外文文献及翻译.doc

_外文文献原稿和译文原 稿Research on Chinese Labor Relations in Economic TransformationXIE BinAbstract: The economic transformation in China has caused significant changes to labor relations. It has made the labor relations more complex and labor conflicts apparent and frequent. However the coordination mechanism has not been developed correspondingly. Based on the empirical research upon current domestic and overseas labor relations, it is concluded that the supply of labor force exceeding the demand of it is the fundamental reasons for explaining labor conflicts in the economic transformation in China. It also suggested that the coordination mechanism of labor conflicts has mechanical dysfunction and the structure of harmonic labor relations would take a long time.Key words: economic transformation, labor relations, labor conflict, coordination mechanism Labor relations in China have become more and more complex, labor conflicts have occurred frequently, and thus labor disputes have been growing with a rate much faster than that of the development of GDP in the past decade. They could become a potential obstacle to the economic development if not appropriately managed. The paper studies the condition of labor relations, and probes the profound reasons for it, and compares it across the world in order to give a description for it.1 CONDITION OF LABOR RELATIONS IN CHINA Since the mid of 1990s, accompanied with the deepening of economy reform of China, most social and economic relationships have been undergoing formidable transformation and the social and living style of some community have been greatly changed. The creation of new glossaries such as rural workers , lay - off , work , re -employment reflected the transformation of the period. The simple and harmonic labor relation between the state-owned enterprises and the workers in the system of planned economy has been gradually substituted by that between the employees a n d the employers of various of different owner ships, underlying the transformation of labor conflicts. The development of labor conflicts could be evidenced by the growing of labor disputes. In accordance with the China Labor Statistical Yearbook (Department of Population, Social Science & Technology Census 2004), from 1995 to 2004 the labor disputes had grown by 6.9 times, from 33 thousand to 260 thousand per year with an annual growing rate of 31.05 percent, which was 3.6 times the average growing rate of GDP of 8.7 percent at the same time. In this period, accompanied with the deepening form of state-owned enterprises, and the constant development of economy within non-public section,the variation of labor relations and the emergency of labor conflicts drew public attention. Some scholars, labor unions and national authorities of statistics investigated the labor conditions and published many reports, which offer invaluable information for other people to have a picture of the labor conditions (Dai Jianzhong 1996; Qiu Shanwen et al.1997; Yang Junjie 1995; Urban Investigation Corps of National Bureau of Statistics 1996). We have the traditional idea that the labor relations within state-owned enterprises featured low payment and inefficiency, in which the workers had no actual choices, but they had full-scale welfare, therefore the labor relations were relatively harmonious. So, the current studies mainly focused on the labor relations within private, foreign and other non-state- owned enterprises (Cooke 2002). However the reform of state-owned enterprises has caused significant changes, and eliminated the distinct gap between themselves and other enterprises. Also some practical matters suggested that some emergent collective events had relation with the acute labor relations within state-owned enterprises.Therefore the labor relations within state-owned enterprises should also be given attention. The current research mainly focused on labor contract, working time and working intensity, payment and welfare,and working conditions and so on. It was discovered that many workers have not signed labor contracts with their employers, which was even common for the small and mid- sized enterprises where labor competition was more severe. A survey into the private enterprises in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province suggested that only 50% of the workers have signed labor contracts or just have oral labor agreement (Xu Feng 2004). A similar survey into the Sino-foreign joint funded enterprises in Wuhan indicated that those employees with written contracts were only about ten percent (Research Team of Labor Relations within Sino-Foreign Joint Funded Enterprises 2000). As to the content of labor contract, many were too brief, rough, informal and without protection for the rights of workers, and some even have terms violating the Labor Law. For example, some contracts do not have terms of employment period, work-related injury insurances and so on. Furthermore, in some contracts for those engaged in dangerous work there are even Death Notes. As for the implementation, many employers did not obey the contracts and frequently laid off employees at random. The extension of working time and the increase of work intensity were common for many enterprises. According to a survey into 159 Taiwan-invested enterprises in mainland China by the Urban Investigation Corps 000 of National Bureau of Statistics of China (1996), the weekly working time was about 45 hours, compared to 40 hours stipulated by the Labor Law. It was also discovered that 32 percent of the employees worked more than 48 hours per week. Moreover, the employees could only get the payment similar to that for the normal working time instead of the overtime compensation. According to a survey into the Sino-foreign joint funded enterprises in Wuhan (Hubei Province) by the Research Team of Labor Relations within Sino-Foreign Joint Funded