I. Employment Law Legislation

1. What legislation governs employment law in China?

Employment law in China is governed by a relatively comprehensive set of laws, more recently supplemented in late 2007 to strengthen workers’ rights.

Major laws include:
- Labour Law of the People’s Republic of China (1994) (“Labour Law”)

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The mistake many people make when engaging manufacturers or buying products in China is to think cheap. Lowest cost-lowest price, discount discount discount. There is a much better alternative and one that traders are not currently exploiting.

For example lets take a pair of shoes. Almost 50% of all the shoes sold in the UK originate in China. Now the costs involved in manufacturing a pair of shoes include the cost of materials, ie. leather, the cost of packaging, the cost of …

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According to the Financial Times, we all chose the wrong career when we decided to be makers, doers and helpers. The big money is in moving money around, and the best salary deals in China are being given to deal makers right now.

Local Chinese and international financial services companies have benefited from the recent opening of the market. The foreign companies have arrived at a good time, with huge volumes of cash sloshing around in unrewarding bank accounts, or lying under mattresses. It’s the perfect meeting of supply and demand.

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Collective labour contracts have been developed and promoted by the Chinese government and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) since the mid-1990s. Thus far, however, because of the lack of genuine worker participation in the contract negotiations, they have brought only limited benefit to China’s workers.

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By Dan Harris

My friend Chris Carr, dean of the CalPoly MBA program and the brains behind the International Business Tour blog has a very thoughtful post, entitled, “Will Paying More Change Behavior And Make Someone More Ethical?” Thoughtful, but wrong.

The post centers on whether paying more gets you better performance and/or better ethics, and Chris pretty much says it does not:

“Some suggested that we could solve the problem of too many defective products coming from China by paying more to the Chinese suppliers that make this stuff. I questioned that assumption, and still do.

One example I gave in that discussion thread was that if paying people more solved the problem, then why does paying most good employees more still result in good performance, but not superior performance? (See Comment No. 29.) And why does paying most bad employees more money still get you bad performance, and not good performance? (If you feel that more money correlates to higher performance, come see me after you have hired, managed and fired more than a few people, and let’s compare notes.)”

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