译者 飞天小女警
Unpaid wages in China
在中国拖欠的工资
Can’t pay, won’t pay
是付不起，还是不想付
Companies’ cash is drying up, with dire consequences for their workers
公司的现金流的枯竭对他们的员工产生了可怕的影响。
EFFORTS to curb inflation in China are having some painful side-effects. A squeeze on bank lending has prompted some businesses short of cash to stop paying wages to blue-collar workers. Even the much-vaunted state sector is feeling the pinch. Work has all but ground to a halt on thousands of kilometres of railway track, and many of the network’s 6m construction workers have been complaining about not being paid for weeks or sometimes months.
在中国为抑制通货膨胀的努力也带来了惨痛的副作用。压缩银行借贷导致许多企业的资金短缺以至于停止向蓝领工作者发放工资。即使富有的国有企业也感到了拮据。大部分在铁路轨道上工作的人员，还有6百万多的建筑工人都抱怨已经几个星期或几个月都没有拿到工资了。
Migrant workers from China’s vast countryside are usually the first to suffer when employers find themselves strapped for cash. In February a revision to the criminal law made it illegal for a company to withhold salary if it had the means to pay. This has done little to protect the more than 150m rural migrants who perform most of the country’s manual labour. A household-registration system that discriminates against migrants in employment, housing, health care and education reinforces a widespread tendency to treat them as second-class citizens.
从中国广大乡村地区出来的农民工经常是第一个遭殃的当雇主发现资金短缺。在二月修订的刑法中表明一个用人单位无理由拖欠工资是违法的。对150百万多为城市提供体力劳动的农民工们的保护显得不够。户籍制度系统在雇佣关系，住房，医疗还有教育上对农民工排斥更普遍加强了把他们当成二等公民的趋势。
The government touted building railways as a great way to keep the economy buoyant during global financial trouble, and boost employment. But the $600 billion stimulus launched in 2008 is all but spent. Indeed, the central government has urged state banks to cut back on lending in order to curb inflation, which in the year to July reached a three-year high of 6.5%, before dropping to 6.1% in September.
政府吹嘘建造铁路是在全球金融困境期间使经济上浮的一个非常好的方法。但是6000亿美金的资金已于2008年全部投入了进去。事实上，中央政府要求中央银行削减借贷以便于抑制通货膨胀，在7月已达到3年来的最高水平6.5%，9月份跌至6.1%。
In recent weeks a credit crisis in the eastern city of Wenzhou has led to the flight of dozens of businessmen, leaving thousands of workers at private companies unpaid. State firms are little better off. After two record years of track-laying, the problems now facing the railway-building industry are severe. The government has had a change of heart about rapidly expanding the high-speed rail network following a fatal crash of two high-speed trains in July. But bank credit drying up has also played a big part. China Daily, an English-language newspaper, says many of the industry’s migrant workers have not been paid for months. Complaints have been growing. A senior railway official quoted in the state media said workers at China Railway Engineering Corporation, one of the country biggest civil-engineering firms, had submitted more than 2,000 petitions to the authorities since July. Another newspaper, Economic Information Daily, said wage arrears and protests by rail workers had “alarmed” top leaders in Beijing. Only a third of railway construction projects were continuing normally, it said.
这近几周西部城市温州的信贷危机导致许多商人的外逃，留下成千上万未拿薪水的工人在民营工厂里。国营企业的境况稍微好点。有前两年的前车之鉴，铁路建设面临的问题是严峻的。政府对迅速加快高速铁路专线网的想法在7月份产生的两起事故后产生了改变。但银行信贷的干涸也是一个重要的部分。中国日报，一份英文报纸，说许多行业里的农民工们有几个月都没拿薪水了。抱怨声见长。一个高级铁路公务人员在中央电视台说中国铁路工程总公司，国家最大土木工程公司之一，里面的的工作人员向当局提交了2000多份的请愿书。另一份报纸，经济参考报，报道说工资的滞付和铁路工作者得抗议为北京的领导敲响了警钟。只有三分之一的建设工程还在正常继续。
Similar problems have also been reported in road building and property construction, prompting a growing number of demonstrations and violent incidents, including clashes with employers and suicides. Such difficulties are likely to get worse towards the end of the year, when companies traditionally try to settle accounts with employees. Wage inflation is adding to employers’ woes. Minimum wages have risen by an average of nearly 22% in the two-thirds of China’s provinces which have adjusted them this year. Nice if you can get it, but not much use if you are not being paid at all.
在道路建设和物业建设中的相似问题也被报道出来了，促使了更多的曝光和暴力事件，包括与雇佣者的冲突和自杀行为。到年底许多公司按照惯例试着和被雇佣者结算财务，这些问题会变得更为糟糕。工资的通货膨胀增添了雇主的悲哀。今年最低工资标准在中国的三分之二的城市已经上调了22%。你能拿到薪酬，那最好，如果拿不到，那你也没办法...
from 译言-每日精品译文推荐 http://article.yeeyan.org/view/231568/229539
