China's top legislature on Sunday started to read the draft law
on labor dispute mediation and arbitration amid an increasing
number of labor disputes that emerged in the country.
The draft law was submitted Sunday to the seven-day 29th session
of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC),
or China's top legislature, for the first reading.
According to NPC statistics, labor dispute cases in China are
continuously increasing in recent years. Statistics show that labor
dispute arbitration organizations at various levels dealt with 1.72
million labor dispute cases involving 5.32 million employees from
1987 to the end of 2005, with a growth rate of 27.3percent
annually.
Xin Chunying, vice Chairman of the Legislative Affairs
Commission of the NPC Standing Committee said on the legislative
session that excepting the increasing number of labor disputes,
other problems also exist. For instance, the personnel in
arbitration organizations are not professional and thus lack
credibility and the process of arbitrating labor disputes is long,
making the cost of arbitration high.
China resumed the labor dispute arbitration system in 1987 and
formed the procedures for coping with labor disputes as "mediation,
arbitration and trial" after the regulation on handling corporate
labor dispute and Labor Law were promulgated in 1993 and 1994.
The procedure and practice for dealing with labor disputes have
been widely accepted by the public, said Xin.
The draft bill is for strengthening mediation and improving
arbitration so as to help fairly solve labor disputes without going
to court and thus safeguard employee's legitimate rights and
promote social harmony, she said.
The draft bill said corporate itself is entitled to establish
labor mediation committee to solve the labor disputes occurred in
its own corporate so as to solve disputes at grassroots level. The
corporate labor mediation committee should consist of employees and
representatives of managerial level.
When labor disputes occur, litigants can turn to the corporate
mediation committee, or grassroots people's labor disputes
mediation organization, the draft bill said.
The draft bill said labor disputes concerning pay, medical fee
of job-related injuries, compensation, pension whose relevant sum
do not exceed 12 months of local minimum monthly wages could be
solved by arbitration. The arbitration documents have legal effects
upon being handed out.
Labor disputes on working time, holidays, social insurance and
collective contracts could also be solved by arbitration with legal
effects, said the draft bill.
(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2007)