The Public Interest Litigation In Labor Standards

Fundamental labor standards can be defined: the lowest for wages, hours of work, weekly rest and paid leave, occupational safety and health and health and employment or women and children. Labor standard has a strong sense of public interest .Labor standard, which has universal effects and has something to do with the public interests, reflects the collective interest of the majority. It not only embodies the individual interest, but also manifests the public interests of the majority. By literally, fundamental labor standards can be thought as the lowest standard of labor condition or the most fundamental labor condition. In terms of theory, fundamental labor standards is related to Human rights and labor rights. In practice, fundamental labor standards also exist many problems, such as: the incompliance of lowest wages; hours of work exceed rules; paid leave can't be made sure in enterprise; malignant injury suffered on the job occur frequently and the amount of occupational disease is too high and the special interests of women workers and young workers cannot be guaranteed and so on. These damage lawful rights and profits of laborer.However, from the perspective of China's current administrative means, the lack of strength of labor inspection caused it is not a good solution to the labor standards controversy. Our present litigation cannot protect public interest except the criminal procedure law; civil procedure law and administrative litigation law provide who suffered injury in fact can be complainant. All these illustrate administration of justice cannot protect the public interest. Nowadays, there are many defects in our present litigation theory and system when used to deal with the cases of labor standard, which is harmful to completely solve the disputes of labor standard. How to reform the present legal system to meet the need of trailing the case of labor standard? This is a question of theory and practice that needs to be answered eagerly. Labor standard has a strong sense of public interest; labor standard has close relation with the interest public litigation. The author holds the view that the labor public litigation is the best legal way to solve this kind of problem. It is beneficial to fully protect all laborers'legal rights and interests; on the other hand, it can add the method of lawsuit. At the same time, there are some different in establishing the concrete systems. At first, the author suggests that the system of labor public interest litigation should clarify the scope of the case and expand the plaintiff. The trade union and the procurator departments should be empowered to exercise the right of litigation. Secondly, the author suggests that some special systems, such as the burden of expense in litigation, burden of proof in litigation and the defendant responsibility to make sure that the labor public interest litigation can undergo smoothly and protect the interests of laborers effectively.