guo a total of 7,281 yuan in salary and failed to make the payment despite Guo's multiple requests for the money.

Guo brought her case to the local labor dispute arbitration committee, requesting compensation of 39,433 yuan from the store, which included a punitive payment for the store's failure to ink a labor contract with her.

However, the committee turned down her request, citing her failure to prove the existence of a labor relationship between her and the store.

Later, Guo turned to the legal aid center of the city which promptly accepted her case and handled it under the center's simplified procedure given her status as a migrant worker.

The center helped Guo file a lawsuit at a local court which ruled in favor of her by supporting her compensation claim.

"Were it not for the legal aid center, I wouldn't have received my salary," said Guo emotionally. "The salary is very important to me and I really appreciate the legal aid center."

"We've attached great importance to the work of protecting migrant workers' interests," said Tian Liu, head of Changchun's legal aid center.

According to Tian, to better help migrant workers, the center has set up 14 legal aid stations for migrant workers, simplified the workflow, cut their expense in seeking legal aid and launched media law popularization campaigns targeting migrant workers.

Actively help enterprises restore their relationship with workers

In July 2017, a group company's subsidiary, based in Jiangyuan district of Baishan, owed its 160 some workers several months of salaries due to its financial woes at the time.

The tension between the enterprise and workers grew after the workers' several failed attempts to get their salaries.

"Upon receiving the notice from the district's justice bureau, we quickly sent a legal service team consisting of three lawyers and two legal workers to the enterprise," said Zhou Liren, head of the legal aid center of Jiangyuan district.

The team helped the workers summarize their complaints into three points including the enterprise's failure to comply with the minimum wage standard, overtime wages and paid leave, and then sent an opinion letter to the group's board of directors.

The team's solution was accepted by both sides which finally re-signed their labor contracts and resumed the business operation.

"We adhered to the principles of transparency, impartiality and legality throughout the negotiation," said Zhou. "We invited worker representatives to all our meetings with the management, trying to help the management learn about the workers' discontent and the workers about the enterprise's difficulties."

The center also opened special windows for migrant workers at four labor-related public facilities in an effort to provide these workers with legal aid.

Building extensive legal aid service network for migrant workers

In February, a special law popularization campaign was launched by the legal aid center of Qianguo county in Songyuan city.

During the campaign, the center put up consulting desks to provide job-seekers with necessary legal knowledge about labor contracts, and distributed legal information cards to over 200 farmers who would work as migrant workers in other provinces.

Today, a five-level legal aid service network comprised of 70 legal aid agencies, 1,549 legal aid work stations and 8,477 legal aid offices has been established across the province.

By the end of August 2019, the network had offer legal aid to 2,804 migrant workers in 2,653 cases.