Labor experts have warned that China's imbalanced industrial
relations system is placing laborers at a disadvantage and eroding
social justice, posing a threat to both management and the
workforce.
The government is attempting to address the issue by creating
laws to hold back corporate powers and is being urged to take other
steps to safeguard the rights and interests of workers.
"In China, in particular the non-public sectors, management has
the absolute upper hand over laborers," said Su Hainan, director of
the Labor Salary Institute under the Ministry of Labor and Social
Security.
As a result, discrimination in labor markets and defaults on
wages are common, workers' salaries are low and slow to rise,
employees work overtime without pay, and social security and
workplace protection is scant, said Su, who was a member of a panel
put together by China Newsweek magazine to discuss the
issue at the end of last month.
"To take the salary issue for example, 52 percent of
farmers-turned-laborers surveyed by our institute this year were
defaulted on their pay," Su said. "In the manufacturing sector, the
pay rise has lagged behind GDP growth by about 5 percent between
1998 and 2003."
The east coast and hinterland regions have experienced a labor
crunch partly because the pay is not attractive which in turn has
hurt employers in the manufacturing sector.
Su said the outlook for current labor-management relations in
China is not optimistic because the nation faces a surplus
workforce in the low-end market, industries are being restructured,
and there is scant legal protection for workers at a time when the
country is in transition from a planned to a market economy.
"Our country has been in such a period that if laborers' rights
and interests are not protected, the imbalanced labor relations
will continue to worsen," Zheng Gongcheng, an industrial relations
professor at Renmin University of China, said in a statement.
"By then the confrontation and conflict between management and
labor would not only sabotage social stability but also waste good
opportunities for national economic development," he said.
Zheng said he supported the use of legislation to help deliver a
balance between management and the labor force.
The nation's top legislature has received more than 190,000
comments on the draft labor contract law, which aims to provide
workers with umbrella protection while restricting corporate powers
such as dismissal.
"Objectively speaking, the law is designed to adjust already
imbalanced employer-worker relations," said Xin Chunying, vice
chairwoman of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing
Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC).
She said the legislature would carefully draw the line between
employers and workers and seek more opinions.
"It is a starting point for a series of laws aiming to smooth
labor relations," said Guo Jun, deputy director of the Legislative
Affairs Bureau with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
He said the draft might be passed into law as early as
October.
(China Daily May 8, 2006)