Dispatch Work in China: A Study from Case Records, Part II

作者：Huang, Philip C C^*

来源：Modern China, 2017, 43(4): 355-396.

DOI：10.1177/0097700417708555

• user of the person vs
• user of the work
• the black hole in legal theory and practice
• obligations for social insurance of the dispatch agencies
• compensation for unilateral termination of contract
• countermeasures adopted by dispatch agencies

On the basis of case records from Xinjiang and Shanghai between 2013 and 2016, this article examines how dispatch work law has changed in practice and in theory during that period. It demonstrates that in using dispatch agencies as legal protective shields to dispose of obligations to workers, the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have behaved much as what the case records from 2012 used in my earlier study (Part I) showed. What has changed is that public institutions and large private enterprises have followed the example of the SOEs to reduce old personnel as well as to hire new personnel through dispatch work. The new cases also show that, within that overall trend, the courts have tried to tighten their regulation of dispatch agencies, especially with respect to obligations for social insurance and compensation for unilateral dismissal of workers. At the same time, dispatch agencies (along with enterprises) have adopted some countermeasures to deal with the new pressures, especially by signing only short-term contracts and rotating a worker among different agencies. Even so, as far as the black hole in legal theory and practice is concernedof an artificially constructed separation of the worker's person from his or her workmanagerial abuses, especially with respect to overtime and vacation work and unilateral termination of workers by enterprises, have continued apace with little restraint from the courts. The situation cries out for stronger reform.

• 出版日期2017-7
• 单位中国人民大学