In the two months since Wen's visit, the workers said they had repeatedly visited the Yunyang County government offices, but achieved little.
"I was there yesterday, and the official told me that we might have some money soon," He said. "If we protest any more, he said, we will not get a penny."
Yuan Shaodu, a deputy director of the county construction committee, said that his agency had distributed 83 percent of the funds for the stairway project, and that bosses should have paid their employees already. He acknowledged that some had not, and said the matter was "under intensive discussion."
Wang Ping, a manager of the Lishen Construction Co., a government-backed contractor on the stairway, initially said all of his workers had been paid. But when told details of his workers' complaints, he said it was the government's fault because it had paid him only half of what it owed him. Even if he had the money, he said, he probably could not find his workers now.
"They come from all corners of the land," Wang said. "I don't know their phone numbers. If they do not come to collect their salaries, how am I going to pay them?"
Such stalemates over back pay have prompted some experts to question Wen's interventions, arguing that only sweeping political and legal reforms can make things better.
Feng, the labor expert, recently wrote a commentary in The China Economic Times arguing that the problem of unpaid wages would never be solved by "personal rule" and "certain clean officials."
"The wage issue cannot be solved even if all the top leaders made it their special task to collect the wages," she wrote. "We have to rely on rule of law."
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