New Formalities for Casual Labor: Addressing Unintended Consequences of China\u27s Labor Contract Law

China’s Labor Contract Law (“LCL”) came into force on January 1, 2008. The first major piece of labor legislation since the 1994 Labor Law, the Labor Contract Law expanded legal protection for workers by mandating that labor contracts be in writing and delivered to all workers. Employers, predicting that the law would effectively raise the cost of employing full-time, long-term workers, sought methods of “creative compliance” with the law. One avenue for creative compliance emerged through the loophole in the LCL for so-called “dispatch workers.” Dispatch workers are formally employed by third-party dispatch service agencies and thus not covered by employment contracts with the firms where they perform their job (“accepting entities”). In the first five years following the LCL’s enactment, dispatch workers grew from a negligible share of China’s labor force into a pervasive phenomenon. The dispatch worker exception began to swallow the rule, eroding the intended labor protections of the LCL. In response, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress amended the LCL, effective July 1, 2013. These amendments drastically reduced the permissible scale and purpose of dispatch labor and augured tighter regulation for the dispatch industry. Following a period of public comment, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Services provided specific departmental rules regarding the licensing of dispatch agencies and standard industry-wide practices, effective March 1, 2014. The new regulations restricted enterprises from hiring more than ten percent of their workers as dispatch workers and clarified the obligations of dispatching agencies as employers. With reports of abuse of dispatch workers continuing to surface, the effects of the amendments and the provisions on labor remain unclear. This comment addresses China’s effort to intervene in employment arrangements via legislation. It first surveys the background of labor legislation in China from the Mao era, through reform, and into the twenty-first century. It then examines the interaction of the labor market and labor legislation, as employers respond to changes in China’s labor regime through the introduction of Amendments to the LCL. Finally, this comment suggests that reform in labor legislation based on individual contract should be secondary to expanding collective labor rights

Foreword

When the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal was founded in 1990, it focused scholarly attention on a region of the world at the dawn of a new era. The year prior, nations of the Pacific Rim came together to establish Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). At the same time, legal scholars in the United States sought to deepen their understanding of the region. However, despite the obvious and growing importance of Asia to global legal study, there was but one comparable law review focused on the Pacific Rim. Acknowledging the relative scarcity of scholarly fora, this Journal was inaugurated with a devotion “to bridge the gap between East and West.” It was fitting such a forward-looking and internationally-minded journal would come out of the University of Washington School of Law. As then-Editor-in-Chief, Lawrence Weiner, remarked in the foreword to the Journal’s intramural issue, “the University of Washington is located in a major Pacific Rim center whose lifeblood is tied to events in East Asia.” His remark echoes as true today as it did then. The school’s Asian Law Center, its LL.M. and Ph.D. programs, and its vision to train “Leaders for the Global Common Good” continues to attract students and scholars alike to the University of Washington campus to discuss the connection between the U.S. and the Pacific world

Note from the Editor-in-Chief

Washington International Law Journal’s editorial staff proudly presents the second issue since adopting a new name, expanding the Journal’s geographic scope, and revising its mission. While capitalizing on the Journal’s close ties to the Pacific Rim region, the Journal now also publishes global perspectives on international legal issues. The articles and comment included herein reflect the best of the Journal’s unique strengths and broadened scope

New Formalities for Casual Labor: Addressing Unintended Consequences of China\u27s Labor Contract Law

China’s Labor Contract Law (“LCL”) came into force on January 1, 2008. The first major piece of labor legislation since the 1994 Labor Law, the Labor Contract Law expanded legal protection for workers by mandating that labor contracts be in writing and delivered to all workers. Employers, predicting that the law would effectively raise the cost of employing full-time, long-term workers, sought methods of “creative compliance” with the law. One avenue for creative compliance emerged through the loophole in the LCL for so-called “dispatch workers.” Dispatch workers are formally employed by third-party dispatch service agencies and thus not covered by employment contracts with the firms where they perform their job (“accepting entities”). In the first five years following the LCL’s enactment, dispatch workers grew from a negligible share of China’s labor force into a pervasive phenomenon. The dispatch worker exception began to swallow the rule, eroding the intended labor protections of the LCL. In response, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress amended the LCL, effective July 1, 2013. These amendments drastically reduced the permissible scale and purpose of dispatch labor and augured tighter regulation for the dispatch industry. Following a period of public comment, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Services provided specific departmental rules regarding the licensing of dispatch agencies and standard industry-wide practices, effective March 1, 2014. The new regulations restricted enterprises from hiring more than ten percent of their workers as dispatch workers and clarified the obligations of dispatching agencies as employers. With reports of abuse of dispatch workers continuing to surface, the effects of the amendments and the provisions on labor remain unclear. This comment addresses China’s effort to intervene in employment arrangements via legislation. It first surveys the background of labor legislation in China from the Mao era, through reform, and into the twenty-first century. It then examines the interaction of the labor market and labor legislation, as employers respond to changes in China’s labor regime through the introduction of Amendments to the LCL. Finally, this comment suggests that reform in labor legislation based on individual contract should be secondary to expanding collective labor rights

