Home -> Law Blog Directory -> International Law Blogs -> China Law Blog

International Law

: China Law Blog

China's New Labor Contract Law. Harmonized Out Of Existence?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

As regular CLB readers now, we have been flacking China's new labor contract law since even before its inception at the beginning of this year. Without a doubt, it has been one of our two or three most popular topics. To wit: --"China's Proposed Labor Law:Going After Capitalists Like China, 1967" -- "China's Proposed Labor Law Causing Sucking Sounds" -- "China's New Labor Law: Enforcement Is The Key" -- "China's Brand New Labor Law Regulations. It's All Here." -- "China's New Labor Law -- It's A Huge Deal. Huge I Tell You." -- "China's New Labor Law: Results Still To Be Determined" -- "China's New Labor Law Gives SOME Employers The Jitters" -- "China's New Labor Law As Plague On All Employers' Houses" -- "China's New Labor Law Means Tenure For Everybody" -- "NPR On China's New Labor Law -- Low Tech Getting 'Difficult'" -- "China's New Labor Law: Compliance Comes Easy" -- "China's New Labor Law. Still Coming. Still A Big Deal." -- "China's New Labor Law And Why Vietnam Is No Big Thing" -- "China's New Labor Law -- Just Deal With It" -- "Putting The China Labor Law Cart Before The Horse" Must recently, we did a piece, entitled, "The Impact Of China's Labor Contract Law," in which we discussed how the new law was influencing China's labor situation. We have talked so much about the labor law because it applies to every business in China with an employee. Complying with the law is relatively easy and the penalties for failing to comply can be so harsh. But last week, a long-time client of ours with a factory in Shandong Province (just outside Qingdao) told me of how a Chinese government employee had essentially told him not to worry so much about China's labor contract law. The gist of the government employee's statements to our client was that so long as this company did not lay off any of its approximately 250 Chinese employees, the government would look the other way regarding other labor law violations. My client and I agreed that it needed to remain in strict compliance with the labor laws because it had nothing in writing from this official, because this official does not control everything in the province or the country relating to labor laws, because violations of the labor laws can lead not only to problems with the government, but to employee lawsuits. I have since talked with a couple other of our Shandong Province clients and they report no such conversations, but they do say they have "heard" that China's labor laws surrounding everything but layoffs are being loosened. What are you hearing?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).