If it?s New Year, spend the day with peasants; if it?s Labour Day, lunch with the workers. China?s leaders know exactly how to get the message across. Instead of spending the day at the state council, said the gushing media, Premier Wen Jiabao preferred to spend May Day with skilled workers at Beijing?s Capital Iron and Steel Company. He shared with them their canteen lunch of fried potatoes, vegetables and steamed buns, asked them about their daily life, housing conditions and incomes, and exhorted them to become ?first class workers??.

With 31 miners just having died in China?s nth mine accident, this tokenism would have been a cruel joke were it not for the sudden concern for China?s vast unorganized labour in the media, which is tightly controlled by the government.

An editorial in The People?s Daily called for expanding trade unions to better protect workers? rights. Ironically, this principle was enunciated by Mao, whose policies have been given a quiet burial by China?s rulers. Expanding trade unions might well prove disastrous for workers. The only recognized trade unions are those affiliated to the Communist Party, and they have lost all credibility. Their members work in government-owned enterprises, which are fast closing down, with the unions doing little to stop the consequent loss of jobs.

In February, over 1,000 workers, mostly women,of a former state-owned textile factory in Shandong, struck work for five days asking for better pay: their wages were just 300 yuan per month. Neither the factory union nor the city-level union intervened. Last heard, the management was drawing up forms for agreeing to go back to work. Those who didn?t sign within 15 days, would be considered to have resigned. In March, 3,000-4,000 workers of the state-owned Yunnan Textile Plant, demonstrated outside the plant against the terms of its restructuring. Significantly, the terms had been negotiated by the employees? representatives? committee and the official union, without including workers in their negotiations. The new contracts laid down a 12-hour working day without wage increase.

Silence is not golden

In April, Shenzheners were amazed to see about 3,000 workers of a Hong Kong-owned furniture factory marching towards the state guest house, protesting against the three hours of unpaid ?voluntary overtime work?? they had to do everyday. Before they were dispersed by the police, they had managed to describe their harsh working conditions to the media: only two days off a month; and one ?off-duty permit?? between 200 workers, which allowed them to visit the toilet and drink water while on duty. Violation of this rule resulted not only in a 10 yuan fine, but also beatings. Again, complaints to the local labour authorities had proved fruitless.

None of this gets reported in the local media but, obviously, journalists get to know if it. Perhaps that is why, talking about the current Golden Week, the week-long holiday which began on Labour Day, and which is meant to boost spending on travel and shopping, the Beijing News intoned ?Golden Week can never be golden if our economy and society cannot bestow a little gold on everyone...We cannot forget the equal rights of rural migrant workers and their right to rest on Labour Day.?

But what beyond such remembrance? Next year, a law might be passed which would guarantee that migrant labour gets back unpaid wages. Meanwhile, tokenism helps. In October 2003, at the start of the Golden Week, Wen Jiabao visited a poor village. A peasant woman made her way to him through the crowd to complain that her husband had yet to receive 2,240 yuan, a year?s wages for building a road. Thanks to the country?s media, the man got his dues by midnight. Five days later, the county government paid all the wages due to those who had worked on the road.