Active Performance of Duties, Judicial Protection for the Bottom Line of People's Livelihood - A Review of the Supreme People's Court's Promotion of High Quality Full Employment through High Quality Trials
2024-07-11
Shuttling through the streets and alleys, carrying the full expectations of diners, Xiaomeng, who won the lawsuit, knew that he would never be "run by an individual again.". This year's National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the Supreme People's Court's work report on "safeguarding the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment" and "judging whether there is a labor relationship between delivery drivers and platform enterprises" has once again drawn attention to one of the "Top Ten Influential Examples of Chinese Social Law in 2021", the "individual case of workers in new forms of employment". This case provides a vivid model for judicial practice to address new issues in the new employment model. Promoting high-quality and full employment, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of workers and employers, cannot be separated from the power of the rule of law. The way to govern is to prioritize people's livelihoods. The Supreme People's Court has always firmly rooted the Party's governing foundation, concerned about and concerned about employment issues, and prioritized employment as a top priority for people's livelihood. It closely combines with the actual judicial work, adheres to the principle of active performance of duties in accordance with the law, and provides strong judicial services and guarantees to promote high-quality and full employment. Strengthening judicial protection - resolving employment disputes and opening up channels for employee rights protection. This Spring Festival, Xiaoyang and his family have had a particularly down-to-earth life. However, just over a month ago, Xiaoyang and his colleagues were still rushing around for unpaid labor fees. In the deep winter of Hubei, the temperature gradually decreases. In order to recover the labor costs, Xiaoyang and 10 workers repeatedly demanded compensation and had no choice but to bring a lawsuit to the People's Court of Yingshan County, Hubei Province on January 23. On that day, the filing court of Yingshan Court opened the "green channel" to file cases on the spot and quickly transferred them to the expedited adjudication team. In the afternoon, after the organization and coordination of the expedited judge, as well as the interpretation and analysis of the law, the 11 labor contract disputes were successfully resolved through the small claims procedure and reached a mediation agreement. Wage arrears are a major problem in social governance. In the four years since the implementation of the State Council's "Regulations on Ensuring the Payment of Wages for Migrant Workers", the Supreme People's Court has effectively implemented this regulation, promoting courts at all levels to fully play the functions of summary procedures and small amount quick judgment mechanisms, reduce litigation costs, expedite trials and settlements, and comprehensively improve the quality and efficiency of wage arrears cases. To ensure that "real gold and silver" fall into the pockets of workers, the Supreme People's Court has increased its efforts in executing cases involving unpaid wages, promoted smooth "green channels" for courts at all levels, fully utilized the "total to total" and "point-to-point" inspection and control systems, strengthened online and offline property investigation work, further promoted cross enforcement, effectively prevented interference from power, relationships, and human relationships, and curbed the abuse of enforcement power and even corruption in enforcement. How effective is the "salary protection" measure? A set of data provides a glimpse: In 2023, courts across the country have concluded a total of 91600 cases involving the wages of migrant workers, with a total amount of 2.177 billion yuan executed. In recent years, in order to resolve "salary" disputes more fairly and efficiently, deepen the governance and diversified resolution of labor disputes at the source, the Supreme People's Court, in conjunction with the All China Federation of Trade Unions and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, has established a "general to general" mechanism for the governance and diversified resolution of labor disputes. Through the "court+trade union" and "court+human resources" mechanisms, a large number of labor disputes have been prevented at the source and resolved at the forefront - at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region High People's Court and the Autonomous Region Federation of Trade Unions have cooperated to establish a "court+trade union" mechanism for the diversified resolution of labor disputes, and increased efforts have been made to protect the rights and interests of new forms of employment. On the banks of the Huai River, the Anhui Provincial High People's Court and the Anhui Provincial Federation of Trade Unions jointly signed the "Opinions on Establishing a Cooperation and Cooperation Mechanism for Protecting the Labor Rights and Interests of Employees", establishing a joint meeting mechanism, a notification and consultation mechanism, a litigation and mediation docking mechanism, a judicial suggestion and union supervision connection mechanism, and