Survey report of work resumption condition during the COVID-19 outbreak in China: Fewer than 30% of employees received normal wage payment during the delayed work resumption period

*This report was written by a labour organization in Guangdong province, and the author owns the copyright. It is prohibited to reprint this article without the author's permission.

 

Affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak, suspension of work and production was applied in various industries, followed by the problems of employees’ wage payment during the delayed work resumption period (and work resumption period). For the containment for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission and the resulting human resources issues, the General Office of the State Council, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Affairs and local governments issued a series of announcement of Lunar New Year holiday extension and the employee rights regulations during the delayed work resumption period.

However, the actual situation of employee rights protection during the holiday extension period requires further investigation. To learn about the labour rights issues during COVID-19 spreading period, a labour organization in Guangdong province conducted an online survey about work resumption conditions. Two hundred and ten valid responses were collected. 66% of the workers under study submitted their answers in Guangdong. More than 7% of the total responses submitted in Hubei and 73% of Hubei responses came from Wuhan.

Limited by factors including the survey nature and method, the present survey is not a comprehensive one. Instead of the full picture of labour right issues in China, this report aims at providing information related to salary payment of a small proportion of Chinese employees during the delayed work resumption period, with support of real data.

1. Participants

The youth was the majority of the research participants. Young people aged 25-45 years old took a significant proportion (around 65%) of our participants. The age distribution of the survey participant was consistent with the general situation that young people contribute to the primary labour force of a society. Also, as the youth are the primary financial providers of their family, the survey might reflect the income problems of households during the COVID-19 period.

Guangdong participants comprised about 65% of the total number, and Hubei participants were 7%. The exceptional condition of disease spreading resulted in the lowest population mobility rate during the Lunar New Year Holiday period in recent years. For the consideration of representativeness, instead of the place of birth or workplace, we use the IP location of survey submission to record the region of participants. From the IP location tracing, 65% of our responses submitted from Guangdong and 7% of them were from Hubei. Guangxi and Hunan comprised 6% and 5% respectively, and the remaining 19% from other provinces.

The occupation and industry of our participants were diverse, while most of them were entry-level employees. We used an open-ended question to collect their job positions. The participants came from industries included manufacturing, service industry (including household service), media and broadcasting, logistics and sales. The job positions were also various, included but not limited to manager, clerk, engineer, technician and even creative industry members like director and editor. We analysed and categorised the answers and summarised the results in the previous table. Overall, the majority of our participants came from entry-level jobs.

 

Table 1. Basic informations of participants

Type

Option

Proportion

Gender

Male

63.33%

Female

36.67%

Age

(Years old)

16~25

14.76%

26~45

64.82%

46~55

20.48%

≥56

0.48%

Industry

Installation, repairing and technician

4%

Administrative, assistant and clerk

9%

Management, design, consultation and project manager

14%

Logistics, household service and catering

3%

Front-line worker, general worker, driver and security guard

57%

Others

13%

IP Location

(Province)

Guangdong

65%

Hubei

7%

Guangxi

6%

Hunan

3%

Others

19%

 

2.Research information

According to the announcement by the General Office of the State Council dated January 27th 2020, the Lunar New Year Holiday was extended to February 2nd because of the novel coronavirus disease. For controlling disease transmission, local governments also issued delayed work resumption announcement. In Guangdong, the work resumption date should not be earlier than 24:00 of February 9th. The work resumption date delayed several times because of disease development. The enterprises in China applied delayed work or home office during the disease period. Governments provided supportive policies and regulations to relieve the pressure on both the employers and the employees. This report aims to provide information about the actual condition of labour rights during the special period.

Remarks: Some participants might select “no delayed work resumptions” as they misunderstood of the definition of delayed work resumptions (i.e. the period from February 2nd 2020 to the work resumption date). The bias was hard to eliminate. For consistency, we use the workers’ original answers in this report.

2.1 78% of the workers under study experienced delayed work resumption, and 71% of them didn’t receive full payment of salary during that period. The labour rights issue in Hubei province was significant that at least 67% of the employees received no payment during their delayed work resumption period. 

78% of the workers under study experienced delayed work resumption. Only 29% of the employees with delayed work resumption received their normal payment, and 25% of them received no payment. The abnormal payment models included delayed payment (15%), partial payment (13%) and others (18%). For the delayed payment, the implementation condition was uncertain; for the partial payment, the standard of payment ratio, the legality and consultation procedures were yet to be confirmed. We also required further details about the “other payment model”.

 

Table 2. How many payments did you receive when you experienced delayed work resumption

Option

Proportion

Normal payment

31%

Partial payment

16%

Delayed payment

18%

No payment

18%

Others

17%

 

The participants from Guangdong comprised the most substantial proportion of our sample. In Hubei, people suffered most from COVID-19 and even experienced city lockdown. Therefore, we particularly analysed the data from the mentioned two regions.

