Labour market governance and working conditions in China and Mongolia

Human resources development and employment centre. China.

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The ILO works with its tripartite partners to improve labour market governance and working conditions in China and Mongolia. Sound labour market governance, which is a prerequisite for an optimal balance between economic performance/efficiency and social justice/equity, requires adequate labour laws and their enforcement.

China

The ILO has offered its technical expertise to the law-makers, policy-makers and social partners when they endeavor to improve labour laws and regulations. For example, the ILO offered its technical advices when the Labour Contract Law was prepared. At the same time, the ILO has been working with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in order to improve its labour law enforcement capacity by reviewing orientations, structures, policy and capacity of the newly established Labour Inspection Bureau.

Another key pillar of sound labour market governance is collective bargaining. Since late 1990s, the ILO has been working with tripartite partners – particularly All China Federation of Trade Unions – with regard to improving and strengthening capacity of trade unions to carry out genuine collective bargaining. As a result of the continuous joint efforts, practices of collective bargaining have spread to different regions and sectors in China. With further reform of representational foundation of collective bargaining, collective bargaining is expected to become a key instrument to determine and improve working conditions, including wages.

Efficient, effective and fair system of labour dispute settlement is a key to industrial peace and social justice.

In particular, with a growing number of interest disputes where workers demand their fair share of economic wealth created by both employers and workers, building and improving labour dispute settlement mechanisms have become a highly pertinent issue for policy-makers and social partners in China.

At the same time, the ILO has been working with the government and social partners to improve a macro policy framework affecting wage/income distributions so that economic wealth created by social partners are distributed, through voluntary negotiation and other re-distributive measures, in more equitable manner so that China’s economic development can become more balanced one.

Mongolia

Since 2003, the ILO has been working with tripartite partners to improve Mongolia’s tripartite social dialogue system. National tripartite social dialogue made significant contributions to Mongolia’s transition from the centrally planned economy to a market economy in the early and mid 1990s by finding agreed solutions and consensus on often difficult economic and social challenges. Now tripartite partners and tripartite mechanisms need to be refined and improved to tackle challenges arising from the country’s deeper integration into the global economy and from market-based employment relations.

In particular, improving wage policy and wage fixing mechanism has become a central pillar of ILO-Mongolia cooperation, as it can have significant effects on livelihoods of hundreds thousands workers and business communities in Mongolia. In this respect, the ILO has provided technical expertise on wage survey, wage data analysis, minimum wage policy formulation and public sector wage fixing.

Another area where the ILO is currently working with tripartite partners is labour dispute settlement system. Until recently, Mongolia did not have a functioning system of labour dispute settlement. With the initiative of Confederation of Mongolian Trade Unions (CMTU), the ILO has assisted Mongolia in establishing a new system of immediate settlement of labour disputes.

As in all other countries, the ILO has been working with tripartite partners in improving legal framework governing work and employment relations with a view to bringing laws and actual practices of Mongolia closer to internationally accepted norms, embodied in various ILO Conventions and Recommendations.