It was learned from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security that as labor relations are becoming diversified and complicated the number of labor dispute cases in China is increasing rapidly. During the first half this year labor dispute arbitration committees at various levels have accepted 135,000 labor dispute cases and handled 6,440 collective labor disputes, which involve 184,000 persons - considerably more than in the past.

It was learned that with the transition in economic structure and employment modes labor conflicts, such as caused by employers' default in wage payoff and social insurance premium payment, are rather prominent and the number of labor dispute cases increases rapidly. Although relevant departments have adopted many measures to reinforce labor arbitration work the construction of labor dispute arbitration institutions in China still lags relatively behind as a whole. Surveys show that labor dispute arbitration institutions in most counties and county-level cities merge with other departments. In some places the case investigation function of labor arbitration institutions have been canceled.

Therefore officials at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security have said the local governments should establish and improve multi-channel and multi-level labor dispute mediation system; organically integrate the four mediation systems including corporate conciliation, neighborhood mediation, mediation by letters and calls departments and labor dispute arbitration conciliation; and train a numerically sufficient and high-quality labor dispute arbitration body so as to ensure the timely handling of labor dispute cases.

By People's Daily Online