China's trade unions are ramping up efforts to protect the migrant workers who form the backbone of China's working population.

About 29.5 million peasant-turned migrant workers had joined trade unions by July 2006 and trade unions plan to recruit 8 million new members each year for the next three years, according to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).

"The Chinese trade unions have taken up the challenge of organizing and representing this key component of the workforce. We will try to build a network to help and protect migrant workers," says Sun Chunlan, ACFTU vice chairman.

China's 200 million migrant workers make up more than one seventh of the total population and their number is expected to grow by 13 million each year as the country's urbanization gathers pace.

"Our situation has improved. In the past, the bosses would not let us leave the construction site on the weekend without permission, but that is no longer the case," says 30-year-old Lu Jiansong, a migrant worker and trade union member who works for Jiangsu Nantong No. 2 Construction Group on its Beijing construction sites.

"Another big difference is that nobody comes along now to check our temporary residence permits. Those checks always used to make me feel looked down upon," says Lu, who has been working as an electrician for eight years. "I feel more accepted by the city. The representatives of the trade unions often come to the construction sites to talk with us and help tackle our problems."

Migrant workers in China face the kind of problems encountered by immigrant workers in many developed countries. Most enter the urban environment with limited skills, and start their life in the city as construction or service workers, security guards, hotel and restaurant workers and janitors.

Major headache for migrant workers

A common problem for migrant workers -- and one the unions are campaigning to overcome -- is late payment or non-payment of wages.

Migrant workers have demonstrated to demand back wages or resorted to extreme actions such as suicide or even criminal action.

In random interviews at Beijing Western Railway Station where many migrant workers hang out, waiting for jobs, bedding down for the night or preparing to return home after failing to find jobs, most said late or non-payment of wages are the perils that upset them far more than the work itself.

40-year-old Liu Deying from Queshan County in central China's Henan Province said, together with other workers, he once took to the streets when his bosses defaulted on payment of 100,000 yuan worth (12,500 U.S. dollars) of wages for 60-plus workers.

"Justice must help us recover the fruit of our sweat." Holding aloft slogans they had scrawled on torn bed-sheets, the workers held a public demonstration to express their anger and exasperation. Liu's peasant friends said the action was both heroic and effective, since the bosses were forced to pay the wages after the media and government intervened.

"Before migrant workers did not know where to turn for help," said Chen Guorui, division-chief with the ACFTU's Grass-roots Organization and Capacity Building Department.

But that was three years ago, and Liu said they are now more experienced and turn to the trade unions and local labor and social security departments if they run into a problem.

Liu, who can earn 30 to 45 yuan a day as a construction worker, believes "powerful organizations" such as trade unions and local labor and social security departments must help migrant workers.

The ACFTU, which formerly would only organize workers with urban residence permits, now makes special efforts to organize migrants. China's central government has stressed protection of migrant workers' rights in recent years.

Construction departments in many cities have issued regulations requiring real estate developers to deposit money before starting a project to ensure that funds are available to pay workers even if the bosses run into problems.

In a case in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province in northeastern China's rust belt, about 30 migrant workers climbed onto the roof of a tall building last July and threatened to jump off if they did not get the 1.2 million yuan (150,000 U.S. dollars) back wages owed to them.

"The trade unions spent almost a whole day negotiating with the boss who was in financial difficulties. The migrant workers eventually came down safely after the boss had raised enough money to pay them," said Zhang Jincheng, deputy president of Shenyang Municipal Trade Unions. "Dealing with such emergencies is part of the grass-roots trade unions' work."

Another important job for the trade unions is to increase migrant workers' knowledge of the law, including the contracts they sign with bosses," Zhang said.

Trade unions claimed 1.31 billion yuan (163.75 million U.S. dollars) of back wages for 2.80 million migrant workers in 2005, according to the ACFTU.