The Guangzhou Daily on 25 March quoted Xie Yingjian, director of the Office of Labour Dispute Arbitration, at the Guangzhou Labour and Social Security Bureau, as saying the number of labour dispute cases in Guangzhou for the first two months of 2008 equaled the total number of cases in 2001. More than 60 percent of all cases involved non-payment of salaries and over-time. The report claimed Shenzhen and the province of Guangdong as a whole had experienced similar increases.
Liu Kaiming, of the Shenzhen Contemporary Social Survey and Research Centre, claimed the increase was directly related to the detailed provisions contained in the new Labour Contract Law which allowed workers greater scope to seek compensation for rights violations: “There are many factories all over in Guangdong with no over-time pay, and inadequate salary levels, so many workers have naturally brought lawsuits against them following the implementation of this law,” he told Radio Free Asia.
Duan Haiyu, a labour law expert in Shenzhen, pointed out additional reasons behind the increase in labour dispute cases: “The renminbi has appreciated, environmental protection is being taken more seriously, and material costs are increasing. With the implementation of the Labour Contract Law, the operating costs of enterprises are higher than before. Therefore, the production of low value-added items has moved to the hinterland or places like India and Vietnam. They have abandoned these workers; they no longer care about them.”
Duan said that in the Longxiang district of Shenzhen alone, more than 60 factory owners ran off in the first half of 2007. The workers had no choice but to file lawsuits with the Labour Department, hoping to receive some compensation from the liquidation of the factory and machines.
Despite the increase in dispute cases, staff levels in the labour dispute arbitration committees (LDAC) in Guangzhou have remained static. The Guangzhou Daily reported that the Haizhu district LDAC only had three staff members, working six days a week, holding evening trials three times a week. Duan Haiyu said Shenzhen was experiencing the same problem: “All the current cases cannot be adjudicated within the legally stipulated deadline. Adjudication ought to take place within 60 days of the case being brought, but after extending this by another 30 days, there are still many cases awaiting adjudication.”
Liu Kaiming explained that staff levels at the Labour Department are based on the registered urban population, while the majority of the working population and the vast majority of complainants are migrants: “In the first place, the labour supervision unit is already relatively small within the Labour Department. Furthermore, its set-up is based on the resident census, which makes it even smaller. And most of the labour dispute cases involve migrants. In the last few years, many people have been calling for a corresponding increase in human resources in the area of labour supervision, allocating management staff, who will perform labour checks, according to the actual population administered. This is an overall change. If there is to be reform, it may involve an adjustment of the household registration system. A region does not have the power to decide the policy on population management.”