Chinese Official Proposes Law for Fleeing Bosses

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Dec. 18 – A senior government official of Guangdong Province is proposing new legislation that will make it a crime for business owners to flee without settling employees’ salaries.

Liu Youjun, deputy director of the Guangdong provincial labor and social security department, told China Daily that he will submit the proposal to the National People’s Congress  at next year’s session.

Since October, about 117 firms have already shutdown in Guangdong. In majority of the cases, the owners would flee without paying the salaries of their employees and forcing the local government to pay for the outstanding bill.

Currently, there is no law that punishes this behavior. Labor and social security departments can issue administrative punishments to business owners, such as preventing them from investing in the future, but they are not enough to stop unscrupulous operators from re-offending, Liu told China Daily.

In addition, China Daily reported that Liu Bingquan, director of Guangdong’s small and medium enterprise bureau, told NPC deputies during a visit to Guangzhou yesterday that in the first 10 months of the year, 15,661 local SMEs either closed down, suspended operations or transferred.