Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
Local government regulations on collective bargaining (集体谈判) or collective negotiation/consultation (集体协商)[1] are slowly becoming common practice in China. As early as the 1990s, a few local regulations specifically on collective contract were promulgated, such as the Regulations of Enterprise Collective Contract of Fujian Province (1996) (People’s Forum, 1996) and of Guangdong Province – 1996 (People’s Voice, 1996). In every case, they followed the Collective Contract Regulation (2004) issued by the former Ministry of Labour[2]. It has been only since 2008 that many provinces have started to amend these collective contract regulations or to discuss legislation of collective wage negotiation (工资集体协商). The years 2011 and 2012 witnessed the most intensive local legislations. By July 2012, 25 of China’s 34 provinces and municipal cities had promulgated regulations on collective contract and another 13 issued or were about to issue documents on wage negotiation[3]. In addition, new clauses on collective bargaining were also added to legislations about democratic management or harmonious labour relations, with the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on the Promotion of the Harmonious Labour Relations – 2008 (Government Online, 2008) being a typical example.
The new local regulations attempted to adjust labour relations “collectively” instead of individually. China’s central government, partly because of lobbying by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), had been promoting labour laws particularly in the new century (Lee, 2009). However, Chinese labour laws still focussed on individual labour standards, such as working hours and individual contracts, but widely neglected collective labour disputes, especially interest-based ones (e.g. Lee, 2007; Chang, 2013). Although collective contract was mentioned in the Collective Contract Provisions (1994; amended in 2004) and a chapter in the Labour Contract Law (2008) stipulated collective negotiation and collective contract, details like the bargaining procedures were missing (e.g. Clarke et al., 2004; Luo, 2011).
Though a series of local regulations on collective contract and on wage negotiations were promulgated after 2008, some questions remain. Since there never has been a law allowing collective bargaining in China, why did the local governments start drafting these new regulations? Why was collective bargaining seen as more important than other labour issues? What were the driving forces that put it on the legislative agenda? And what combination...