After the government has accepted to increase the teachers’ wages by 772 RMB/month on average, the strike ended on November 20th.
Despite this agreement, there are still issues regarding pension insurance benefits. The teachers ask the government to return their contributions to pension insurance while the government says it is impossible.
Li Zhen, the director of the Zhaodong Social Security department explains that Zhaodong is stuck between the teachers and the central government. On the one hand, Zhaodong has been identified as a pilot province for public service organizations’ (事业单位) pension reform by the State Council years ago, and therefore has to keep increasing the number of staff working in public service organizations participating in the pension insurance scheme. On the other, the central government still has not proposed a national plan to solve these issue, therefore, people living in provinces who have been defined “pilots” for a long time start feeling their situation is unfair.
