Labour Dispute Mediation Committees
Case study summary
Reference: ESRC/Case Study/A/10
Resolving labour disputes through enterprise level mediation is very difficult in China. A lack of neutrality and weak primary trade unions are among the main obstacles to successful mediation. As a result, district and area (quyu) level mediation committees have become increasingly commonplace. They are composed of combinations of district/area level trade union officials, officials from MOLSS stations (zhan), industry offices (gongye bangongshi) and officials from political and legal government departments. This case study looks at the work of various levels of such committees in East China.
K district in N city has 515 private small-scale enterprises employing 24,000 people. In 2001, the city level trade union and the MOLSS organised a district level mediation committee made up of various government department officials. The committee allocated specialist staff experienced in labour disputes to deal with its daily work.
In its working methods, the Mediation Committee (MC) acts as coordinating office for various initiatives, drawing on relevant government departments when needed. It acts as a conduit for initiatives of the district office itself such as a notice from the Party Committee of the office on improving industrial safety, which was a result of monthly ‘condition of the people’ reports from the mediation committee. The MC has also formulated guidelines for dealing with spontaneous industrial disputes that are basically refined and formalised fire-fighting methods. The MC has also issued a notice systemising labour law training and awareness that has made use of local tripartite conferences.
In its first three yeas the MC dealt with 393 labour disputes and resolved 81%. It has also assisted primary level trade unions in preventing disputes from escalating. The city level trade unions have drawn the following lessons from the experiences of the MC:
· Need for professional mediators in labour disputes
· Area/district mediation committees can avoid the constraints of enterprise level committees. Local statistics show that a well operated district level MC can reduce the number of applications for arbitration dramatically.
Township (District) Mediation Committees
This committee was originally a pilot project of the N City Federation of Trade Unions, dating back to 1996 based on trial regulations issued by the ACFTU in 1995. In 2000 the regulatory framework for the committee’s work was improved by opinions and regulations issued by the City level trade union and the standing committee of the provincial labour arbitration committee. The work of the various township mediation committees across N obtained full (legal) recognition when the city government issued a Method on mediation work in 2002, the outcome of a city wide conference on labour mediation held in 2001.
As with the previous example the township committees draw on government resources and are made up of relevant government department personnel, although the daily work in undertaken by a standing committee. Between 2002 and mid 2004, these committees dealt with over 10,000 cases that mainly concentrated on obtaining and upholding workers’ rights in labour dispute cases. The reputation of the committees among migrant workers helped to reduce the pressure on arbitration committees and the courts and rendered the first stage of the three-step labour dispute resolution system far more effective.
However, mediation at this level is still facing serious problems, including a lack of professional staff with a working knowledge of the labour law. In this area of concern the township mediation committees are little better than the enterprise mediation committees, where poor knowledge of the relevant labour law is a major problem. The lack of a trained body of staff also leads to inadequate or inappropriate compromises by workers, who are persuaded to do so by unprofessional procedures. Thirdly, the limited capacity of the township mediation committees to work effectively is partly a result of the lack of national laws or regulations guiding their activities. A credible step forward would be to take measures to get mediation agreements recognised in law. This has already been successfully piloted in another city in the province.
Town Level (district) Labour Mediation Committees
W city has 16 mediation committees working at this level with considerable success. In the previous year they handled over 1500 cases and obtained payment of almost 3.5 million yuan in injury compensation or wage arrears. In the mid-90s the city government began drawing up regulations and opinions on geographical mediation committees at various levels, as it viewed these as potentially more effective than arbitration courts. The committees were formed in both developed and less developed areas from the usual government departments and Party Committee representatives. Two specific staffers were hired and over 300 people were trained in mediation and dispute resolution, using specially designed teaching materials and guest lecturers from W city’s arbitration court network.
Mediation was used as a device to avoid disputes becoming serious. A number of the 16 town level mediation committees proved to be very effective in mobilising primary level trade unions in pre-empting disputes by more effectively identifying workers’ complaints and addressing them. HH town mediation committee was successful in this work to the point of formulating an opinion document based on their experience gained, which included a marathon ten-day mediation in which they persuaded an employer to pay almost 40,000 yuan in wage arrears to 20 migrant shoe workers
HH (jiedao) Labour Dispute Mediation Committee
HH area was dominated by shoe manufacturers employing mainly unskilled workers. There were four main characteristics of labour disputes in HH:
· Very common and not restricted to small shops. Some larger factories were frequently hit by disputes.
· Employers’ legal violations were frequently the cause of disputes, including unfair labour practices such as ID confiscation, fines, wage arrears and very poor health and safety.
· The pattern of disputes related directly to seasonal patterns in production
· Workers accumulated experience in protecting their legal rights via collective action, and this increased pressure on the need to construct more effective channels of resolution.
The result was that hardening attitudes on both sides often led to public disturbances that at times affected the normal functioning of some government offices. At the same time, in HH there was growing awareness among government officials that HH’s development depended heavily on migrant workers and that their contribution could not be ignored, and required a backbone of experienced workers. Thus there was growing realisation that the prompt settlement of labour disputes and HH’s future were closely linked.
A network of mediation committees was set up in the HH area, organised by a standing committee of local government department and union officials. Two government departments contributed 14 staff between them, all of whom had acquired experience in labour disputes. The MOL provided a car. The work was combined with more general unionisation across the area and a standing committee for a specially established sector-level shoe workers union was appointed to link up the separate branches. It had an office and was manned 24 hours a day.
Case study continues with a detailed description of the HH mediation committees’ operation