Industrial relations and collective bargaining in China

This paper is to attempt to offer an overview of industrial relations and collective bargaining developments since the early 1990s. The following section will describe the political, economic and social context of the industrial relations developments. In section three, the paper analyzes key features of the emerging industrial relations regime in China, including political imperatives behind the industrial relations development, the new legal framework of industrial relations, tripartism, employers’ organizations, and finally, recent union organizing campaigns. Section four offers an overview of collective bargaining and an analysis of a new attempt to develop coordinated bargaining in interaction with the government policy framework. Also, a preliminary attempt to examine the effectiveness of union governance and of collective bargaining in improving working conditions in the workplace will be made. In the final section, major findings is summarized.