China’s new Labor Laws: employment contract reforms

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

I just read a detailed report on China's new labor law on The Red Wombat
Hole blog:

http://communistwombat.blogspot.com/2007/12/chinas-new-labor-laws-employment.html

Although there is a galore of articles on the Internet that warn dear
capitalists how to ward of distasteful situations, some regulations
stirred up my suspicion as their contents still seem unclear. 

For instance, a blog which informs foreign investors about China law,
states:

"It is also going to require all employers maintain a written employee
handbook setting out the basic rules and regulations of employment.
Without an employee handbook, employers will be essentially unable to fire
anyone; "the failure to maintain an employee handbook means that an
employer will effectively be unable to discharge employees for cause,
since "cause" must be determined with reference to the employee handbook."
Do it." 
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2007/11/chinas_new_labor_law_its_a_hug.html

My question is, according to which superior regulations must a handbook be
written that regulates employment? Without apropriate superior laws, a
handbook serves more to penalize workers. I recalled a passage from
Capital: 

"The factory code in which capital formulates, like a private legislator,
and at his own good will, his autocracy over his workpeople, unaccompanied
by that division of responsibility, in other matters so much approved of
by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more approved
representative system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of
that social regulation of the labour-process which becomes requisite in
co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in common, of
instruments of labour and especially of machinery. The place of the
slave-driver?s lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties. All
punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from
wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory Lycurgus so arranges
matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to
him than the keeping of them." 

When I was an undergraduate student and living in one of the most
unrestrained student dormitory that you can imagine, I had a conversation
with the principal who suddenly showed off a long list of rules and
regulations consists of nearly 150 articles, and said: "As you see,
although it seems that there is not a single rule in this dormitory,
actually every step you take is a transgression of the rulebook. But with
our goodwill, we use it in certain situations".

We've cut the the prices on salvation and sin, but I am scared of the
dusty day when the preachers cannot read a word from the handbook:

"The telephone rang and it jumped off the wall,
That was the preacher paying his call.
He said, look at the shape that world is in
I've gotta cut price on salvation and sin

The church houses were jammed and packed
People was strengthened from front to the back
It was so dusty the preacher couldn't read his text
So he folded his text took up collections".

Note: It is quite possible that I mistook the verses  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqiblXFlZuk

Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/


      
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