UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal

Today, multinational and domestic corporations in many industries are no longer self-contained vertical structures with permanent staff, but increasingly are horizontal organizations with fissured employment characteristics using outsourcing, franchising, and subcontracting with contractors and chains of subcontractors. Too often, the workers of the subcontractors suffer the consequences of the subcontractors’ cost cutting measures, work in unfavorable conditions, and have low wages and few benefits, all for the purpose of serving the interests and profitability of the primary corporation.

This paper therefore focuses on domestic laws that provide workers with an additional avenue of remedy from an expanded employment relationship—a doctrine of joint employer liability that places obligations “up the chain” on the in-country originating contractor who benefits from the supply chain or operates it for the benefit of the offshore multinational corporation. Some form of this doctrine is already used to provide workers with wage remedies against Chinese construction companies and to provide dispatch workers wage and “employee” benefit remedies. Given China’s extensive role in multinational supply chains, this paper examines the doctrine of joint employer liability up the chain and evaluates whether it can be expanded in China to remedy labor law violations and protect workers in the labor supply chains.