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- Human Resources and Payroll in China 2016-2017 (5th Edition)
The part-time worker has five characteristics:
• The employee may not work for more than four hours per day on average.
• No probation period is allowed, and either the employer or employee may end the agreement
at any time.
• The employee is not entitled to severance compensation.
• The employee must be paid at least every 15 days.
• Part-time employees need not receive a written contract.
Part-time work could be appropriate for an office cleaner, or some other role where the tasks can
be completed within a relatively short period of time each day.
2. Non-fixed Term Contract
There are four ways for an employee to obtain a non-fixed term contract.
• The employer and employee sign a non-fixed termcontract upon commencement of employment
(not recommended).
• The employer has failed to give a written contract to an employee who has been working for
over one year.
• The employer wants to renew the employee’s contract for a second time.
• The employee has worked for the same employer for ten years continuously.
The non-fixed term contract effectively guarantees the employee job security until retirement age.
As there is no longer a contractual limit to the length of employment, companies will be unable to
dismiss the employee without a valid reason.
This means employers can only terminate the employee based on the grounds listed for immediate
dismissal, dismissal with 30 days’notice, or as part of a mass lay-off. During a mass lay-off, employees
on non-fixed term contracts must be prioritized over other employees.
3. Job Contract
A job contract is defined by the task or project the employee is to work on, not the length of time.
This type of contract allows a company to hire a person to implement a specific project. Once the
project is completed, the employment relationship comes to an end. At that stage, the company
needs tomake a severance payment to the employee according to Article 22 of the Implementation
Regulations of the PRC Labor Contract Law.
Job contracts are sometimes used for seasonal jobs where the scope of work can be defined very
clearly. However, in most cases, defining the scope of work proves to be a challenge. It is often hard
to adequately define the completion of a project. The relevant legal framework offers no guidance
on what to do when a project is left uncompleted for whatever reason, or how employees should
be compensated in such a case.