Chinese courts struggling to handle labour dispute cases

BEIJING - Chinese courts are battling to address a growing number of cases involving labour disputes, partly because of the global financial crisis over the past two years, an official of the country’s top court has said.

Labour dispute cases have become one of the most difficult and central tasks for Chinese courts, China Daily reported Wednesday quoting Sun Jungong, spokesman of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC).

Statistics from the SPC showed that courts nationwide handled 295,500 labour dispute cases in 2008, a year-on-year increase of 95.3 percent.

The figure jumped to 318,600 in 2009, up by 7.8 percent over the previous year.

The number of new labour dispute cases reached 207,400 between January and August this year.

The global financial crisis has had a “grave impact on China’s economy and its foreign trade in particular”, said Sun at a press conference.

“A lot of enterprises, especially export companies, are unable to satisfy workers’ requirements for higher salaries,” he added.

“Some enterprises tend to ignore the protection of workers’ rights in order to maximise profits and minimise labour costs, with illegal employment and violations of employees’ legitimate rights being common,” he said.

The workers’ growing awareness about protecting their own interests and rights has also prompted more of them to resort to lawsuits, the spokesman said.

China implemented the Employment Contract Law, as well as the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labour Disputes, in 2008 to offer workers easy access to lawsuits to settle labour disputes if they are not satisfied with mediation and arbitration results.

The SPC Tuesday issued its third judicial interpretation about hearing labour dispute cases. The interpretation was meant to better safeguard workers’ rights and to balance the interests of the employers and employees, the SPC said.

He Li, a Beijing-based lawyer, said different areas in China have different judicial practices regarding labour disputes.

The new judicial interpretation from the top court will help guide the practice nationwide, making it more consistent, He said.

About 80 percent of enterprises in China are privately-run or foreign-owned, employing about 75 percent of the country’s total urban workforce, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.