More than 100 employees of the diary giant Sanlu Group, involved in the milk food contamination scandal, have not been paid for two months.
Southern Metropolis Daily reported Thursday that Sanlu has about 120 salespeople in the capital city of Guangdong province - most being women in their 30s.
Some of the women went to Sanlu's sales agency in the city, Guangzhou Yifeng Diary Co Ltd, on Wednesday to demand their overdue wages.
"We signed labor contracts with Sanlu. We are employees of it," a saleswoman surnamed Zhang said.
The sales staff receive a basic salary of 900 yuan ($132) a month from Sanlu, plus commissions paid by Yifeng.
"Some of us can earn as much as 3,000 yuan a month," Zhang said.
"Our basic salaries are paid on the eighth of every month. We have not been paid for August and September so we decided to contact Yifeng for an explanation."
Huang Weimin, chairman of Yifeng, said: "We are also victims of the scandal. The basic salaries of the salespeople are supposed to be paid by Sanlu, not us."
Huang said after the scandal broke, Yifeng stopped all business dealings with Sanlu.
He said Yifeng prepaid Sanlu more than 10 million yuan, but because of the scandal, that money has been frozen.
"We will pay the salespeople their commissions on time, even though we too are in difficulty," Huang said.
He said he hoped Sanlu could be bought out by another company soon to end all the problems.
"In the meantime, we can do nothing," Huang said.
Sanlu has a sales agency in every city of Guangdong. There are about 700 Sanlu contracted salespeople in the province.
Huang said all the agencies and salespeople are in the same difficult situation.
(China Daily October 10, 2008)