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

Morphing Planar Graph Drawings Optimally

We provide an algorithm for computing a planar morph between any two planar straight-line drawings of any $n$-vertex plane graph in $O(n)$ morphing steps, thus improving upon the previously best known $O(n^2)$ upper bound. Further, we prove that our algorithm is optimal, that is, we show that there exist two planar straight-line drawings $\Gamma_s$ and $\Gamma_t$ of an $n$-vertex plane graph $G$ such that any planar morph between $\Gamma_s$ and $\Gamma_t$ requires $\Omega(n)$ morphing steps

Finding a state in a haystack

We consider the problem to single out a particular state among $2^n$ orthogonal pure states. As it turns out, in general the optimal strategy is not to measure the particles separately, but to consider joint properties of the $n$-particle system. The required number of propositions is $n$. There exist $2^n!$ equivalent operational procedures to do so. We enumerate some configurations for three particles, in particular the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)- and W-states, which are specific cases of a unitary transformation For the GHZ-case, an explicit physical meaning of the projection operators is discussed.Comment: 11 page

The graph of an abstract polytope

Recently a generalization of simple convex polytopes to combinatorial entities known as abstract polytopes has been proposed. The graph of an abstract polytope of dimension d is a regular connected graph of degree d. Given a connected regular graph Г of degree d , it is interesting to find out whether it is the graph of some abstract polytope P. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for this, in terms of the existence of a class of simple cycles in Г satisfying certain properties. The main result in this paper is that if a pair of simple convex polytopes or abstract polytopes have the same two-dimensional skeleton, then they are isomorphic. Every two-dimensional face of a simple convex polytope or an abstract polytope is a simple cycle in its graph. Given the graph of a simple convex polytope or an abstract polytope and the simple cycles in this graph corresponding to all its two-dimensional faces, then we show how to construct all its remaining faces. Given a regular connected graph Г and a class of simple cyles D in it, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which D is the class of two-dimensional faces of some abstract polytope which has Г as its graph.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47917/1/10107_2005_Article_BF01584675.pd

Efficacy of Chlorine-based, Enzymatic and Combined Chlorine-enzyme Treatments on Biofilm Removal

Glyphosate resistance evolution in weeds is a growing problem in world agriculture. Here, we have investigated the mechanism(s) of glyphosate resistance in a Lolium rigidum population (DAG1) from South Africa. Nucleotide sequencing revealed the existence of at least three EPSPS homologues in the L. rigidum genome and identified a novel proline 106 to leucine substitution (P106L) in 52% DAG1 individuals. This mutation conferred a 1.7-fold resistance increase to glyphosate at the whole plant level. Additionally, a 3.1-fold resistance increase, not linked to metabolism or translocation, was estimated between wild-type P106-DAG1 and P106-STDS sensitive plants. Point accepted mutation analysis suggested that other amino acid substitutions at EPSPS position 106 are likely to be found in nature besides the P106/S/A/T/L point mutations reported to date. This study highlights the importance of minor mechanisms acting additively to confer significant levels of resistance to commercial field rates of glyphosate in weed populations subjected to high selection pressure

Morphing Schnyder drawings of planar triangulations

We consider the problem of morphing between two planar drawings of the same triangulated graph, maintaining straight-line planarity. A paper in SODA 2013 gave a morph that consists of $O(n^2)$ steps where each step is a linear morph that moves each of the $n$ vertices in a straight line at uniform speed. However, their method imitates edge contractions so the grid size of the intermediate drawings is not bounded and the morphs are not good for visualization purposes. Using Schnyder embeddings, we are able to morph in $O(n^2)$ linear morphing steps and improve the grid size to $O(n)\times O(n)$ for a significant class of drawings of triangulations, namely the class of weighted Schnyder drawings. The morphs are visually attractive. Our method involves implementing the basic "flip" operations of Schnyder woods as linear morphs.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure