The labor dispute arbitration committee in Pudong New Area has appointed 10 part-time arbitrators to help solve disputes - the first setup of its kind in the city.

Coming from different enterprises, most of the arbitrators are lawyers and law scholars or counselors and all have obtained qualification certificates in arbitration.

Working as part-time arbitrators in the committee, they would be responsible for no fewer than 56 cases every year. They will handle labor disputes independently.

According to Zhang Huacheng, director of the committee, the hiring of the part-time arbitrators aims to alleviate the pressure of an increasing number of labor disputes filed by employees.

There were a total of 1,498 labor disputes handled by the committee during the first quarter of this year, an increase of 156.95 percent compared to the same period last year.

The number of arbitration requests filed by employees to the committee had reached 2,011 by the end of April this year, most of which involved wage and employers failing to sign labor contracts with workers.

However, the committee faced a shortage of arbitrators. According to Zhang, there are only eight full-time arbitrators in the committee.

"Every arbitrator should handle 62 labor disputes every month, exceeding the standard of labor department which stipulates that each arbitrator in labor dispute committees generally deal with 50 cases every year," Zhang said.

"As a result, every arbitrator in our committee had to open at least three courts in session every day," he said.

Zhang said the newly appointed part-time arbitrators would play an important role in solving disputes.

"Most of them are professionals who are now lawyers or law advisers in enterprises, so it's no problem for them to handle the cases involving labor contract disputes independently," he said.

Ma Wanli, the director of a personnel department in an enterprise in Pudong New Area, is one of the 10 part-time arbitrators.

"Ma already began to open court sessions last week," Zhang said.

According to the committee, the full-time arbitrators will still play the most important role and they will also encourage people with disputes to use mediation.