The Standards Of Identification For Working Hours

In recent years, the development of our country’s labor law theory has been relatively rapid. Especially with the enaction and implementation of Law of the Employment Contracts, Labor Law on Labor-dispute Mediation and Arbitration and other laws, the number of labor dispute cases has been increasing rapidly year by year and has reached a climax. A considerable part of the labor dispute cases involves the issues of payment for extra working hours, among which, the identification of the working hours is a primary issue that must be solved. As there are no definite regulations on working hours in our country’s law system, which makes local courts and the arbitration agencies don’t have a common standard on working hours throughout the judicial practice, it also makes the employers and laborers equally confused, which is not conducive to build a harmonious and stable labor relations in our country. In view of this, this article aims to focus on the theoratical and practical levels, carrying on the analysis and research in terms of the identification of working hours, and to form certain identification standards. I hope it can be helpful to solve this kind of issues in practice, and I also hope it can contribute to the improvement of theoretical researches to the identification of working hours in our country’s labor law.This article mainly starts an analysis about the identification of working hours from five aspects:the concept and nature of working hours, the necessity and realistic significance of the identification of working hours, the identification standards of working hours, the defects in our country’s legislation on working hours and relevant suggestions put forward on perfecting the working hours.The first part introduces the concept and nature of working hours. I have a deep analysis and induce different theories on the concepts of working hours in our country and carry on a discussion combining with the provisions in the law from other countries, coming to the conclusion that the existing theories have many defects, and they are lack of understanding of the nature of work hours. I further put forward that the dominance of laborers is the nature of working hours.The second part recounts the necessity of identifying working hours. Laboring during the working hours is the basis of getting wages, we can only safeguard laborers getting relevant wages from the employers by determining what working hours is. Once the working hours is determined, it will be helpful to reduce the occupation of the rest time for laborers by the employers, thus more conducive to ensure laborers’ right to rest. In addition, determining the working hours, to a great extent, helps to solve the problems of the industrial injury and so on, and to perfect our labor law system.The third part analyses the standards of identification for working hours. This part first has a simple introduction about several related factors influencing the identification of working hours, in combination with the existing theoretical researches on the identification of working hours in home and abroad and on the basis of judicial practice, the author puts forward that the standards of identifying working hours should be:the laborers’ activity time should conform to the purpose of the work stipulated in the labor contracts; activities workers engaged in in the activity time should be related to the production; workers in activity time should be in the charge by the employers.The fourth part holds a discussion on several existing problems in the process of legislation concerning with the field of working hours in our country, and to categorize a variety of special time that the law does not make clear and to identify them according to the standards of identification for working hours.In the fifth part, the author puts forward some relevant legislative suggestions on working hours combining the present situation in our country, hoping that laws in our country can have clear regulations on the concepts and scope of working hours. At the same time, under the condition of not harming the interests of laborers, the law should commit that proposed legal force be made between employers and laborers and it should have the inclination of protecting the rights and interests of laboring when the law is ambiguous. In addition, enterprise unions and collective contracts should play an important role.