Business As Usual in China

Two days ago, I dealt a little humorously with the issue of discrimination.

But joking aside, according to the China Daily, discrimination is keenly felt by young workers in China. Specifically, they cite appearance, height, gender and marital status as the biggest issues or ëdiscriminative categoriesí.

The study says that about 85 percent of the 3,424 respondents said discrimination in work and employment did exist. More importantly, 58 percent thought the problem to be severe. The study covered the whole of China but only 10 major cities, so the validity is a little suspect. Just a little.

The funniest example given was Beijing resident Zhang Meng, who had more than 10 yearsí driving experience, failed to get a job because his prospective employers considered his name to be ìunluckyî. ìMengî, they said, literally means ìrushî in Chinese, which made him more accident prone than others. Not very funny for Zhang Meng however.

The current Labor Law does cover job discrimination but it is so vague as to be useless. It says that workers cannot be discriminated against, regardless of their ethnicity, race, sex, or religious beliefs. But it doesnít specify what this means. The new Labor Law could deal with this area and the indicators are that it will.

The article says that ëEmployersí discriminate against people for a variety of reasons but my immediate reaction to that is that ëEmployersí is just shorthand for people. It is people who are the repositories of discriminatory attitudes, not companies. It is people who assess workers and find them lacking, not companies. It is people who make erroneous decisions.

According to the study, people discriminate against other people in China because they come from an area where people are seen to be lazy and while there is some truth in this, it is obviously an easy way for a lazy person to make a decisioin about someone else. Itís an easy way to rule them out and not offer them a job.

Simple, and stupid of course. Assessing them properly would take time and effort, and thatís not everyoneís first choice.

Email: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com