CHINA’S trade unions faced mounting pressure to get tough with the country’s mammoth construction industry today after politicians highlighted dire conditions for its workers.

People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC) national committee chairman Yu Zhengsheng hailed construction as a “pillar industry in the national economy” but argued that the rights of the workers behind the building boom were routinely ignored by employers.

After meeting “advisers and experts” Mr Yu said government plans to increase social security coverage were welcome, but that the Building Law needed revision to standardise conditions across the sector and clamp down on subcontracting.

He called for greater clarity on the responsibilities to workers of government and employers respectively, but noted that trade unions needed to “play a more active role” in fighting to safeguard legal rights.

Mr Yu’s intervention comes after the PPCC social and legal affairs department ordered a special investigation into the construction sector.

Despite the introduction of the Labour Contract Law in 2008, designed to shore up workers’ rights, research has found that six years on most construction workers are not unionised, more than 80 per cent do not even have a written contract with their employer and many of those with written contracts do not have their own copies, which leads to frequent abuses.

A plethora of dodgy subcontractors commissioned to employ staff had been used to let building companies shirk their responsibilities. 

Difficulties in proving employee status in court meant that three-quarters of injured workers received less than 70 per cent of the accident compensation they were legally entitled to, while a third received less than 20 per cent according to a wide-ranging survey earlier this year by Hong Kong-based labour professor Pun Ngai.

Exploitation of unregistered migrant workers from the countryside was particularly acute, the PPCC noted, calling for legal changes to ensure that they win the same rights at work as staff who are officially resident in the cities they work in.

The PPCC brings together representatives of various political parties as well as industrial, trade union, professional and religious leaders and advises the legislating National People’s Congress.