In the evolutional process, the Chinese industrial relations is influenced by the contradiction of new and old mechanism, and some new problems that can’t be ignored have appeared too, these are mainly shown in the following aspects:
3.1 The establishment, change and termination of industrial relations are very random
The important reform of industrial relations in China is pursuing generally the labor contract system in enterprise’s recruitment system. This reform aims at protecting the legitimate rights and interests of enterprise and laborer. However, because Chinese labor market isn’t perfect, the supervision, coordination and restriction mechanism of new-type industrial relations haven’t been set up yet, as a result, because of inefficient law-enforcing supervision, though enterprises have signed the labor contract with employee and have implemented the labor contract system, a lot of enterprises have not dealt with affairs according to the labor contract, and cancelled the labor contract randomly, the phenomenon of dismissing employee at will exist in a large amount; employee ignores the contract agreed on, “job-hopping” without authorization exists in a large amount. In addition, many enterprises hiring laborers have no formality, they seldom confirm the right and obligations of both sides in form of the written contract; Though some enterprises have signed the labor contract with employees, the content is simple, the condition is not reciprocity, especially in private enterprises, joint venture enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises, the problem that the right and obligation are not clear and reciprocity exists generally; The labor contract terms that some enterprises sign are totally decided by themselves, there are obviously many illegal contents and unreasonable agreements in the contract; “local policy” of some enterprises also damages the legitimate rights and interests of employees. These phenomena indicate that the establishment, change and termination of Chinese industrial relations are very random, because the signing of contract is not standard, the management of contract is not rigorous, the enforcement of contract is not overall, the cancellation of contract is imprudent.
3.2 The friction of interests in industrial relations increases increasingly
Market economy cultivates the subjective consciousness of enterprise and laborer, strengthens the pursuing of their own interests of both sides of industrial relations, makes the past interests contradiction concealed by the administrative relations expose now. Between the country and enterprise, the enterprise and enterprise, the enterprise and employee, employee and employee, the new division and conformity have taken place in the interests pattern, the unsteady factors is increasing in industrial relations, the interests friction is increasing. Because the supply of labor-force resources in China exceeds the demand, the interests friction of industrial relations mainly takes place in enterprise infringing employee’s legitimate rights and interests, such as some enterprises pursuing the economic benefits one-sidedly, ignoring the relevant regulations of labor safety and health, lacking the essential protective measures, bad work condition, simple and crude facility, which have injured the employee’s physical and mental health. Some enterprises lengthen work hours at will, force employee to work extra hours, book rules and regulations excessively to pocket the employee’s salary, which have caused the antagonistic sentiments of both sides in industrial relations. Some enterprises in poor-performed and deficit situation are in arrears with the employee’s salary, living cost, medical fee and social insurance, therefore it has caused the unstable factor of the society.
The interests friction of Chinese industrial relations also take place in the change of status between manager and laborer. The introduction of modern enterprise system makes the manager have more and more power in recruitment, personnel adjustment and salary distribution. Meanwhile, under the condition of employment post decreasing and unemployment pressure increasing in transformation period, the status of laborer in the enterprise drops to some extent. In essence, the change of status is the adjustment of interests relations, so it also make the interests friction of industrial relations increasing.
In addition, the interests friction of Chinese industrial relations also take place in the division of employees that state-owned enterprise’s reform brings about. The reform of state-owned enterprise changed the existing distribution structure, which has not only aggravated the division of rich and poor, but also the division of employees has been accelerated. In the course of reform of state-owned enterprise, some employees become the enterprise shareholders and closer with the combination of means of production, because of providing funds to buy state-owned assets. And another part of employees become pure laborers because of being unable or having no qualification to buy enterprise’s assets. On the distribution method, the former have both the part of obtaining compensation according to the work and the part of sharing bonus according to the stock; the latter can only obtain compensation according to the work.