a cooperation and co construction mechanism to jointly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees. In the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the diversified labor dispute resolution model of "court+trade union" in Hubei Province has achieved full coverage at the city and county levels. Trade union mediation organizations at or above the county level have fully entered the people's court mediation platform to promote the front-end resolution of conflicts and disputes. By the end of May this year, more than 19800 mediation organizations and more than 34000 mediators from human resources and social security departments and trade unions had settled in the mediation platform of the people's court. A total of 1.1239 million labor disputes had been mediated before litigation, 923000 of which had been successfully mediated, with a success rate of 83.5%. In January of this year, the Supreme People's Court and the All China Federation of Trade Unions, as well as the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, jointly issued the Minutes of the Chamber of Commerce Meeting of the Supreme People's Court and the All China Federation of Trade Unions Work Exchange Conference and the Notice on Strengthening the One Stop Mediation of Labor Disputes in New Forms of Employment, guiding courts in various regions to improve the regular consultation mechanism around the prevention, mediation, and resolution of labor disputes, and safeguarding the rights and interests of workers. Together with relevant departments, they further facilitated the channels for mediation, arbitration, litigation, and enforcement, actively fulfilled their legal functions of guiding mediation, and effectively improved the level of legalization of labor dispute prevention and resolution. "At present, more than one-third of the labor disputes brought to the court are settled through pre litigation mediation, without charging the parties, and the cost of labor dispute settlement is greatly reduced." The person in charge of the Supreme Court of Justice told reporters. Should employers pay nursing leave wages when a husband accompanies his wife for childbirth, in order to promote the construction of harmonious labor relations through unified judicial standards and practical judicial guidance? Does the non compete clause between the company and ordinary employees who do not have confidentiality obligations infringe upon the right of workers to freely choose their jobs? Should the R&D personnel compensate the company for any losses caused by their refusal to handle work handover procedures with the company after resigning? On the eve of this year's International Labor Day, the Supreme People's Court issued six typical cases of labor disputes, providing judicial guidance for issues of general concern to society. Once the case was released, the official new media reading volume quickly reached over 100000. A case is worth a dozen files. Since 2023, the Supreme People's Court, in conjunction with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, has released several typical cases. In addition to the six typical cases of labor disputes mentioned above, there are also 13 typical cases of wage arrears disputes, as well as 6 typical cases of labor disputes in new forms of employment, promoting the construction of harmonious labor relations throughout society. National People's Congress representative Mai Shirui once told our reporter that the release of typical cases by people's courts can effectively play a leading and demonstrative role, guide the formation of reasonable litigation expectations, cultivate the conscious awareness of legal compliance and usage among employers and workers, and have high social legal popularization value. In addition to releasing typical cases, the People's Court Case Library, which was officially launched and opened to the public in February this year, is also an important carrier for the Supreme Court to unify the judgment scale and guide correct labor values. For example, in the "invisible overtime case" included in the case library - Li v. a certain technology company labor dispute case, the trial court clearly defined the recognition criteria of "invisible overtime" online as the payment of substantive labor and obvious occupation of time, ensuring that workers are not treated differently due to flexible working hours and remote labor modes, safeguarding their right to rest and receive labor remuneration, and providing a model for solving new labor disputes with universality in the era of the internet. The reporter learned that there are currently 43 labor dispute cases in the database, involving multiple aspects such as confirming labor relations, terminating labor contracts, probationary periods, non compete restrictions, recovering labor remuneration, and work-related injury insurance benefits. In addition to fully utilizing the case library, timely answering legal application difficulties encountered in the trial of lower court cases through the "Legal Answer Network" platform, promoting unified legal application, is also the key to ensuring employment work by the Supreme Court. "Does the employer have the right to choose to renew an open-ended labor contract after two consecutive fixed-term labor contracts have been signed between the employer and the employee?" Recently, the Supreme People's Court