How much do vocational school students know about employment traps when school intermediaries jointly dig holes?

Attention should be paid to the employment disorder of vocational school students

China Newsweek reporter/Zhou Qunfeng

Published on the 1112 issue of China Newsweek magazine on October 16, 2023

Hunan Changde Haicheng Vocational School cooperated with a labor agency in Shenzhen and introduced many graduates to the Philippines to work as "customer service and clerks". After they went there, they found that their job was actually to contact some gamblers (mainly from within China) to place bets on the gambling platform. After returning to China, they were arrested one after another on suspicion of opening a casino.

When interviewed, many graduates did not deny that their work violated the law. Nevertheless, in this event, these graduates still have many things to sympathize with. They graduated as young adults, inexperienced in the world, and lacking social experience. The reason why they went abroad to work is also directly related to the endorsement and recommendation of the school. After the public opinion ferments, the school's response of "ignorance" is obviously not convincing.

Several cases show that in the current employment market of some vocational school students in China, an interest chain consisting of employers, labor agencies, schools and graduates has formed from top to bottom. Employers have obtained cheap labor, and labor agencies and schools have received "referral fees". Only graduates at the end of the chain are the most vulnerable, and their interests are difficult to be protected.

When operating this topic, in addition to contacting graduates and finding information from internal personnel of the school, in order to understand the "profit model" of such intermediary companies, I also made secret visits to several intermediary companies as the head of the employment office of a vocational school. What impressed me most was that the insiders of these intermediaries said that when they introduced jobs to students, they did not value whether the students' majors were compatible. What they valued was how much the intermediary and the school could get from the employers after the students entered the factory. An intermediary company told me that "this kind of cooperation (business) with the school is profitable".

In order to circumvent the law, they also have many countermeasures. For example, according to the national regulations, schools cannot profit from interns, so intermediary companies will pay introduction fees to the school account in the name of subsidizing students, or privately directly to school leaders. The school cannot directly sign a contract with an intermediary. Some intermediary companies have set up a "education company" to sign a contract with the school in the name of the company.

Some experts said that in recent years, such labor agencies have sprung up like mushrooms. In order to avoid liability, some intermediaries often cancel their companies and change their waistcoats within three or five years or less of their establishment. In this case, the intermediary company in Shenzhen was cancelled after three years of establishment, and now no one has answered its phone.

At present, the main person in charge of the school has been detained, and Changde police are investigating relevant violations of the school. In this case, once the illegal acts of the school and the intermediary company are verified, they will also be punished by law.

The Regulations on the Administration of Student Internship in Vocational Colleges clearly stipulates that the school shall not organize, arrange and manage student internships through intermediaries or paid agents, but such chaos still exists today, so it is necessary to cut off the chain of interests of illegal labor intermediaries and vocational schools.

China Newsweek, Issue 38, 2023

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