What We Do

A major focus of China Labour Bulletin’s work is in the peaceful and beneficial resolution of labour disputes, which have increased rapidly in scale and number over the last decade. In 2003, CLB established a Labour Rights Litigation Program, in which we identify cases of labour rights abuse, provide legal advice and support to the workers concerned, and help them seek justice through the court system. In order to facilitate this program, we have established wide-ranging cooperative links with law firms, labour rights groups and individual lawyers across China.

However, legal redress is often a means of last resort, and usually only helps individual workers once they have already lost their job. In order to defend the collective rights and interests of workers whilst they are still employed, CLB advocates and promotes the use of collective bargaining between labour and management. By establishing a direct line of communication between democratically-elected workers’ representatives and management, grievances can be aired and disputes resolved before they escalate into strikes and protests.

In order to further promote workers’ rights as well as raise international awareness and understanding, CLB has produced an extensive series of Chinese language and English language research reports that provide an in-depth analysis and overview of some of the most important labour rights issues in China today. The reports will be of particular use to scholars, researchers, policy makers and journalists but are written with the general readership in mind. In addition, we have created a resource centre designed to give readers new to China with a general, fact-based, introduction to key topics such as: migrant workers, the reform of state-owned enterprises, wages, unemployment, work-related injuries and compensation, and the labour dispute resolution system. The resource centre separately includes a wide range of regularly updated comparative statistics.

CLB publishes all of Han Dongfang’s Radio Free Asia interviews with workers in China, and summarizes many of them in English. We web-publish numerous commentaries, features and news items, and issue bulletins and a digest of articles from the website to our subscribers in China and around the world. In addition, we have three blogs and a regular podcast, all of which can be subscribed to on RSS. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

CLB is widely recognized as reliable source of expert opinion on Chinese labour issues, and is regularly quoted at length by international and domestic Chinese media organizations.


	Will the New Year see a resumption of collective bargaining in China?
	As the Chinese economy recovers, an influential magazine calls on the government and trade unions to take concerted measures to alleviate the growing conflict between workers and management. Photo. Onekel


	County government squeezes out community teachers
	Two community teachers from Jianchang county in Liaoning, both fired by the local government in 2007, talk about their attempts to seek redress and the corrupt and underhand activities of local officials.


	Going it alone: a report on the state of the workers' movement in China
	CLB looks at how the workers’ movement in China has developed over the last two years, how the government has responded to it, and why the official trade union has been unable to play a positive role in it. Photo by Saad Akhtar


	Job seeker successfully sues hospital for violation of right to privacy
	A 25 year-old university graduate with Hepatitis B has, for the first time in China, successfully sued a hospital for violating his right to privacy after it gave the results of his blood test to a prospective employer.