China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Slave law to protect China's workers
Rowan Callick, China correspondent
July 03, 2007
CHINA'S parliament has passed new labour legislation that includes tough late amendments introduced after the shock discovery of thousands of slaves, including many abducted children, working in brick kilns in Shanxi province.
The thrust of the new law, passed at the weekend, is for individual contracts rather than for collective bargaining through unions.
It gives workers the right to negotiate written employment contracts specifying terms, conditions and benefits, establishes a statutory probationary period for a fixed-term contract, improves health and safety regulations, requires redundancy payments after a contract is terminated, and makes it harder to terminate contracts, especially of long-serving workers.
It seeks to address the widespread mistreatment of China's 100 million migrant workers, who are usually not officially employed by the business they work for, but by a labour supply agency. Under the new law they will still be employed by these labour firms, but will have similar rights to regular workers.
Officials whose abuse of power "results in serious harm to the interests of workers" can now be prosecuted.
The law allows workers' representatives to negotiate workplace contracts, but only through the All China Federation of Trade Unions, the Communist Party-controlled monopoly union.
The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin says: "This represents a significant climb down from provisions in the second draft of the new law, which allowed workers' representatives to negotiate independently with management.
"This revision is in the interests of the ACTFU, which has been steadily losing its influence and becoming more anachronistic as the private sector expands. It also reflects the concerns voiced by foreign chambers of commerce, which ... claimed the draft was too restrictive and could lead to foreign companies moving operations out of China."
The new law does not grant workers freedom of association or the right to strike or to elect their own representatives, even though labour protests are taking place on an increasingly large scale throughout China.
Under the new law, employees whose bosses refuse them a contract after they have worked there for more than a month are entitled to two months' wages. Those who work for more than a year without receiving a formal contract are now deemed to have a permanent contract.
But, admitted legislator Xin Chunying, "a major problem is in the implementation of the law". As usual in China.