Foreword

When the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal was founded in 1990, it focused scholarly attention on a region of the world at the dawn of a new era. The year prior, nations of the Pacific Rim came together to establish Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). At the same time, legal scholars in the United States sought to deepen their understanding of the region. However, despite the obvious and growing importance of Asia to global legal study, there was but one comparable law review focused on the Pacific Rim. Acknowledging the relative scarcity of scholarly fora, this Journal was inaugurated with a devotion “to bridge the gap between East and West.” It was fitting such a forward-looking and internationally-minded journal would come out of the University of Washington School of Law. As then-Editor-in-Chief, Lawrence Weiner, remarked in the foreword to the Journal’s intramural issue, “the University of Washington is located in a major Pacific Rim center whose lifeblood is tied to events in East Asia.” His remark echoes as true today as it did then. The school’s Asian Law Center, its LL.M. and Ph.D. programs, and its vision to train “Leaders for the Global Common Good” continues to attract students and scholars alike to the University of Washington campus to discuss the connection between the U.S. and the Pacific world

Performance assessment of wastewater treatment plant of Hawassa St. George Brewery, Hawassa, Ethiopia

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance efficiency of the wastewater treatment plant of Hawassa St. George brewery by collecting wastewater samples from the influent and outlet of each treatment unit and analyzed using standard methods for major physicochemical parameters. Results of the present study revealed that except for temperature (36-38 0C), all of the other analyzed parameters of raw wastewater exceeded the national discharge limit indicating the necessity of treating the raw wastewater generated by the brewery. In most cases, the values decreased as the wastewater passed over the treatment units of the plant indicating an involvement of the units in the removal of pollutants. The brewery’s treated final effluent had a mean value of 8.6±0.08 (pH), 24.9±0.6oC (temperature), 203.0 mg/L (COD), 17.7 mg/L (NH4-N), 3.62 mg/L (SO24), 220.6μS/cm (EC), 49.8 mg/L (BOD5), and 529.6 NTU (turbidity), which were within national industrial wastewater discharge limits. However, the values of some parameters namely, TN (41.0 mg/L), TP (24.3 mg/L), H2S (3.1 mg/L) and TDS (110.6 mg/L), were higher than the limits. The overall pollutant removal efficiency of the treatment plant was 96.0% (BOD), 92.3% (TSS), 92.0% (COD), 88.5% (EC), 80.6% (TDS), 49.6% (turbidity), 43.0% (SO42-), 42.7% (NH4-N), 33.6% (temperature), 32.8% (TN), 31.8% (pH), and 30.4% (TP). This result shows that the overall removal efficiency was higher only for BOD5, TSS, COD, TDS, and EC, all others (especially nutrients) had less than 50.0% efficiencies. Higher nutrient concentration exceeding the discharge limits in final effluent and poor removal efficiency of the treatment plant indicates that the Hawassa St. Gorge brewery waste treatment plant is not effective enough to lower concentrations of these parameters below the discharge limit. Therefore, in order to make the plant more efficient and to reduce the effect of effluent, the factory should take some technological, technical and recycling measures.Keywords: Brewery, Hawassa, Performance, St. George, Treatment, Wastewate

Callous-Unemotional Traits among Children and Adolescents in Asian Cultures: A Systematic Review

Considerable evidence now exists for callous and unemotional (CU) traits as markers for a high-risk pathway to child and adolescent conduct problems implicating unique risk processes and treatment needs, but research has been limited largely to Western countries. We review the evidence base related to CU traits in Asian countries that has emerged in recent years, with respect to four key questions. Specifically, are higher CU traits among Asian children and adolescents associated with (1) increased severity of conduct problems; (2) similar neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive correlates as reported in Western countries; (3) similar environmental risk factors as reported in Western countries; and (4) poorer treatment outcomes? A systematic search identified 28 studies that have reported on child and adolescent CU traits in Asian countries. Consistent with Western samples, CU traits were associated with individual risk factors including atypical neural activation during cognitive tasks and poor empathy, as well as parenting risk factors. CU traits were also positively associated with most measures of conduct problems. Differences from findings in Western samples, however, emerged for areas such as correlates of reactive aggression and delinquent peer influence. Treatment has been investigated in only one study to date and is therefore a high priority for future research. The limitations of existing evidence are addressed along with key directions for future cross-cultural research, including measurement research with children and adolescents.</p

Supersymmetric probes on the conifold

We study the supersymmetric embeddings of different D-brane probes in the AdS_5 x T^{1,1} geometry. The main tool employed is kappa symmetry and the cases studied include D3-, D5- and D7-branes. We find a family of three-cycles of the T^{1,1} space over which a D3-brane can be wrapped supersymmetrically and we determine the field content of the corresponding gauge theory duals. Supersymmetric configurations of D5-branes wrapping a two-cycle and of spacetime filling D7-branes are also found. The configurations in which the entire T^{1,1} space is wrapped by a D5-brane (baryon vertex) and a D7-brane are also studied. Some other embeddings which break supersymmetry but are nevertheless stable are also determined.Comment: 44 pages, LaTeX; v2: typos corrected, references added, discussion of D5-brane embeddings improve