Paid vacations can fix 'golden mess'

Since employees have little power to negotiate with the employers, the government needs to intervene to safeguard their legal rights. The central government needs to set specific goals for the popularizing of paid leave throughout the country in the work plan laid out by the State Council at the beginning of each year. Then governments at all levels will follow suit and include these goals into the performance evaluation of local officials, much like how GDP affects the promotion of local government officials.

Moreover, government officials, particularly national leaders, have to set an example by starting to take regular paid vacation themselves. Government and Party organs and State-owned enterprises that refuse to offer paid leave must pay their employees three times the normal salary.

Class action is recommended as the way for employees to pursue their rights should a dispute arise over paid vacation. The biggest advantage of class action is that only the chief plaintiff has to be directly involved throughout the legal process. Other employees, if they don't voice their opposition to the lawsuit, are automatically regarded as members of the plaintiff group. Once the indemnities have been decided by the court, each plaintiff will get his or her own share of the compensation. Class action will greatly reduce the complexity of lawsuits related to paid vacation as the lawyers only have to communicate with the chief plaintiff.

Another advantage of class action is that the lawyer can only charge the plaintiffs by winning the case. The fees entailed by the lawsuit are paid in advance by the chief plaintiff. Since the compensation paid for successful class action is usually quite large, lawyers will be willing to accept such cases though they are not paid immediately.

Lastly, the right to paid vacation should be written into the Labor Contract Law so that it will appear as a clear-cut independent term in the labor contracts. Once it is put down in words, the right to paid vacation cannot be easily dismissed by the employers.

The author is the director of the center for political economy at Tshinghua University.