Unions vow to secure decent jobs
By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-12 07:18

Armed with a new Labor Contract Law, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) has vowed to help each of the country's workers secure a decent job, a senior official has said.

"We are confident of doing that, with increasing attention on the protection of workers' rights from the government and the public," Zhang Qiujian, director of the auditing committee and member of the secretariat of the ACFTU, said.

Zhang is also a member of the National Committee of the 11th CPPCC.

Her comments came amid a slew of measures for strengthening workers' rights - a new Labor Contract Law that took effect in January and a dispute arbitration law to come into force in May.

Under a socialist market economy, the government cannot intervene with companies' operations, but it is obliged to introduce rules such as setting minimum wages and overtime pay, she said.

A man reads a copy of the Labor Contract Law at a bookstore in Linyi, Shandong province. File photo

The new law requires a clear-cut, wage increasing mechanism be set up in enterprises, which was also mentioned in Premier Wen Jiabao's government work report, she said.

More importantly, Zhang said, it stipulates that the government is responsible for promoting collective consultations on payment between the trade union and their employer.

"It's a historic breakthrough," she said.

The trade unions represent employees while the government acts as a third party to harmonize the employer-employee relationship, she said.

Efforts to ensure decent jobs for workers must be pushed forward, she said.

She also pointed out that the trade unions are not acting against enterprises.

"We help workers with their basic rights while improving the development of enterprises," Zhang said.

Zhang said that was not the case that the implementation of the Labor Contract Law dealt a blow to the vitality of enterprises and acted as a heavier burden on their labor costs.

"It's fully compatible with the country's current situation, and far less tough than that of developed countries," she said.

"Although workers are the group that the new law aims to protect, many have actually already been abused," she added.

Currently, 80 percent of the country's labor abuse cases happened in the service and construction industries where migrant workers are the pillars of the sectors.

"Defaulted pay and workplace injuries are the top problems," she said.

Only 40 percent of the country's 200 million migrant workers are part of unions.

"By the end of 2008, we'll add another 30 million union members nationwide with migrant workers being our main target," she said.

(China Daily 03/12/2008 page6)