[Excerpt translation from Chinese to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre] 

“Over 200 workers gather at Hanergy’s Beijing headquarter to protest wage arrears”, 9 Oct 2019

Journalists on-site estimated that there were over 200 Hanergy workers gathering at the company’s headquarter in...Beijing, demanding for the payment of back wages… Most of the workers at the protest have not been paid since May 2019, with a minority being recruited in August… It remains unclear how many staff members have been unpaid…

Yang Jing, Senior Office Assistant of the Board of Directors of Hanergy, represented the company to communicate with the protesting workers. During the negotiation, Yang Jing admitted that Hanergy has been delaying the payment of workers’ wages for over five months and has stopped paying for workers’ social insurance since August. She apologized for the difficulties caused by the company.

Yang Jing suggested that staff members should allow a grace period and promised to settle the payment of wages for one to two months by 15 October. However, Yang’s suggestion was immediately rejected by the protesting workers. Some workers claimed that Hanergy “is not credible”, saying that similar promises had been made in July, August and September, all of which were not fulfilled. It would be hard for workers to believe in promises like that again…  

Protesting workers said that Hanergy has been delaying the payment of wages for over five months, causing great difficulties to workers’ livelihood and families; the company has never shown any sincerity in settling the wage arrears and even stopped to pay for their social insurance. These workers demanded Hanergy to pay all the wage arrears immediately, and if there are financing difficulties in the short term, the company should at least fully repay the social insurance contributions to show their sincerity.

Facing the workers’ complaints, Yang Jing said that the name list and the total amount of wage arrears of the protesting workers at the meeting would be calculated, and that the information would be passed on to the company for a solution to be reached, aiming at a partial settlement of the backpay.

… the records of the workers at the meeting showed that there were about 400 workers demanding the payment of wage arrears, involving about 37 million yuan. Yang Jing said that the amount and number of workers would have to be verified, and that even after verification, it would be impossible to settle the payments for all workers… the negotiations did not lead to any substantive results…