released the sixth batch of selected Q&A questions on FaAns.com, one of which involves labor contract disputes and is also the third issue related to the rights and interests of workers since the release of the selected Q&A. The judge of the Supreme People's Court gave a serious and detailed response to this. This response clarifies that in the case where the employee meets the requirement of entering into an open-ended labor contract, the employer has a mandatory contractual obligation, and the employee has a unilateral right of choice in the judgment rules, providing a legal "protective umbrella" for the employee to protect their legitimate rights and interests. Up to now, the Supreme People's Law has responded to 33 labor dispute issues, providing timely and effective guidance to courts across the country to strengthen judicial protection of worker rights and promote the construction of harmonious labor relations, including the protection of the rights and interests of migrant workers, work-related injury insurance benefits, protection of overage workers, economic compensation, and recognition of new forms of employment. Realizing the concept of "focusing on the front end and preventing diseases" - Gathering efforts from multiple parties to create a good employment environment. In China, the concept of "overage workers" is not unfamiliar. According to the statistics of the Supreme People's Court, there are tens of millions of overage workers, and about 50000 labor disputes related to work-related injury recognition, social security payment, etc. are filed in court every year. "Further standardize the employment relationship between over aged workers and employers." "Improve the relevant regulations for participating in work-related injury insurance." "Promote the search for basic pension insurance information and the disclosure of rights." During this year's National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, with the rapid dissemination of the content of the report on the work of the Supreme People's Court, the "No. 5 Judicial Proposal" aimed at solving the prominent problems faced by over aged workers in China has attracted social attention. The judicial suggestion of "small leverage" can leverage employment and improve people's livelihoods. At present, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has adopted the judicial suggestion and is actively promoting a series of practical measures, such as clarifying the scope and standards of labor standards for over aged workers, strengthening work-related injury protection for over aged workers, and improving the search for pension insurance information, to effectively ensure that "the elderly have something to do". To achieve "front-end management and disease prevention", it is necessary to gather the efforts of various departments and coordinate governance. In order to remind employers to implement labor laws and regulations or correct their illegal labor and employment behavior, the "Labor Union Labor Law Supervision Reminder Letter", "Labor Union Labor Law Supervision Opinion Letter", and "Labor Union Labor Law Supervision Recommendation" applicable to trade unions and related units are referred to as "one letter, two books". In March this year, the Supreme People's Court and the All China Federation of Trade Unions jointly issued a notice on promoting the work of "one letter, two books" in a coordinated manner. According to this document, the people's court and the trade union will explore the establishment of a two-way communication and information sharing mechanism, as well as a linkage mechanism between judicial suggestions and trade union supervision. Local trade unions at or above the county level can consult with the people's court to send personnel to carry out business guidance and enhance the ability of trade unions to carry out labor legal supervision in accordance with the law. It is understood that 27 provincial (district, city) trade unions have established cooperation mechanisms with courts at the same level. Collaborative promotion of the "one letter, two books" work is beneficial for the people's court to leverage its professional advantages, form a working force with trade unions, further improve the quality and efficiency of cooperation, promote the implementation of labor laws and regulations, and serve the high-quality development of the economy and society. The Supreme People's Congress and the All China Federation of Trade Unions also summarize and report on the implementation of the "One Letter, Two Books" every year The head of the Supreme People's Court stated. According to the Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law, labor dispute cases are subject to pre arbitration of labor disputes. Pre arbitration can fully play the role of mediation and arbitration, which is conducive to resolving labor disputes in the initial stage and timely protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the parties. In 2023, Shanghai arbitration institutions accepted 207000 cases, and the court received 20000 first instance cases, reducing the litigation rate to below 10%. However, in practice, if the concepts and standards of arbitration and judiciary are not unified, it can easily lead to disputes
Edit：Jia jia Responsible editor：Liling
Source：http://rmfyb.chinacourt.org
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