V. Strengthening the Protection of the Legitimate Rights and Interests of Workers

It has been the Chinese government's consistent development concept to respect people's right to work, stress the protection of workers' rights and interests, realize the dignity of labor and promote people's all-round development. The Chinese government has adopted a series of policies and measures to strengthen the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of workers, and is effectively promoting the sound development of human resources.

Guaranteeing equal employment

In recent years, the Chinese government has endeavored to strengthen the building and management of a unified and standard market of human resources, overcome the divide between urban and rural areas, between people of different identities and between different regions - which is caused by historical factors, eliminate institutional obstacles to the development of the human resources market, and establish an equal employment system for urban and rural workers. By improving market supervision, carrying out examination of law enforcement in the human resources market, and cleaning up and rectifying illegal acts in the market, the relevant departments of the Chinese government has effectively protected the lawful rights and interests of all market elements, including job seekers.

The state makes every effort to ensure that women have equal rights to employment with men, and endeavors to remove barriers to women's equal employment. The country mobilizes various non-governmental sectors to expand the employment channels for women, and formulates and implements policies supporting women's self-employment. The positive role of women's federations at all levels is brought into full play in making known to authorities women's demands, in promoting equal employment and equal pay for equal work, and in providing rights protection services. By 2008 women workers accounted for more than 45.4 percent of the working population nationwide.

The Chinese government is formulating an overall plan for the employment of the disabled and has adopted the principle of combining centralized and decentralized employment, so as to guarantee the right to employment for the disabled. It formulates and implements policies favorable for the disabled people's employment, stipulating that every employer must hire at least one and a half persons with disabilities out of every 100 employees working in the company. Any employer with one quarter of its employees being persons of disabilities will enjoy tax preference. The government also gives advice to and helps the disabled to establish welfare enterprises of persons of disabilities, and encourages and supports them to explore flexible ways of employment. The China Disabled Persons' Federation at all levels protects the legitimate rights and interests of disabled persons and promotes their equal participation in social life. A total of 3,043 employment service agencies have been set up at the provincial, municipal and county levels to provide special employment services for the disabled. By the end of 2009 the number of disabled employees in urban areas nationwide had reached 4.434 million, and 17.57 million disabled persons in the rural areas had found stable jobs.

The state pays great attention to the protection of rural migrant workers' rights and interests. Rural migrant workers are a special group of workers that has emerged in the process of China' s reform and opening-up, industrialization and urbanization. They have made great contributions to the economic and social development of the country. In 2006 the State Council established the Joint Conference System to coordinate and guide the work on rural migrant workers across the country. China has eliminated many unreasonable restrictions on rural migrant workers' seeking jobs in cities, strengthened work safety and public health training, expanded social insurance to cover more migrant workers, established a retirement pension scheme, which ensures continuity of one's retirement insurance wherever he or she lives, and carried out such supporting programs as "Spring Warmth Action" and "Spring Breeze Action." By the end of 2009 a total of 80.1482 million rural migrant workers had become members of trade unions, almost 80 percent of the migrant workers' children were receiving free compulsory education at public schools in urban areas, and the number of migrant workers covered by insurance for work-related injuries, medical insurance, basic retirement insurance for employees of enterprises in urban areas and unemployment insurance had reached 55.87 million, 43.35 million, 26.47 million and 16.43 million, respectively.