Labor Conditions in China

In Depth: Labor Conditions Do current labor conditions in China effect whether we should open a Chick-fil-a or not? China has faced many pros and cons when dealing with their labor conditions. Labor laws have been in effect since 1994 and have been modified many of times. January 1, 2008, The Labor Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China, established new laws abolishing the system of at-will employment for most full time employees and requires employees with written contracts. These new laws make it harder to fire workers. In the past and still happening some today, many workers are being cheated out of minimum wage and not getting paid for overtime. Even though there are labor laws to protect them from these issues, they are still being broken. Many of the workers have no idea that these laws even exist. Since Chick-fil-a is a franchised company, they have their own guidelines to follow about how the company should be operated. This being said, I believe that opening a Chick-fil-a in China is a great idea and will help to create more ethical working conditions. China is one of the biggest countries in the world. This means lots of available workers. Not only is their abundance of workers but, also an increasing amount of cheap labor. This is one of many reason we chose China to start our business. China also has a huge supply of labor, which makes finding employees easier. Even though the labor laws are different from the United States to China, we would have to change some of our guidelines to meet there standards. Some of things that we would need to change would be the wages and hours they are allotted to by the Labor Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China. Workers, which are protected under the labor laws, are guaranteed a minimum wage of at least $48 a week. “The standard workweek is 40 hours and overtime shall not exceed three hours a day or 36 hours per month (Article 41). Overtime pay should not be less than 150 percent of an employee’s