In these two provinces, delayed work resumption rate (81% and 80%) was consistent with the overall result of 78%. However, the wage payment condition showed divergence. The charts 4 and 6 show that in Guangdong, 31% of the delayed work participants received normal payment (2% higher than the overall result) while only 16% for Hubei. In Hubei, the high ratio of “no payment” was noticeable, with 67% of the Hubei participants certainly would not receive any payment of the delayed work resumption period while 18% for Guangdong (7% lower than the overall result). As the major damage area of COVID-19, the labour rights issues during the disease control period worth more attention.

 

Table 3. How many payments did you recieved when you experienced delayed work resumption (Guangdong)

Option

Proportion

Normal payment

16%

Partial payment

0%

Delayed payment

0%

No payment

76%

Others

17%

 

Table 4.How many payments did you recieved when you experienced delayed work resumption(Hubei)

Option

Proportion

Full payment

29%

Partial payment

13%

Delayed payment

15%

No payment

25%

Others

18%

 

2.2Problems beyond the workers’ resumption to work: 18% of the workers under study needed quarantine, 25% for salary adjustment, 32% for workload increase and 6% lost their job.

Before the survey completion, around 80% of the companies of our participants fully resumed operation (35%) or partially resumed (45%). In other words, approximately 20% of the workers could not continue work due to the business suspension, and 45% of the workers were under the risk of non-resumption to work because of the enterprises’ partial work resumption.

During the special period, employees also took the risks of quarantine, salary adjustment, workload increase and even employment termination. The study does not explore if all of the risks mentioned above are legal, reasonable and the workers fairly compensated. But the difficulties of the workers affected is clearly revealed.

a.Delayed work resumption

Up to our research, more than 20% of the enterprises of the workers under study had not resumed production. Few general frontline workers returned work before February 9th 2020.

Around 35% of the workers resumed to work, but 45% partially did so, and 20% not yet resumed to work.

We analysed the responses of the workers and concluded the primary group of the workers resuming to work before February 9th 2020 were mainly clerical, management, technical and   safeguard. Few general workers from the manufacturing industry returned work before February 9th 2020. As the participants might have a misunderstanding of delayed work resumption, the work resumption date analysis reflected that the actual rate of delayed work resumption was largely higher than the survey responses.

 

Table 5. The enterprises’ resumption of production

Resumption level

Numbers of the workers who responded to this questions

Proportion

Full resumption

73

34.76

Partial resumption

94

44.76

No resumption

43

20.48

Total number

210

100.00

 

b.Quarantine

18.56% of our participants needed quarantine after work resumption, but only 23% of them received full payment during the quarantine period. Other 23% of them received no payment during the quarantine period.

 

Table 6. How many payments did you recieve during the quarantine

Option

Proportion

Full payment

23%

Partial payment

34%

No payment

23%

Others

20%

 

c.Salary adjustment procedure and workload increase

25% of the participants experienced salary adjustment after the work suspension, and 74% of the adjusted group received a decreased salary. Primarily, 83% of the salary adjustment was decided without democratic consultation with the employer.

Apart from the wage decrease, around 32% of the workers increased their workload.

 

Table 7. Did your workload increase when you returned to work

Option

Number

Proportion

Yes

53

31.74%

No

114

68.26%

Total number

167

100%

 

d.Dismissal

6% of the workers were dismissed after the delayed work resumption. 30% of the dismissed workers resulted from economic layoffs, and 20% were due to the end of the contract.

3.The employers

We listed the conditions related to the employers in several aspects: supply of personal protective equipments (PPE), the form of work, size of enterprises and ratio of work resumption.

a.83% of the enterprises of the participants provided free PPEs for their staff, but it is sorry that 17% of the enterprises did not do so.

b.Around 63% of firms required on-site work and 12% applied home-office.

 

Table 8. Where did you work

Option Number Proportion

On-site work

106

63.47%

Home office

20

11.98%

Others

41

24.55%

 

c.Size of enterprises

The study covers mainly the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). 65% of the enterprises employ less than 200 workers. It is worrisome that the enterprise is highly affected by the economic recession due to the pandemic and redundancy could easily happen in these enterprises.

 

Table 9. Enterprises that have returned to work

Option

Proportion

Less than 10 people

12%

10 to 50 people

30%

50 to 200 people

23%

200 to 1000 people

18%

More than 1000 people

17%

 

4.Conclusion

From the survey, nearly 80% of the employees delayed their work resumption due to the COVID-19, but no more than 30% of them received full payment during the special period.

Salary cut, increased workloads or even unemployment caused pressures on the labour. Because of the large labour force size in China, 6% dismissal rate could reflect a significant number of unemployed people when more enterprises resume production. The pandemic will be over one day, but how about the full protection of workers’ rights?

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