Abstract: To protect employers’legal rights and interests is one of the statutory responsibilities of the trade unions. With the continuous increase of labor wages, the status of employers and employees has changed, and the employees’willingness to make decisions at work has been gradually promoted. Therefore, the maladjustment between the existing labor rights protection system and social development has gradually become more apparent. In the modern corporate governance, trade unions have great impact on the formation of a healthy and orderly labor relations. The report of the 19th CPC National Congress clearly proposed that“we should improve the consultation and coordination mechanism involving the participation of government, trade unions and enterprises, and establish a harmonious labor relationship”. At present, the academia pays more attention to the effectiveness of trade unions’ own rights protection. However, in the new era, the transformation of trade unions in China should be explored from the fundamental perspective of its position and function. This article conducts empirical tests on multiple aspects of the present situation of how trade unions protect employees’labor rights based on China Employer-employee Survey(CEES). The results show that trade unions have significantly positive impacts on promoting the protection of employers’right to be employed, right to obtain renumeration, and right to receive vocational training. However, trade unions do little to promote the protection of the right to relax and the right to enjoy social insurance. Therefore, based on the theory of opportunity cost, this article concludes that the reason for this is that there is no clear boundaries among the trade unions’obligations, so that the passive rights of employees’for free choices are intruded, which causes the dilemma of employees’“unintentional rest”and“non-optimal investment”. It is suggested that trade unions assertion of employees’rights should aim at realizing the positive labor rights, and should also respect the negative labor rights. In other words, trade unions should put emphasis on the“realization of labor rights”, but at the same time get rid of“over-protection”.
Key Words: trade unions; labor rights; employees’passive rights; respect for obligations; opportunity cost