Global retail giant Wal-Mart plans to sign collective labour contracts at all of its more than one hundred outlets in China by the end of September, according to the official Chinese media. Photo by h.dot@flickr.com

Beijing has set up a new central government department designed to promote and defend the interests of China’s more than 130 million migrant workers. However, the Department of Migrant Workers’ Affairs will face an uphill task. Photo by onekell @ flickr.com

Retail giant Wal-Mart has signed a collective labour agreement with the trade union at one of its stores in China. The landmark agreement at the Shenyang store in northeastern Liaoning province covers employee remuneration, annual pay rises, over-time, paid vacations and social security payments.

The lack of legal compulsion and the impotence of many enterprise level trade unions are making the implementation of the Chinese government's collective wage consultation system an uphill struggle, union officials in the central city of Luoyang have conceded. Photo by Saad Akhtar@flickr.com

Workers in China do not have the constitutional right to strike. Yet, every day in the Pearl River Delta alone there is at least one major strike involving over a thousand employees and dozens of smaller strikes and stoppages. Photograph by Sebi

Inflationary pressure has forced Shenzhen to raise the minimum wage, already the highest in China, by 20 percent to the unprecedented level of 1,000 yuan a month. However, simply raising the minimum wage will not be enough to guarantee workers even a basic standard of living.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers all over China have been making the long journey home to look for loved ones lost or injured in the Sichuan earthquake. CLB expresses our deepest sympathy and support for those affected by this appalling tragedy. We urge the government to repay the people of Sichuan for all their efforts in building the new China by building them decent housing, schools and hospitals and providing employment opportunities closer to home, so that families are no longer separated by thousands of kilometers for years on end.

CLB publishes translated extracts from the Southern Metropolitan Daily report on 28 April that more than a thousand children had been trafficked from the poverty-stricken region of Liangshan in Sichuan to work in factories across the Pearl River Delta.