China will take three years to get all businesses, construction firms in particular, to sign labor contracts with all their employees, said Hu Xiaoyi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, at a press conference in Beijing Thursday.

"We'll take these three years to oblige all businesses to implement the Labor Law and have employers to sign labor contracts with their employees," he said.

During the first three quarters of 2005, more than 230,000 labor dispute cases involving 560,000 laborers were raised and over 90 percent of them got settled.

Noting that some employers fail to abide by the Labor Law, Wu said the three-year plan for action will focus mainly on private businesses, restructured state-owned enterprises and construction businesses.

During the four year period from 2001 to 2005, some 4.2 million institutions were inspected and 1.06 million illegal employment cases were spotted by 3,277 labor inspection authorities above the county level.

More than 34 million employees were able to sign their due labor contracts and received 14.9 billion yuan (1.9 billion US dollars) of social insurance paid by their employers.

Source: Xinhua