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Labor scams

Today is World’s Consumer Rights Day, and because of that the Shanghai Labor and Social Security published a list of the top-10 most common employment scams. Some could have happened in Europe as well, such as that the job is very different from the job description that was advertised. But others you would not often encounter there, a few examples:

– If you want to get a job at a certain company, you first need to do a paid training course. The company, or at least the recruiter, earns money from this.

– You have to submit a sample of your design work when applying for a job. These works are often used commercially, even if the applicant was not offered a job.

– When applying for a sales job, you have to buy the products that you need to sell. I remember a story where it turned out that the price is much higher than the real market price, and the sales jobs were actually fake.

– Everybody is fired right after the probation period, because workers in China earn less during the first months on the job. Of course you can get re-hired, but only at the lower probation period salary.

The main problem is that there are too many people looking for jobs in this city, and therefore there is a lot of competition to get a job. Each year there is a huge amount of university graduates that cannot find jobs and there is a steady flow of migrant workers arriving in the city. Often these groups are quite naive. Migrant workers because they are new in a big city, and students because they have not encountered the problems of real life yet. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs know that these groups easily fall for these traps, and use it to earn money.

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  1. Hi Marc,
    I just read your new post. Funny, I also just published an article from CCTV concerning the consumers right. And fyi: I am linking to your blog since this morning.

  2. Hi Suzie, thanks for you link! I also read about the KFC food scandal, I would not be surprised if it is true. On the other hand, competition in China is often so fierce, that competitors do not mind spreading false rumours (Tudou also had some experience with this).

  3. Why would the multinationals not complain? I think with Nestle it was the false expire date of milk. But I am not sure. It is a while a go, maybe end of 2005.
    Oh, and thanks that you do not mind that my Beijing Notebook is linking to you 🙂

  4. China’s economy has been developed too intensively, in terms of location, resources or industry…this results the problems clustering very quickly as well…I dunno what if China could solve all the problems its people are complainning or confused about…I think it takes both–the people and the goverment, together find a way they could feel settled…untill then, I’m wondering how the West would look at/talk about China tho…would there be a lot of critics or applauses? or just no words…

    so…the point is continuing the complaints but take one step up–how to solve them…I guess only Chinese could take this tasks then…but if Western people have the mindset to seek for mutual benefits from the risking of China, they could also be a part of this new culture revolution process…