China changes Labor Laws

From the NY Times:

June 30, 2007
China Passes a Sweeping Labor Law
By JOSEPH KAHN and DAVID BARBOZA
BEIJING, June 29 — China’s legislature passed a sweeping new labor law today that strengthens protections for workers across its booming economy, rejecting pleas from foreign investors who argued that 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.

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 the 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.

Police have freed nearly 600 workers, many of them children, held against their will in factories owned or operated by well-connected businessmen and local officials.

Abuses of migrant laborers have been endemic in boom-time China, where millions of temporary workers have faced unsafe working conditions, collusion between factory owners and local officials and unpaid wages. Party-run courts often fail to enforce their legal rights.

Senior leaders in Beijing have grown increasingly 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 employees 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 significantly, it gives the state-run union and other employee representative groups the power to bargain with employers.

Lets hope China enforces this.

This one paragraph from this article stood out for me:

"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 employees will have to have written employment contracts that comply with minimum wage and safety regulations."

Might be a good idea for our migrant workers and may control the problem of aliens crossing our southern border.