VZCZCXRO8290
RR RUEHCN RUEHGH
DE RUEHBJ #2273/01 1650852
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 140852Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY BEIJING
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8885
INFO RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCPDOC/USDOC WASHDC
RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 6532
RUEHGZ/AMCONSUL GUANGZHOU 0803
RUEHGH/AMCONSUL SHANGHAI 4940
RUEHSH/AMCONSUL SHENYANG 6351
RUEHHK/AMCONSUL HONG KONG 7638
RUEHIN/AIT TAIPEI 5713
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 1167
LABOR/LABOR COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 012273 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/CM, DRL/IL 
DEPARTMENT PASS USTR FOR KARESH, ROSENBERG 
DEPARTMENT PASS USTR FOR STRATFORD, WINTER, ALTBACH, CELICO 
LABOR FOR ILAB HELM, CHURCH, SCHOEPFLE, LI 
TREASURY FOR OASIA/ISA-DOHNER AND KOEPKE 
USDOC FOR 4420/ITA/MAC/MCQUEEN 
GENEVA FOR CHAMBERLIN 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ELAB EFIN ETRD PHUM PGOV CH
SUBJECT:  Legal Aid Attorneys Chronicle Advances, 
Challenges in Labor Law Enforcement 
 
 
Sensitive But Unclassified; Handle Accordingly 
 
¶1.  (U)  Summary:  Labor Intern, accompanied by Labor 
Officer, met with the Director and Staff attorneys of the 
Peking University Women's Legal Aid Clinic June 9, 2006. 
The attorneys said that, in their opinion, China?s current 
legal system and labor law enforcement mechanisms are 
better than they were twenty years ago, but have a long way 
to go.  While China's labor laws have strong protections 
for workers, China lacks the ability to ensure that the law 
is enforced.  The legal aid lawyers argue that the 
establishment of an independent inspection system would 
prevent many violations of the labor law and protect 
workers, especially in child labor, violation of wage and 
hour laws and firing female workers for pregnancy.  End 
Summary. 
 
Labor Laws, Enforcement Mechanisms Improving 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) On June 9, 2006, Labor Officer and Labor Intern met 
with Guo Jianmei, Director; Xu Weihou, Vice Director and 
staff attorneys of Peking University Women?s Law Studies 
and NGO Legal Aid Center to discuss enforcement of China?s 
Labor Law.  According to Director Guo, China?s labor laws 
and enforcement mechanisms are getting better.  In the past 
10 years, many laws have been written and many 
implementation measures have been established at the 
provincial, municipal, and regional levels, Guo said.   As 
one example, the draft of the Labor Contract Law that was 
issued in March 2006 states that employers must have 
written contracts with their employees.  This is to ensure 
that workers have information about the job and pay, and to 
provide a legal document that can be enforced.  However, as 
Director Guo pointed out, the draft had been somewhat 
controversial because investors are worried that it will 
tip the balance in favor of the worker instead of the 
employer. 
 
Legal Environment Improving with More Transparency 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶3.  (U)  Furthermore, Vice Director Xu said, the overall 
legal environment is getting better.  Regulatory 
transparency has increased, citizens have been granted more 
rights to speak out, political sensitivities have decreased, 
and the media is playing a greater role, she said. She 
cited the case of a woman in Hunan Province who the week 
before had been arrested by railway police for collecting 
empty bottles.  The woman was charged with "disturbing the 
peace" and was detained for five days.  However, this 
incident was brought to the media?s attention and stories 
were broadcast on television and appeared on the internet. 
The media pressure as well as expressions of concern from 
citizens reached the senior local official, who ordered the 
woman released immediately.  Follow-on stories in the media 
resulted in the railway company paying the woman 
compensation of 6,000 rmb (about USD 750). 
 
Improvements in the Judiciary Apparent 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (U) Progress has been made in other areas as well, said 
Director Guo.  Specifically, the quality of judges has ben 
improved, and the increasing soundness of the judicial 
system is evident.  In the past, many retired military 
personnel were appointed as judges despite having no formal 
training or background.  This no longer takes place. 
Currently, judges must pass an exam and receive a 
certificate before they can undertake their judicial 
responsibilities.  China?s Supreme People?s Court now 
issues judicial interpretations, case handling guidance, 
 
BEIJING 00012273  002 OF 003 
 
 
and other materials to help judges conduct court business, 
Guo said. 
 
