January 31, 200
QINGDAO, China, Authorities have informed a group of 204 former employees of the Shixian Taibai Group in China's southwestern city of Chongqing that they will have to pay 350,000 yuan (US$48,500) for arbitration in a dispute over unpaid wages, the official Xinhua news agency reported last week.
This leaves the laborers with nowhere to turn; the price is unaffordable. This high price represents protection of labor rights with Chinese characteristics. Procedures for handling industrial disputes have been loudly criticized in society, described as "first, one mediation; second, one arbitration; third, two lawsuits."
The 204 workers were laid off after the Chongqing Light Textile Holding Company took over the Shixian Taibai Group in September last year. Those who were full-time employees were compensated 1,293 yuan (US$179) for each year they had worked for the company, while temporary, contract workers were simply dismissed.
This was not acceptable to the workers, however. The formal employees complained that they had had 7 percent of their salaries deducted each month, as a so-called "management fee," for more than 10 years, whereas the temporary workers had 4 yuan (US$0.60) deducted monthly for the same reason. Moreover, none had received promised overtime payments.
"The enterprises have completely ignored the laws and regulations all these years. As long as there is a need for production, the laborers have to work overtime unconditionally. And during the busy seasons, employees work from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. They are not allowed personal leave, have no days off and no overtime pay," stated the workers' representative. Thus, the 204 workers could not accept their termination and decided to seek legal redress.
Nevertheless, all industrial disputes must go through "arbitration" before a lawsuit will be accepted in court. This regulation lays out a single, compulsory path in labor disputes; it effectively digs a systematic trap for Chinese workers who seek to protect their rights.
The workers had no choice but to request arbitration from the local authority, the Industrial Dispute Committee. So they filed a claim against the company for unpaid overtime wages, unlawful deductions from their salaries, housing allowances and unemployment insurance benefits, totaling more than 30 million yuan (US$416,000).
The committee responded by issuing a fee note to the workers, charging 350,000 yuan (US$ 48,500) for accepting and working on this case.
The actual payment the laborers had been receiving was merely 500 to 600 yuan (US$70 to $84) per month. Now that they had lost their jobs, how could they possibly afford such an expensive fee? Chinese workers are no longer willing to simply accept their fate as a disadvantaged minority. They are increasingly taking action to defend their legal rights.
In this case, the 204 workers tried to apply to have the fee exempted, reduced or delayed, based on certain regulations; the Industrial Dispute Committee flatly refused. The head of the City Labor Bureau excused this by saying that the workers had failed to submit required documents issued by the local labor union in order to have the fee exempted, reduced or postponed. He said the fee would be refunded if it turned out it was in excess of what was required for the case.
"We did go to the labor union to request the required document, but the labor union turned us down since we could not submit proof of low insurance payments. How could we get such proof after losing our jobs?" the workers asked angrily.
In fact, if the labor union wished to act on behalf of the workers, it would have been easy to clarify the situation and issue the document based on the reality. However, the labor union pitilessly stood by with folded arms in front of the powerless workers.
This is to say that official labor unions only recognize official documents, rather than genuinely concerning themselves with workers' rights. This is an indirect way of allowing capitalists to illegally deprive workers of their rights. Further, it fully demonstrates that China's labor unions are bureaucratic organizations that cannot protect workers.
There have been growing numbers of industrial disputes since 1987, when China resumed its practice of arbitration. According to statistics from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, cases increase by 27.3 percent each year. The number of such disputes in 2006 was 447,000. If cases that were rejected by the system are included, the actual number could be much higher.
One study showed that a Chinese worker from the countryside, seeking less than 1,000 yuan (US$139) in unpaid wages, will need to spend at least 920 yuan (US$128) to complete all the required procedures, which will take 11 to 21 days, a delay that costs the worker 550 to 1,050 yuan (US$77 to 146) in lost pay.
Many workers in China who face unpaid wages and unfair lay-offs are unable to afford the high costs of the legal system, and have no choice but to try the endless "letters and visits" system of appealing to higher authorities for help. Originally, the law is supposed to serve as the strongest safeguard of fairness and justice; under the social system with Chinese characteristics, however, the "letters and visits" system has becomes the usual practice.
Under an effective system, workers would organize their own labor unions, and could sit down at the table to negotiate with capitalists to resolve industrial disputes. But since labor unions in China do not fight for workers' rights, to whom can workers turn for help when their rights are violated?
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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2], published in Hong Kong, for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org . ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)
http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Society_Culture/2008/01/31/no_legal_recourse_for_poor_chinese_workers/3942/
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