Tougher oversight of labor management vowed

A senior labor resources official on Monday pledged stricter supervision of enterprises’ labor management, responding to reports of abuses in Chinese manufacturers for Samsung Group and Apple Inc.

X in Changxing, vice-minister of human resources and social security, said excessive overtime and unpaid long shifts can be found in a minority of companies, while most employers abide by laws to protect workers’ rights.

Xin said the human resources and social security authorities will continue to strengthen law enforcement and inspection of companies’ behavior in labor management.

Authorities “will provide more guidance and services for enterprises and encourage them to improve their labor management, provide humane care for workers and improve working conditions”, he said.

The ministry will also make more efforts to publicize laws and regulations on labor rights, to enable workers to better protect their rights, he added.

Xin made the above remarks at a news conference at the State Council’s Information Office on Monday.

Earlier last week, Samsung admitted that employees worked longer than the law permits in Huizhou-based HEG Electronics, one of its phone product suppliers on the Chinese mainland.

Samsung also said on its Chinese website that the company had management flaws and potential work-safety hazards, including the absence of a clinic within the company.

However, Samsung denied the accusation of a US-based labor NGO — China Labor Watch — that the company was exploiting child laborers.

Last week, another accusation of a labor-rights violation made headlines in East China’s Jiangsu province. Vocational schools in the province’s Huai’an city made thousands of students work as interns at a local plant of Foxconn Technology Group, Apple’s largest supplier. Big orders have flocked in the factory as the release date for the new iPhone handset draws near.

Feng Tongqing, a labor professor from the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, said that in many labor-concentrated areas, the labor resource departments often lack the staff to regularly inspect emplayers’ behavior.

He urged the government better mobilize media and nongovernmental organizations to supervise labor-employer relationships, instead of relying on administrative power.

Xin also said that the country’s economic slowdown is starting to have an effect on employment, and the growth of newly created jobs has been decelerating since April, especially in the country’s eastern regions.

However, he stressed that the employment situation in China has been kept “generally stable”, adding that more than 9.18 million new jobs have been created in the first eight months of this year, higher than the same period last year.

There have not yet been large- scale layoffs among migrant workers, he said.