Farmer Labor Service Export from Heilongjiang Province to Russia

Xu Hong-zhuan, Wang Li-min, and Feng Zhan-fu

1 College of Economy and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

2 College of Economy and Management, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China

3 Harbin Dong'an Automotive Engine Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Harbin 150000, China

Introduction

Currently, researches on labor export are mainly focused on regional studies, such as researches on labor export from northeast area to Russia, Japan and Korea, or researches on labor export from south area to southeast Asia. In addition, there are many studies on labor cooperation laws, forms of cooperation and the security.

In recent years, scholars at home and abroad began to research labor export in view of different cities or provinces. For example, on the basis of the full survey of Yongfeng Village in Jixi City, Dong (2012)made random sample for Korea labor export based on 298 farmers from Foong Korea Township. At the same time, he found some characters, such as labor export earning embodiment ratio and foreign trade exchange of China. Based on the above analyses, he found some problems and gave related countermeasures.In addition, there are some researches on trade and economic cooperation between China and Russia areas. The main contents of bilateral cooperation are trade cooperation, international channel construction,industrial cooperation, tourism and labor cooperation,cultural exchanges and cooperation (Jin, 2012). It is visible that no matter which region, its economy and trade cooperation during the research for labor cooperation is essential. But during the cooperation,labor service personnel security is also very important.

Throughout the research on labor export, we found the researches on the development of agricultural labor exports to Russia was very few. In the context of the present development of modern agriculture, this paper tried to analyze the farmer's labor export to Russia, and gave the evidence of another viable way of rural labor transfer in Heilongjiang Province, and this approach would be conductive to Heilongjiang Province agricultural modernization and the rural urbanization development.

Current Situation and Trend

Taking far East area as main area of farmer labor export from Heilongjiang Province to Russia

There are more than 3 000 kilometers border lines between Heilongjiang and Russia. Far East area is very vast and has 621.59 square kilometers. But it only has 1.1 person per square kilometers (Bao and Meng, 2013). Lacking of labors, it becomes the main area of labor export from Heilongjiang especially farmer labors (Li, 2004). Now, most of the cities in Heilongjiang Province engaged in farmer labor exports are near to Far East, such as Heihe, Mudanjiang, and Jiamusi cities. The exporting farmer labors from those cities mainly did the work of farming, broad scale cutting down of trees, excavation and building. And we all knew that most farmer labor exports to Russia were in these industries above (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Different industry scales

Encourage farmer labor export to Russia

According to calculation, in the first five months of 2009, the numbers of Heilongjiang farmer labor exports to Russia were 4 370, which increased 6.6%. In recent years, Russian Far East area's people migrated to its Europe area. For this reason, in Far East area,there was a lot of lands which were uncultivated,which created more opportunities for Heilongjiang farmers to farm abroad. Take Heihe City as an example, the government continued to strengthen the labor export to Russia. Now, there are more and more farmers go to Russia to do farming work. Apart from this, in order to encourage more farmers to work in Russia, Heihe City also built the production base of grain and vegetables and soybean seed breeding base on the land of Russia which was only separated by a river. In 2009, Heihe City had exploited 53 333.3 hm2land and created more than 5 000 jobs for its farmers,which had revenue more than 250 million Yuan.Another example was Dongning City. Dongning Farm Committee said that it had exported 13 000 farmer labors to Russia.

Authority statistics showed that currently there were 7 200 000 acres of planting lands in Russian territory.The expanding of Russian foreign agriculture led the labor export to Russia. Annually, Heilongjiang Province exported labor more than 30 000 people to Russian, and per income was more than 30 000 Yuan.Now, there is no exact statistical data of farmers of Heilongjiang Province working in Russia. But according to the small range statistical data from all the levels of government and industry association, the author summarized main areas which exported farmer labors to Russia as follows: Mudanjiang City which included Suifenhe and Dongning; Jiamusi City which included Tongjiang and Huanan; Heihe City which included Xunke; Jixi City which included Jidong and Mishan.

More peasant labors importing

In March 2012, Putin was reelected as Russia's President. With the coming "new era of Putin", Russia's economy would go into an unprecedented period of development. The Russian Far East development would attract more investors, and would bring more opportunities for Heilongjiang Province to export labor. In 2012, Russia joined the world trade organization (WTO). Russia agricultural industry was weak,and in order to encourage the development of its agriculture, the government offered certain subsidy.Developing agriculture needed more labors; however,Russia was lacking of labor force (Zhang and Wang,2013). On the base of the above analyses, we believed that Russia's agricultural development policies would bring more opportunities for farmer labor exports in Heilongjiang Province.

Further improving level of labor service cooperation with modern agriculture development

The Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward to promote the building of modern agriculture, and the agricultural modernization was an important part of national modernization.At this time, Heilongjiang Province puts forward to develop "large water conservancy, large machinery,large technology and large cooperation", large machinery was the backbone of modern agriculture,large technology improved the total grain output; and large cooperation promoted the new span agricultural production mode (Zhao, 2013). With the advancement of modern agriculture in Heilongjiang Province, the intensive management of agriculture led to more farmers leaving their land and becoming surplus labor. In the process of urbanization, farmers were likely to become the "citizen"; however, farmers would not only use their rich farming experience, but also would bring more pressures to the city. In this context, we could organize more farmers who have particular rich farming experience to transfer to Russia. All of those would further improve the cooperation level of the labor service.