3.3 The reform of state-owned enterprise’s property make the contradiction dominant in employment field
Though the reform of state-owned enterprise’s property accords with the inherent demand for development of market economy, it becomes the objective factor that aggravating the employment contradictory in the short-term. After the reform, the enterprise’s administration has changed from the mode of administrative management to the mode of capital management. This transition requires enterprises to dispose various kinds of factors of production rationally to realize the maximum of investment return. Thus it requires state-owned enterprise to peel off the redundant employees to realize the rational disposition of workforce and means of production, which make the contradiction in employment field change from recessive into dominant and cause a large amount of employees laid-off and unemployment. Especially in the course of reform of “invigorate large enterprises while relaxing control over small ones” of Chinese state-owned enterprise in recent years, we have walked the way of annexation and recombination, employee reduction and efficiency increasing. This brings about the expansion of capital scale, the raise of capital organic form and the decrease of employment post in the short time. What is more, when pursuing efficiency first, some enterprises substitute the original laborer of older age and lower quality with the laborer of younger age and high quality who first get into employment, and often use the precondition that whether the employee participate in becoming a shareholder to establish and cancel the industrial relations, those employees will be laid off if they don’t become a shareholder. Some enterprises stipulate that the employees who become the shareholders have priority in the work arrangement, the kind of work and the choice of work post. And the employees who don’t become the shareholders can’t be on the executive position, they will change to forefront of the production or engage in the provisional work. Some enterprises change and cancel the labor contract without authorization in reforming process, they reduce the personnel illegally. These methods have strengthened the contradiction in the employment field even further and formed the situation of strong capital and weak labor.
3.4 The depression of economic development make employment environment worsen and employment quality drop
In recent years, Chinese economic development is in depression because of the demand deficiency. Adding structural adjustment and economic transition, some enterprises lack the competition advantage and suffer from the loss and stopping work, stopping production. As a result, the employment deficiency and the phenomenon of laid-off are serious, the reemployment rate of employees whose living standard are lower than the local minimum line drops, the average unemployment cycle of employees are lengthened, the lives of quite a few laid-off employees are very difficult. The abilities to receive rural surplus labor force of the main channel are obviously weaken. In the reform process of more than ten years in the past, the township enterprise was a main channel to receive the rural surplus labor force and had received more than 100 million people altogether. From 1978 to 1999, the workforce that township enterprises received account for more than 60% of non-agricultural industry’s total receiving amount. But after entering 1990s, the township enterprise was in unfavorable status among the market competition because of lacking technology, talent, the benefit drops, the ability of receiving the surplus workforce was weakened. Besides, because in the course of economic development, the farmland is taken up in a large amount, the per cultivated land of peasant drops, which cause a large number of rural laborer leave the soil and the hometown and flow in the strange land. At present, the whole country have more than 85 million floating population, which equivalent to the total population of the largest country in Europe—Germany, there are 60 million peasant workers that flowing throughout the year among them and 40 million peasant workers that flowing trans-regionally.
On the other hand, the labor supplies of China are more and more:
1) The existing amount of the workforce supplies is difficult to digest. According to the preliminary statistics, the amount carried forward of workforce (unemployed people plus laid-off people) is up to 12,480,000 people in 1998.
2) There are a great number of employees inside the system that being squeezed out and need reemployment. It is estimated that the state-owned and urban collective-owned enterprises nearly have 40 million abundant workforces to accelerate discharging outwards; The administrations and public institutions are overstaffing, the overpeopled phenomenon is very serious, there are at least 10 million redundant staff to be cut down and 150 million rural surplus workforce need to shift. Because the population base number of our country is large, the newly increasing population every year is at least twice as much as the population in Hainan Province (more than 80 million). These newly workforces who grow up in urban and rural areas need to look for work position. The contradiction between the supply and demand of workforce has already made the employment situation more severe and employment quality dropping constantly.
3.5 The informal organization has not functioned in the coordination of industrial relations
In China, because the employment pressure is strengthened increasingly, some new employment forms of part employment, self-employment and provisional employment have appeared. For example, provisional work form in some strong seasonal industry and unstable demand industry; part-time worker in some highly flowing industry; self-employed worker in some industries of small scale, little capital investment and quick turnover of trade, etc. In addition, in implementing the reemployment project, the government encourages the personnel who have difficulty in obtaining employment in the market competition to join the community service of the informal labor organization; it implement finding places by the government for the laid-off unemployed personnel who have difficulty in being reemployed through developing public welfare labor organization; it encourage the laid-offs who have stronger market competitiveness or ability to start an undertaking independently to look for jobs individually or start an undertaking independently. These flexible employment form has become the main channel of China to obtain employment. This indicates that the informal organization has become an important main body of recruitment, but it hasn’t entered the coordination field in the subject qualification of industrial relations at present, which make the industrial relations in the unstable informal organization become more and more unstable.