BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature
on Sunday started to read the draft law on labor dispute mediation and
arbitration amid an increasing number of labor disputes that emerged in the
country.
The draft law was submitted Sunday to the seven-day
29th session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC),
or China's top legislature, for the first reading.
According to NPC statistics, labor dispute cases in
China are continuously increasing in recent years. Statistics show that labor
dispute arbitration organizations at various levels dealt with 1.72 million
labor dispute cases involving 5.32 million employees from 1987 to the end of
2005, with a growth rate of 27.3percent annually.
Xin Chunying, vice Chairman of the Legislative
Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee said on the legislative session
that excepting the increasing number of labor disputes, other problems also
exist. For instance, the personnel in arbitration organizations are not
professional and thus lack credibility and the process of arbitrating labor
disputes is long, making the cost of arbitration high.
China resumed the labor dispute arbitration system in
1987 and formed the procedures for coping with labor disputes as "mediation,
arbitration and trial" after the regulation on handling corporate labor dispute
and Labor Law were promulgated in 1993 and 1994.
The procedure and practice for dealing with labor
disputes have been widely accepted by the public, said Xin.
The draft bill is for strengthening mediation and
improving arbitration so as to help fairly solve labor disputes without going to
court and thus safeguard employee's legitimate rights and promote social
harmony, she said.
The draft bill said corporate itself is entitled to
establish labor mediation committee to solve the labor disputes occurred in its
own corporate so as to solve disputes at grassroots level. The corporate labor
mediation committee should consist of employees and representatives of
managerial level.
When labor disputes occur, litigants can turn to the
corporate mediation committee, or grassroots people's labor disputes mediation
organization, the draft bill said.
The draft bill said labor disputes concerning pay,
medical fee of job-related injuries, compensation, pension whose relevant sum do
not exceed 12 months of local minimum monthly wages could be solved by
arbitration. The arbitration documents have legal effects upon being handed out.
Labor disputes on working time, holidays, social
insurance and collective contracts could also be solved by arbitration with
legal effects, said the draft bill.