Future Challenges: Women?s Rights in the Workplace 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶5.  (U) China must confront a number of future challenges 
in the labor sector, both Guo and Xu emphasized.  In 
Director Guo's opinion, women have fewer rights in the 
workplace now than they had 20 years ago.  Moreover, 
minority women have even fewer rights.  There are two 
reasons why this is the case:  1) they have little or no 
idea of their rights; and 2) once they become aware of 
their rights, they do not know to whom to turn to advice or 
help, if there is any available. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Equally importantly, there is a discrepancy 
between international and domestic labor law standards, 
Vice Director Xu said.  China has accepted an increasing 
number of international law standards, but that has been 
done only for the nation?s political image, while very 
little has been done to actually enforce the laws.  One 
example of the international-domestic labor law discrepancy 
in China is that most multinational corporations have good 
internal regulations mandating equal treatment and 
forbidding discrimination on the basis of gender, but 
similar provisions are not yet included in China?s laws, 
said Xu. 
 
¶7.  (U) In addition, Vice Director Xu said, conflict arose 
between international investment and domestic labor laws 
when the Central Government proposed the Labor Contract Law 
draft in March.  According to Xu, thousands of foreign 
funded companies in Shanghai said that if the law passed, 
they would withdraw their investments. 
 
Labor Laws Do Not Match Current Labor Situation 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
 
¶8.  (U) The change from a planned economy to a market- 
driven economy created labor issues that the Central 
Government has yet to rectify, the legal aid attorneys said. 
Under the planned economy, most workers worked in State- 
Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and were well protected by the law 
because the laws were written to apply to SOEs, Vice 
Director Xu said.  With the huge shifts from the planned to 
the market economy, and from SOEs to private businesses, 
most workers now work in non-publicly owned, private sector 
enterprises, or in the informal sector, in small 
restaurants, family owned businesses, or as household staff. 
As a result, the labor laws that were set up to meet the 
needs of the planned economy are simply not adequate to 
cover the current range of employment problems workers face, 
said Vice Director Xu.  SOEs provided workers with better 
protections under the planned economy than do private 
companies in the current market-driven economy. 
 
¶9.  (U)  Vice Director Xu provided three examples:  1)  In 
the past female employees working in SOEs received paid 
maternity leave, as required by law.  Now, however, there 
are many reported cases of women being fired immediately 
after the employer discovers that they are pregnant.  2) In 
Zhejiang Province a factory building collapsed and killed 
20 workers, five of whom were child laborers.  Vice 
Director Xu visited this factory with the Ministry of Labor 
and Social Security (MOLSS), and found a number of other 
family-sized factories who had also hired child laborers. 
The managers of these factories said that they did so 
because children are cheaper, easier to manage and generate 
higher profits.  3)  Several weeks ago, it was reported in 
the news media that a woman in Sichuan Province had died of 
over work (guo lao si) after having worked 10-hour days for 
 
BEIJING 00012273  003 OF 003 
 
 
several consecutive days.  The market economy gives 
employers more choices, Director Guo said, but what choices 
are there for workers?  Vice Director Xu traveled with 
MOLSS to Zhejiang, Hunan, Hainan and Guangxi Provinces in 
2002; she discovered that employees had neither an 
awareness of their rights as workers or any idea of what 
constituted an abuse of their rights. 
 
Needed:  Inspectors Free of Local Influence 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (U) Attorneys Guo and Xu both agreed that the main 
reason for labor abuses throughout China is because of the 
collaboration between corrupt local officials and 
businessman. Although MOLSS and the local labor and social 
security bureaus (LSSB) have established an inspection 
mechanism, Guo and Xu say that local officials have a 
special relationship with local businessmen (guanxi). 
These officials are forewarned about inspections, and are 
able to remove child laborers, cut back on excessive hours, 
and make it appear as though work is being conducted in 
accordance with the law, even when that is definitely not 
the case.  Corruption thus compounds the problems of an 
inspection system that is both understaffed and overworked, 
the attorneys said. Directors Guo and Xu both maintain that 
the best way to foil corruption is to establish an 
investigative team that is independent of local officials. 
Such a system, they said, would give the investigative team 
the ability to carry on difficult investigative 
responsibilities without worrying about the consequences of 
cracking down on the child labor, wage and working hour 
violations and unsafe working conditions that continue to 
plague China. 
 
¶11.  (SBU)  Comment:  This group of legal aid attorneys, 
whose clinic handles numerous important cases, has provided 
an insightful description both of the advances that China 
has made in enforcing the labor law, and of the kinds of 
changes China still must make to meet the ongoing 
challenges of protecting Chinese workers. 
 
Randt