To help millions of China's laid-off workers quickly find new jobs, a nationwide re-employment drive has recently moved into high gear.

Apart from the customary aid given to workers by re-employment centers, such as job-hunting advice, free job training and recommended job opportunities, a range of new assistance has been developed.

The helpers come from not only government departments but also mass organizations, communities and small and middle-sized businesses.

In Shanghai, preferential tax policy has been granted to businesses hiring laid-off workers aged between 40 and 50. In other areas, job subsidies have been offered to the laid-off willing to work in low-paid public positions.

To relieve increasing employment pressure and encourage people to become self-employed, special low-interest and longer-term loans are available in many regions.

As the size of China's labor force keeps rising in recent years, experts say modestly educated and single-skilled laid-off workers have become increasingly disadvantaged on the job market.

Ministry of Labor and Social Security statistics reveal that the country's registered unemployed stands around 6.8 million. However, many laid-off workers are not included in the unemployed. Besides, there are 150 million redundant rural laborers, with 12 to 13 million people entering the job market every year.

Between January and March this year, some 220,000 laid-off workers got jobs again, but 4.899 million became redundant from state-owned enterprises in the same period.

Wang Dongjin, vice-minister of labor and social security, said that laid-off workers, constrained by their education and skills, find it hard to get new jobs.

At ages between 35 and 50, the laid-off workers have to support both their parents and children, a number of households can not even make ends meet, he said.

Given that progress in re-employment has a direct bearing on the country's industrial restructuring and economic reform, a nationwide job assistance campaign is sweeping China.

Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo said at a recent labor conference that China would strive to re-employ laid-off workers within three years and the aim of job assistance should go beyond the previous basic livelihood guarantee to make sure each worker was soon qualified for the competitive job market of the future.

To achieve the objective, a package of policies has been worked out by relevant departments such as the State Administration of Taxation, State Administration for Industry and Commerce, People's Bank of China, State Development Planning Commission and Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

Local governments have also resorted to various means and incentives to explore job openings suitable for laid-off workers.

In Nanchang City in east China's Jiangxi Province, job-hunting advisors dubbed as "employment doctors" by local people are widely applauded as they pep up depressed laid-off workers and bring them hope and a new start.

In Guangdong, thanks to the establishment of a special job-training fund, one million people have been re-employed during the past three years. In Dalian, some 13,000 job openings have been offered by 3,600 private enterprises.

Wang Chunguang, a sociologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said job assistance is more than caring for the vulnerable but a duty of both government and society.

"Although laying-off is a side-effect of the country's market reform which comes together with industrial restructuring, the transition has a lingering impact on the workers' lives and their children's future," Wang said.

In China, the term laid-off workers refers to those who have been declared redundant but still remain legally employed as their employment contracts with unprofitable businesses are still valid.

With the development of China's social welfare system, especially unemployment insurance, all those nominal employment contracts will be abolished in the end and laid-off workers will have to compete on job market as plain jobless.

As a result, re-employment centers for laid-off workers established by large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises responsible for their redundant workers will be closed gradually.

In the planned economy, every state-owned enterprise pursued a policy of "low pay and high welfare". Workers tended to work all their lives in just one enterprise that granted them pension, medical care and insurance even after retirement.

But after the reform of state-owned enterprises beginning the late 1990s, no company provides welfare from the cradle to the grave or hires employees for life any longer.

However, just as the reform takes time to work, laid-off workers need time to adapt to the new environment.

Zhang Ying, an official with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, said that despite the difficult task of finding work for all those laid off, the country should not regard them as a nuisance.

From 1998 to 2001, a total of 25.5 million people were laid off, among whom 16.8 million were re-employed.

"If China's current job market is a pole-vaulting contest, the take-off board for laid-off workers is rather low compared with their peers'," Zhang said.

"And the aim of job assistance is to lower the height and give everyone a chance," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2002)