City acts to secure jobs and stabilize production

Shanghai has issued measures to stabilize employment and retain workers in an orderly manner, to guarantee normal production and life amid the current labor shortage in some industries.

The city clarified that enterprises should bear the main responsibility to secure jobs and stabilize production, seeing it as a top priority to ensure normal operation.

Companies should maintain the basic stability of the scale of employment, by efforts such as closely tracking national policy guidance, timely research and judgment of the employment situation, formulation of relevant work plans for the timely resolution of risks and problems.

The city encourages enterprises to develop and implement staff care and incentive measures, especially to deliver care to frontline personnel.

For instance, it suggests e-commerce platforms as well as postal and express companies increase commissions, set up rewards, provide couriers and take-away deliverers with necessary food and beverages, and issue warm work clothes and supplies. Construction firms, meanwhile, are encourages to reasonably increase the income of construction workers.

Shanghai is also to solidly carry out special actions to rectify the problem of migrant workers' wages default, and further increase the efforts to investigate and combat malicious non-payment of wages.

It is reiterated that enterprises must pay overtime wages to those working during the Spring Festival in accordance with the law.

To motivate e-commerce platforms and postal and courier enterprises to keep on providing services, from December 25, 2022 to January 27, 2023 (hereinafter referred to as the "subsidy period"), subsidiaries of 60 yuan (US$8.6)per day for each person will be given to the frontline staff of the key monitored e-commerce platforms and postal courier enterprises.

Especially for the New Year's Day holiday (from December 31, 2022 to January 2, 2023) and the Spring Festival holiday (from January 21 to January 27, 2023), each frontline employee who works during the two holiday periods will be given a subsidy of 150 yuan per day.

The city also encourages key construction projects not to suspend construction if possible. During the subsidy period, a daily subsidy of 100 yuan per person will be given to the frontline staff of key construction projects, if the project sees the actual number of workers on duty on that day reaching more than 80 percent of the figure at the end of November 2022.

Subsidy funds will be covered by finance of both the municipal and the district level.

The city asks migrant workers to return to work sooner after the holidays, with better services for their return trips and traffic subsidies.

During the period from January 28 to February 5, 2023, enterprises that rent buses to organize migrant workers to return to work across provinces will be subsidized at 50 percent of the actual rental cost. The maximum amount for each enterprise is 300,000 yuan.

Migrant workers are also encouraged to stay in Shanghai for the Spring Festival, with various activities staged. Cultural and tourism activities, as an example, will be carried out, with the city's cultural and tourism enterprises giving out free movie tickets and tickets to scenic spots for the migrant workers who stay in Shanghai during the holiday.

Health care services for front-line personnel and adequate anti-pandemic materials will also be guaranteed, with authorities drawing up related documents on supportive implementation details.

The measures came into force from December 25, 2022 and are valid until June 30, 2023, except for the detailed ones with specific implementation periods.