Enterprise (2000), 33.4 percent of employees worked for more than 8 hours per day, and nearly 50% of employees worked at least an extra shift each, and 41.3% of the employees got no payment or only got some symbolic payment for their overtime work. In addition to the extended working time, the work intensity of employees in the Sino-foreign joint funded enterprises was also higher than that in other enterprises, so 51.6% of them feel mental fatigue and 48.4% physical tired. As to the payment and welfare, back pay occurred usually. The payment and welfare was the primary causes for the labor disputes, as evidenced by the fact that labor disputes related with payment and welfare represented 57 percent of all in the period from 1997 to 2000 (Yao Xianguo 2005). Some enterprises didnt make the payment on time, but deferred the payment for one or more months, or even paid only a living-support sum and all the other payment would be deferred to the year end. A survey into the non-public enterprises in Shengzhou City of Zhejiang Province indicated that about 70% of the employers didnt pay the salaries monthly (Wang Hongchun et al. 2002). There was great gap between urban and rural employees, as evidenced not only by the payment, but also by the working conditions, working stability and welfare. The explanations for the gap might be the difference between human capital and employers and Chinese “hukou” discrimination to rural employees, and the latter has gained more attention. Yao Xianguo and Lai Puqing (2004) investigated through the current statistics about enterprises and rural employees and discovered that the average monthly salary for an urban employee was 1 213.21 yuan and that for a rural employee was 981.78 yuan, about one-fifth (or 19.1 percent) lower than the former. Considering that the work time of rural employees was one-fifth longer than that of urban employees, the calculated gap of payment rate between them was nearly one third. There was also great gap between them in welfares such as the pension, medical insurance and unemployment insurance, of which the coverage rates between them have the differences of 42%, 41% and 44%, respectively. And the calculated result by Blinder-Oaxaca Model showed that the differences in the payments, pension, medical insurance and unemployment insurance were 30%, 31%, 26% and 21%, respectively. The working and living conditions in some enterprises were also bad. In recent years, some mineral organizations did not take adequate protection measures for the employees and so many serious emergencies occurred (State Administration of Work Safety 2006). It was more common that many employers had supreme authority to their employees, and employees rights were frequently invaded. Punishment, abuse or limitation to freedom of employees occurred often, which aggravated the labor relations(Qiu Shanwen et al. 1997; Yang Junjie 1995; Gao Luhua et al. 1999). Attention should also be paid to the status of labor relations in informal organizations in cities, where most rural employees were attracted. Since these firms were often small-sized, and had no normal regulations, and the authorities could not carry out efficient supervisions, the labor relations in these firms were even complex. It was difficult to get useful information about them and thus the objective research of labor relations in them was very difficult, which might explain the lack of studies as to them. However, the employment within these organizations was so huge, and most labor disputes were settled through informal methods in the absence of regular coordination mechanism, which could become serious obstacle to the social stability. Therefore more studies were much needed. In conclusion, the weak status of workers and the related labor conflicts will still exist for a long time in present and in the coming future and it is urgent to regulate and coordinate the labor relations. However, the labor relations were not absolutely contradictive and non-coordinated because the acute labor relations can bring losses and damage to the interests of both employers and employees. Thus the coordination of labor relations should be a long trend. Some survey suggested that 76% of the middle-level managers and 67% of the employees were interested in the long-term development of the enterprises, which might be an evidence to the trends aforementioned (Xu Feng 2004). But the existence of bad working and living conditions in some enterprises might result in more acute labor relations. Some scholars even argued that the working conditions in some private enterprises were similar to those in the early capitalism described in the Capital by Karl Marx (Liu Jianqi et al. 2003).2 BACKGROUND FOR SHARPLY INCREASED LABOR CONFLICTS: ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION The labor relations have experienced radical changes in the process of economic transformation in China in the past two decades . The economic transformation in China meant the transformation of both the economic system and the economic structure. In the transformation of economic system, the labor relations changed from the traditional planned-economy system to market-oriented economy system, and from the simple style between state-owned enterprises and employees to the complex style between enterprises of various owner ships and employees with different status, from interest consistency and inter-cooperation to interest conflict and the combination of inter- cooperation and confliction. In the transformation of economic structure, lots of rural surplus labor, attracted by the payment difference between rural and urban China floated into cities and constituted huge supply of labor force (Chen Zongsheng 2005). As estimated by Wang Jiangui and Ding Shouhai (2005), there were 46 million rural workers whose marginal contribution was zero by Lewis labor surplus theory. Chu Ng