Problems

Blindness of farmers labor export

According to the statistics from each border, in Heilongjiang Province, there was a large numbers of farmer labor exports. However, export of farmer labor overseas also had a considerable blindness. Especially some farmers went abroad to work through informal civil society organizations. All these had buried a hidden danger to emergence of issues such as labor disputes, and also made some labors' security and the legitimate rights and interests be unguaranteed.

More farmer labor disputes

At present, as Russia's export of labor services flourish, some illegal individuals or organizations involved in and got the middle interests. They ignored the laws and regulations and the rights of farmer labors. All those led to the increase of farmer labor disputes. How to stop illegal farmer labor exports, how to protect the rights of farmer labor against the law and how to improve the labor export laws and regulations would become the important issues which all the levels of government, organizations and relevant units should face to.

Farmers' rights not being guaranteed effectively

As we all know, farmers were the weak groups, so they had no awareness of safeguarding their rights and inadequate awareness of the law. When they went abroad to work, they even did not know how to safeguard their rights. The informal civil society organizations even the illegal organizations went rural areas to recruit farmers. But as farmers did not know if the organization was right or not, so they would take part in organizations as long as the organization provided good conditions and salary.

Security problems of farmers

In recent years, there are more the security issues, for example, farmers working in Russia were cheated,threaten and even terrible beaten. In July 2013, 200 farmers from Suihua City in Heilongjiang Province went Camaro vaud in Russia to work. They were abused in life and did not be paid, and personal safety was threatened. More than 60 people who were unbearable humiliation fled to the mountains and asked for help to the outside world. There were many cases and all of those means ensuring the personal safety and property safety of emigrating farmer was very important.

Countermeasures

Strengthening government's coordination

Intergovernmental coordination can create good atmosphere for the political and economic conditions.Heilongjiang Province should vigorously strengthen the communication with the regional governments of Russia and encourage all the cities and counties to strengthen the communication and cooperation independently with states in the Far East. In the light of issues that farmer labor personnel legitimate rights could not be effectively protected, we believed that both sides should amplify the labor laws, regulations and better protect the legitimate rights and interests of farmer labors. This will be conducive to the development of bilateral labor cooperation better and we can say that this is the key of win-win.

Government should also provide supports for the establishment of the corresponding information platform. For example, Mudanjiang City set up the Ussuriysk labor export service center, which provided comprehensive and timely information to the export of farmer labor services unit. Information exchange is essential to the success of labor service cooperation.Accurate, timely and comprehensive information application and being familiar with the Russian labor market information are the guarantees of accessing to the labor market. So we must do more useful work in terms of communicating information. Due to the lacking of organization for the farmer labor export,the possibility of timely access to reliable information was smaller. Contracting Co. of Russia work may also be deprived of corresponding information because channels were blocked. Therefore, government,chambers of commerce and industry organizations should give some supports information and establish effective channels for information. They also should do their best to form information network covering the whole of Russia through providing labor market information of Russian contractors or doing project tracking using local employees and agents to establish extensive contacts with large enterprises which scattered in various regions of Russia.

Playing contractor's role

China International contractor's association is the national business trade organization which engaged in foreign labor cooperation its coordination, guidance,advice and all of these functions are gradually highlighted. And it would play a bigger and bigger role in rectifying the market order of operation and promoting the industry development. Against the foreign labor market characteristics and the problems, chamber of commerce should focus its effort on strengthening the management of the contract, standardizing business conduct, managing the company to enter the Russian market dynamically. Besides, Heilongjiang Chamber of Commerce also carried out in-depth work in this area. In order to promote farmer labor exports more standardized, labor export organizations of various types should fully rely on China Contractor Chamber of Commerce and China Chamber of International Commerce.

Taking measures to improve quality of farmer labor export

First, improve the quality of farmer labor export.Organize training to the exporting labor, for example, Mudanjiang City organized "Mudanjiang City labor exports to Russia training courses", including the overview of Russia, the natural resources of Russian

Far East region, Russia labor dispatch knowledge,Russian business knowledge, the laws and regulations in foreign labor cooperation, Russian vegetable cultivation technology and product quality standards. We believe this form of farmer labor training is very good for exports of farmer labors.We can try to carry out "the order of training" by the formal institutions. According to the Russian labors'need, we should form an effective mechanism of close combination of worker demand and training. Through training, migrant farmers can adapt in advance to the characteristics of farming in Russia, and better engage in certain professional agricultural labors.

Second, pay attention to the health screening work and immunization for exporting farmer labor before exporting, which is not only related to the interests of labors, but also related to the vital interests of labor organizations. Heilongjiang Province should set up health screening group in health departments in the focus cities and counties which export farmer labor services to Russia. Government can take corresponding measures, such as concessions by the government or paying inspection fees by the relevant departments.

Third, regulate the civil spontaneous and organize farmer labor export to Russia. The government should provide oversight and guidance to the civil spontaneous and organized farmer labor exporting. At present,non-governmental farmer labor exporting organizations are not mature and need to be given appropriate guidance and regulation. These labor export organizations' high-quality work in farmer labor exporting relates to the image of Chinese farmer labors in Russia,and also relates to the establishment of foreign labor service brand of Heilongjiang Province.

Conclusions

Agricultural modernization needed to solve the problem of farmers' income, and urbanization needed to solve the farmers' work. Farmer labor export to Russia could increase farmers' income and transfer some surplus labor forces at the same time, wellorganized and reasonable farmer labor export to Russia could play a role to the agricultural modernization and urbanization development.

Therefore, we should make good use of Russia's agriculture development and the policy of developing modern large agriculture in Heilongjiang Province,well organize the labor service cooperation, and improve the level of cooperation. All of those would promote the economic development.

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