If a person were denied a job opportunity because of his or her
height, gender or blood type, who would be held responsible?
Two out of three of the 73,176 people questioned in a recently
released survey said they had been discriminated against in regards
to employment.
The survey was jointly conducted by the Ministry of Labour and
Social Security and a portal called China Human Resources
Development last year.
In recruitment advertisements, discriminative prerequisites of
age, gender, height, specific location of household registration
and even blood type are often listed.
These tight requirements deprive those who may have outshined,
in their practical capability, the people who meet the conditions
of the opportunity to get a specific job.
In March 2003, university graduate Zhou Yichao took an
examination for a civil servant position in
Zhejiang Province. He passed the exams, but was turned down
because he carried the hepatitis B virus.
The enraged graduate killed an official with the local personnel
department and was given the death penalty and later executed.
In Hunan Province last year, a university graduate was refused a
civil servant position simply because he was one centimetre shorter
than the specified height.
In another case, an applicant was denied an opportunity to work
as a salesman just because he had AB blood. He was told that people
with AB blood type were not good at socializing with other people
and therefore would not make good salespeople.
In an extreme case, 10 women were forced to divorce their
husbands because their firms had a stipulation that married women
would not have any chance of renewing their labour contracts. As a
result, they had to make a choice to keep their husbands or their
jobs.
Surplus supply of labour is undoubtedly one of the major reasons
why discrimination in recruitment persists.
The vast pool of labour has made it possible for employers to
set thresholds of any kind to sift from oversupplied applicants for
the exact type of employees they want.
But some requirements they set do not justify their demands.
Unless the job itself demands a person is tall or short,
applicants' heights do not have anything to do with their ability
to be a good employee.
Whether a female is attractive or not has no bearing on her
capability as a secretary or office clerk. But this is often set as
a requirement for a job.
In a humanistic perspective, these requirements reflect a
discriminating attitude toward certain groups of people and are
often insulting.
In a judicial perspective, the criteria run counter to the
spirit of the Constitution, which stipulates that all citizens have
the right and obligation to work.
The country's Labour Law says that no citizen should be
discriminated against in employment based on their gender,
ethnicity or religion.
The law concerning the protection of handicapped people says
that the State protects the right of the disabled people to
work.
It is apparent that the specific requirements previously
mentioned go against the fundamental principle of these judicial
stipulations.
We have a goal to build a harmonious society, which must be a
civilized one. These discriminations do not belong to a civilized
society, in which everyone is supposed to be equally offered
opportunity and benefits.
Some suggest that we need a law to specify legal codes against
such specific discriminations.
We do need such a law, which could provide victims of employment
discrimination a legal weapon to protect their rights and
interests.
(China Daily February 10, 2006)