According to the Huzhou Municipal Federation of Trade Unions, to promote the transformation of industrial workers' skill value and the optimization of the salary system, the city is advancing the quality improvement and scope expansion of collective negotiation on skill-based wages across the board this year.

It is reported that collective negotiation on skill-based wages is an institutional reform of the distribution system, led and implemented by trade unions, with corporate development as the goal, skill, and rank as the foundation, and the improvement of the distribution system as the starting point, conducted through collective negotiation. Its core lies in promoting common prosperity by “enhancing enterprise competitiveness through skills”, “increasing wages based on skills”, and “expanding the middle-income group and boosting incomes for low earners”.

In recent years, the city has incorporated skill-based wage negotiation into the core tasks of the reform in building a contingent of industrial workers. It has selected leading enterprises across Huzhou city as pilots for collective negotiation on competency-based wages, cultivated 45 star-rated demonstration enterprises, and guided more enterprises to establish a scientific salary system through a pilot-then-scale approach. Up till now, the city has cumulatively signed collective agreements on competency-based wages, benefiting over 300,000 employee instances. Among them, 3,056 enterprises above the designated size with established trade unions have carried out such negotiation, with a coverage rate of 78.36%. Enterprises designated as reform pilots for building a contingent of industrial workers at or above the county level have achieved full coverage, and the collective negotiation coverage rate of emerging industries with established trade unions has reached 60%.