Negotiation System in China Workplace

 Negotiation System in China Workplace

With the development of Chinese economy, more and more workplace conflicts happen nowadays. And not like many developing countries, the legal framework  has not been well settled in China. Since the labor union came back to China only after 1980s. It is important for the managers to set a inside negotiation system to solve these conflicts as soon as possible.

When disputes occur, the first step for managers is to understand the appealing of workers and correctly complete the spokesmen identification. In most situations, the workers may fire the dispute together, but different individuals would have different needs and bottom lines. So it is important to identify the spokesmen and start negotiation based on unified demands of workers.

There may be two scenarios. In the first scenario, a natural leader has already been there as the representative of workers. The managers need to find out whether this representative has the ability to speak for all the workers and what is the true motivation of the representative. Sometimes the natural leader actually does not have enough understanding of the demands of workers and lack of leadership skills to make sure they could formulate unified demands thus will negatively affect the following negotiation process. And it would also be possible that the representative has some personal motivation that would be an obstacle in achieving the solution.

For the second scenario, when there is not a recognized representative, the managers need to urge the workers to choose a representative by their own and only after that the negotiation would be started. Honest communication needs to be conducted to help the workers to understand the importance to have representatives and the effectiveness that would bring to the following negotiation. It would emphasize the honesty of employers to employees. Also the single voice would help to keep a highly organized and effective negotiation.

The company also needs to designate the representative team to have a clear division of responsibility and labor.

After the teams have been confirmed, the two-side negotiation could start. Since the effectiveness is crucial for the company side, the managers should help the workers to list their demands, expectation solution and determine the priorities. The managers need to guide them skillfully to identify the real demands and issues behind the simple direct reasons that caused the disputes. Also with the priority setting, these would help the managers to manage the satisfaction level of workers during the negotiation process. Detailed meeting notes should be kept in case the negotiation failed and legal investigation will have to be conducted to solve the problem.

If the final agreement could not be achieved in the two-side negotiation, the managers need to consider introducing mediation. It needs to be noticed that the introducing of mediation should be based on the agreement of both sides.

Most developing countries have built mechanism to conduct the mediation when the disputes could not be solved by simple two-side negotiation. In China, although the government also has required chapters of the ACFTU to be established in all enterprises, the fact is that the labor union and the workers not always hold the entirely same position. The union is in fact not independent from the government. And under many circumstances, the government has the motivation to keep the peace, stop the protest and protect the interests of the company. It has been more and more common that the workers act bypass the union and not well accept the union as a trustful third party to conduct the mediation.