China's New Labor Law. Still Coming. Still A Big Deal.
Very good Los Angeles Times article on China's New Labor Contract Law, set to go into force on January 1. The article is wrongly entitled, "New workers' rights being undermined in China." I say "wrongly entitled" because though the article focuses on a few violent acts against labor activists, it is way too early to talk about either workers' rights or the new law "being undermined." The law has yet to even be enacted.
What I like about the article is its descriptions of the new law and on how it is likely to impact labor relations in China, going forward. I also like how the article rightly highlights how it is going to be up to the workers themselves and plaintiff side labor lawyers to enforce the new laws. Lest anyone still doubts our earlier postings on how Chinese labor lawyers are lining up to sue under the new laws:
"The government is not promoting this law, so we need to," said Li Jinxin, an assistant with a Shenzhen labor law firm who last month was pushed into a van and taken to a remote street where men clubbed him with iron pipes. Sitting in his apartment here last week, his cast-encased leg resting on a red stool, the 29-year-old Li said employers "wish we did not exist."
For more on this new law, check out the following:
"China's New Labor Law: Enforcement Is The Key" (This post centered on an interview of me by the Christian Science Monitor before the extent of private enforcement had become clear)
"China's New Labor Law -- It's A Huge Deal. Huge I Tell You."
"China's New Labor Contract Law," linking over to a well received interview with Steve Dickinson on the China Business Network.
"Power to the People." A column by Steve Dickinson for the China International Business magazine that remains the most popular article in the magazine months after its publication.
"China's New Labor Law Gives SOME Employers The Jitters."
BOTTOM LINE: If you have ANY employees in China or anyone who arguably might be an employee in China, it almost certainly behooves you to enter into a written contract (in Chinese!) with them now and to draft up an employee manual that sets forth grounds for employee termination.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/2349
» China's New Labor Law -- Just Deal With It. China Law Blog
Meganshank.com has an excellent post up on China's new labor law, entitled, "Dealing With It: MNCs learn to cope with the Labor Law." Ms. Shank is a reporter with Newsweek Select (Newsweek's China Edition, not to be confused with China Newsweek) who wr... []
Comments
CLB: Being a plaintiff's lawyer in China is not easy, is it? Even if you can avoid employers' thugs, your own employer might chastise you (with a truncheon?) for not signing up the clients fast enough.
Posted by: Law Office of Todd L. Platek | December 29, 2007 6:33 AM
One clear message out of the violence againt labor right promoters is the real fear for a law. Now if the employers are just scorning off the upcoming law as another pretty but toothless document, it should be more worrying. Yet thanks to rising awareness, which might justly be attributed to active civil group campaigns, Chinese employers and other vested interests are taking the law very seriously, as manifested in the multitude reports of harrassment, threatening and violence against workers and civil right groups and lawyers.
Bloody, yes. But if this is what it takes for every step closer to a rule-of-law society, let's not forget to celebrate the good news embedded in this whole episode.
Posted by: Handan | December 29, 2007 8:02 AM