Identification Of Labor Relation In Construction Industry

Since reform and opening up, the construction industry develops rapidly and becomes the pillar industry of Chinese national economy. Construction industry, as a labor-intensive industry, because of its low technical requirements, poor working conditions and high risk, has attracted a large number of builders on a low literacy level, doing manual work, most of which are migrant workers, working at the forefront of the construction and bearing heavy construction tasks. However, for a long term, the phenomenon of infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of builders remain incessant, and the arrears of migrant workers' wage and work-related injury insurance for migrant workers have always been the difficulty in this field, because of the lack of regulated employment management and the imperfection of related regulations in the construction field. Contracting contract, multi-level contracting contract, sub-contract, and affiliated business models have been widely adopted in construction industry. Builders are at the final section of the business links. No matter which link goes wrong, at last it is the builders at the very bottom will suffer most. Meanwhile, such special employment model, leads to the identification of labor relations in the construction industry in a suspended state in many circumstances.Recently, regarding identifying labor relations in the construction industry, there are two viewpoints in the theoretical and judicial practice field. One view is that, from a perspective of giving and actual receiving in labor relations, combined with the principle of tilt protection, a labor relationship exists between the builders and the employers with qualification of employment. Another view, based on the current Labor Law, the Labor Contract Law, etc., as well as the dependency theory, holds that the actual builder(e.g. The labor contractor) has an employment relationship with the recruited builder, while has no labor relationship with the employers with qualification of employment. The current laws and regulations explicitly prohibit illegal contracting contract, sub-contract, and prohibit the labor contractor recruiting builders personally, although which remain incessant. In my opinion, one reason is that it can help evade the labor law liability, on the other hand, by this way the labor's costs especially the contractor and the employer's costs can be greatly reduced. Within the construction industry, many labor contractor teams without corresponding qualifications enter the construction site by illegal ways such as sub-contract, etc, which will lead to the hidden trouble about the right protection of construction builders. If we turn a deaf ear to these problems, not only the healthy development of construction industry in our country would be influenced, but also the harmonious society. Therefore, it is a realistic and urgent task to study on the identification of labor relations in construction industry.The article is structured as follows:In the introductory part of the article, author emphasizes on the significance of Construction industry labor relations identified in both theory and practice.The first part, in the perspective of historical changes in the construction industry employment system, the author emphasizes the path of the construction industry labor relations as well as the current state, including: the labor contract system of the initial stage labor, labor base and base management of the development stage, labor subcontracting companies of the solid stage. It also describes the current situation in the construction industry, serious wage arrears problem, low signing rate of labor, workers' compensation tough, low rate of social security contributions; and points out the necessity of research on the construction industry labor relations identified.The second part discusses the status quo of labor relations in the construction industry. The author first describes the status quo of labor relations and then the legal analysis of construction industry labor relations. The author describes the existing legislation and academics viewpoint and points out the contradiction of labor relations where identified, at the same time revealing the particularity identified.The third part, on the basis of the second part, elaborates the hinder of the construction industry labor relations identified, including loss of value concept, path dependence in the change of employment system, legislative ambiguity and low effectiveness, identification of a single standard.The fourth part,on the basis of the third part, focuses on how to improve the construction industry labor relations identified. First discusses the value of construction industry labor relations identified, including multi-tilt protection and the balance of interests and of promoting the development of construction industry employment system; Then points out how the identification of labor relations in the construction industry should get rid of the existing path barriers; then recommends to make legislative provisions clearer and improve legislative effect level in the construction industry labor relation identified. Finally, the author points out to build flexible standard to identify labor relation in the construction industry.