http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/29/business/labor.php
China enacts a labor law meant to improve workers' rights By Joseph Kahn and David Barboza Friday, June 29, 2007 BEIJING: China's legislature passed a sweeping new labor law Friday that strengthened protections for workers across its booming economy, rejecting pleas from foreign investors who argued the measure would reduce China's appeal as a low-wage, business-friendly industrial base. The new labor contract law, enacted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, requires employers to provide written contracts to their workers, restricts the use of temporary laborers and makes it harder to lay off employees. "This is the biggest change in Chinese labor law in the reform and opening period," said Qiu Jie, a labor law expert at People's University in Beijing. "It gives legal protection to the vast majority of workers who had no way to protect their rights under the old system." The law, which is to take effect in 2008, also enhances the role of the Communist Party's monopoly union and allows collective bargaining for wages and benefits. It softens some provisions that foreign companies said would hurt China's competitiveness, but retained others that American multinationals had lobbied vigorously to exclude. The law is the latest step by President Hu Jintao to increase worker protections in a society that, despite its nominal socialist ideology, has emphasized rapid, capitalist-style economic growth over enforcing labor laws or ensuring an equitable distribution of wealth. But it may fall short of improving working conditions for the tens of millions of low-wage workers who need the most help unless it is enforced more rigorously than existing laws, which already offer protections that on paper are similar to those in developed economies. Passage of the measure came shortly after officials and state media unearthed widespread use of slave labor in as many as 8,000 brick kilns and small coal mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces, one of the most glaring labor scandals since China began adopting market-style economic policies a quarter century ago. Abuses of migrant laborers have been endemic in boom-time China, where millions have faced unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions and collusion between factory owners and local officials. Party-run courts often fail to enforce their legal rights. Senior Chinese leaders have grown concerned about the issue because migrant workers have contributed to a surge in social unrest and violent crime. While the new law will do little to eliminate violations of existing laws, it does require that employers treat migrant workers as they do other employees. All will have to have written employment contracts that comply with minimum wage and safety regulations. It also moves China closer to European-style labor regulations that emphasize fixed- and open-term employment contracts enforceable by law. It requires that employees with short-term contracts become full-time employees with lifetime benefits after a short-term contract is renewed twice. Perhaps most significant, it gives the state-run union and other employee representative groups the power to bargain with employers. Many multinational corporations had lobbied against provisions in an earlier draft of the labor law. The early draft, circulated widely in business and legal circles, more sharply limited the use of temporary workers and required obtaining approval from the state-controlled union for layoffs. Companies argued that the rules would substantially increase labor costs and reduce flexibility, and some foreign businesses warned that they would have little choice but to move their operations out of China if the provisions were enacted unchanged. International labor experts said several of the most delicate clauses had been watered down. But lawyers representing some global companies doing business here complained the new law still imposes a heavy burden. The National People's Congress released a summary that said companies must "consult" the state-backed union if its plans workforce reductions, suggesting a softening from earlier drafts that gave unions the right to approve or reject layoffs before they could take place. But it retained language that limits "probationary contracts" that many employers use to deny employees full-time status. It also states that severance pay will be required for many workers, and tightens the conditions under which an employee can be fired. Moreover, the law empowers company-based branches of the state-run union or employee representative committees to bargain with employers over salaries, bonuses, training and other work-related benefits and duties. In the past, workers have had to negotiate wages with their employers individually. The Communist Party's monopoly union is a legacy of China's socialist planned economy that in practice has tended either to play no role whatsoever or to help managers monitor and control workers. Workers are not allowed to form their own, independent unions. But Hu has pressed the union to take a more active role, and it has demanded greater representation in private Chinese and foreign-invested companies. Foreign executives said that they are especially worried about new labor regulations because their companies tend to comply with existing laws more rigorously than some of their Chinese competitors do. Their competitive disadvantage could increase sharply, they said, if the new rules put fresh burdens on foreign companies that their local counterparts ignore. Chinese legislative officials said Friday that such concerns are overblown and that many local governments bend the rules to favor foreign investors over local companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
