Culture Quiz 257the week, making subtle threats that if you don’t nominate
a labour union representative, they have the right to insert
their own person into your company as the labour union
representative. You respond by:
Refusing to assign a labour union representative and thank
them for their time.
Ask them to provide you a written copy of the regulations
and give you two weeks to explain this to your headquarters
so that you can properly comply with the support of your
head office.
Call in your HR person and ask them to handle the situation.
Tell them you will get back to them in a week with the
name of the appropriate person.
Comments
Government agencies often act as bullies in China, using
scare tactics to gain your cooperation. Oftentimes, they take
the local interpretation of a provincial or national charter and
implement it without understanding intent or outcome. They
may be under direction to test a regulation in advance of it
being implemented in order to determine whether there will
be easy compliance. The best response to this situation is .
You should create enough time and collect enough facts to
allow you to do full due diligence, before responding to the
directive. Two weeks would allow you enough time to check
with your industry association, your attorney, the commercial
section of your consulate, your chamber of commerce and
competitors to understand the real requirements and how
they are being translated. In this instance, it so happens
that the regulation had not been passed and was only being
tested. The government official in question was trying to
win kudos with his boss by signing up multi-nationals in his
district in advance of implementation. He had no ability to
enforce the threats he was making.
SITUATION 8
You had a big Friday night out with guests in town from
overseas and had intended a lovely sleep in on Saturday