Ying et al. (2000) estimated that those should represent 6 percent of the total labor force from the countryside. However, the economic transformation of China would not only include the shift of those with zero contribution from countryside, but also include the shift of those unknown unemployed with contribution of more than zero but lower payment than urban employees by Fei Jinghan-Ranis Model (Fei et al. 1964), which could be much more than those estimated. Actually there was always huge gap in wages between agricultural sector and other sectors and the gap was being constantly widened. According to the China Statistical Yearbook of 2005(National Bureau of Statistics 2005), the payment in agricultural sector in 1978 was about 76.42% of the average across the country, but the ratio sharply decreased to 51.5% in 2002 . The huge gap in wages drove a large number of labor force floating into cities and thus increased the supply of labor force. In general, the condition of supply exceeding demand of labor force would be a long time trend in the economic transformation. The contradiction of supply and demand would be even more acute in the sections with the requirement of low labor skill, and in the informal economic sections. These were the main reasons for the inequality between employers and employees and for the intense labor relations. It should be mentioned that the increase of labor disputes also existed in other emerging market countries with high economic growth rate, such as in Korea. Korea took an economic development strategy based on the cheap labor force for a long time, and the government did ignore the demand to increase wages and improve working conditions. The labor disputes sharply increased in the late 1980s. Because the Korean government did not adjust the policies in time, and still continued to limit the political rights of workers and repress their movement instead, serious social crises occurred. The labor disputes caused the burst of democratic movement across the country in 1987. Therefore the wages were increased significantly and the working conditions were greatly improved, which caused the loss of competitiveness of many industries in Korea. Then many Korean enterprises invested overseas, and brought huge damage to the internal economic competitiveness of Korea. According to the estimation of the economic competitiveness of 12 economic bodies across Asia-Pacific region by IMD, a famous international economic competitiveness ranking organization, the labor relations in Korea were the most intense, and the overall economic competitiveness of Korea ranked 3rd from the bottom.3 SYSTEM ABSENCE IN COORDINATION MECHANISM FOR LABOR CONFLICTS The status of labor relations is in essence determined by the comparison between the force of capital and labor, and also affected by the interrelationship between employers, employees, their respective collective organizations and government (Cooke 2002). Presently, the unbalance between capital and labor in labor market of China can mostly explain the tension of labor relation s, so establishing new coordination mechanism for labor relations and balancing the force of capital and labor through proper intervention from collective organizations of employees and employers and from the government is the main solution to the problems. However, being inconsistent with the development of labor relations, current coordination mechanism remains the continuation of original planned system. Zhou Changcheng and Chen Qun (2004) argue that the absence of rights of labor union, the governments preference for employers and the inequality between employers and employees are the main reasons for non-establishment of a rational coordination mechanism. Such viewpoints are supported by other studies. As far as labor union organizations are concerned, although enterprises are more active to establish labor unions and most of workers join them, the labor unions do not have enough independent rights, and can hardly fully represent the interests of employees. Most of labor unions are functioned as organizing social activities, allocating welfare and coordinating management under traditional system (Cooke 2002). As for proper intervention of the government in labor relations , some local governmental officials fear that the establishment of labor unions and the implementation of the labor law will affect the development of local enterprises and the competitiveness of local economy, which can result in administration nonfeasance or insufficient action over labor relations. According to the investigation into 11 prefecture-level governments of towns and cities in Zhejiang Province, such idea can be commonly felt (Xia Xiaolin 2004). Due to lack of practically effective negotiation object and due to the governments ineffective administration over labor relations, the coordination mechanism for labor conflicts in China is out of effective institutional arrangement. Looking around the world, we can find that the development and change of labor relations in various countries are somewhat similar to the case in China. The development of labor relations and the improvement of coordination mechanism in the western developed countries have been under a long time of evolution. From the end of 18th century to the middle of 19th century, when European countries were transforming from agricultural society to industrial society, namely the stage of earlier capitalism, labor relations were in intense opposition with continuous and constant labor conflicts and labor movements, which even threatened the reign of the capitalist class and directly jeopardized the interests of the governing faction. Accordingly, the governments of western countries began to carefully deal with laws and policies regarding labor relations, where factory law, labor protection law, labor insurance law, law for settlement of labor dispu