Exploiting Chinese Interns As Unprotected Industrial Labor

Abstract

Multi-nationals with employees and contractors in the PRC confront the need to comply with an increasingly complex set of Chinese labor and employment laws and regulations. Many employers have chosen to rely on student interns, whom they treat as exempt from labor and employment law requirements, as a major source of workers for their factories and other facilities. Paid less than regular workers, but performing the same work with little to no educational enhancements, these “subminimum workers” are now a major source of industrial disruption. They have in recent years taken grievances about their treatment to the street, acting often as catalysts for strikes and disruptions in industry. In this article, we review the status of industrial interns under the 2008 Labor Contract Law, and related statutes and regulations, with an aim to examining whether the “intern” exemption from labor and employment law has any basis in the statutory and regulatory framework of current labor law, and whether it is a sound industrial practice to rely on large numbers of “subminimum” workers laboring alongside higher paid workers performing the same work in factories and other facilities, or in the service sector. We conclude that the “intern exemption” has little basis in the law, and is at odds with the policy of the 2008 labor and employment law reforms’ goal of protecting rights and promoting peaceful resolution of industrial disputes without strikes and slowdowns. We also explore whether, in those many factual situations where important credentials are contingent on completing the internship and intense pressure is exerted on students to sign up to meet employers’ “manpower” need, the practice amounts to forced labor under the ILO Conventions and other international law instruments.