Build a supply and demand platform to provide rights and interests protection, optimize employment services, say goodbye to "street squatting jobs", and open odd job stations in many places
2024-08-08
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On July 19, job seekers looked at job information in the Shaguangping Community of Tianxingqiao Street, Shapingba District, Chongqing. On that day, the first job fair for odd jobs was held at the "Odd Job Station" of the re-employment supermarket in the Shaguangping Community. 37 companies provided 611 positions such as express delivery sorters, hand embroidery, and housekeeping services. More than 60 job seekers met with companies "face to face" to select positions. Image courtesy of Visual China
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On August 3, starting from 8 a.m., the Odd-job Station for Elderly Services in Yanshan District, Fangshan District, Beijing, welcomed a number of odd-job workers.
Walking into the station, China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporters saw various employment policy bulletin boards and manuals, as well as facilities such as air conditioners, water dispensers, and tool cabinets that can be borrowed. There are also functional areas such as negotiation areas and rest areas. One staff member answered the phone while recording the number of recruits, working hours, salary, job requirements and other information required by the employer. The other two staff members were assisting part-time workers in registering basic information in the job registration area.
This is a microcosm of my country's efforts to vigorously explore and promote the construction of the gig market, create a gig station service brand, and help new employment groups, flexible employment workers and other job seekers achieve efficient employment.
On July 21, the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese-style Modernization" was released. Among them, in terms of improving the system of safeguarding and improving people's livelihood, it is proposed to improve the employment priority policy. Improve the mechanism for promoting high-quality and full employment, improve the employment public service system, and focus on solving structural employment contradictions. Improve the employment support system for key groups such as college graduates, migrant workers, and retired soldiers, and improve the lifelong vocational skills training system. Improve the labor relations consultation and coordination mechanism and strengthen the protection of workers' rights and interests.
The odd-job station is a bridge connecting the supply and demand sides of employment. At present, all parts of the country are constantly exploring the construction of odd-job stations, taking odd-job services as the starting point, gradually improving and expanding service functions, effectively protecting the rights and interests of workers, and promoting standardized and orderly recruitment and employment. The construction of odd-job stations in various places has enabled scattered workers to change from the previous "street odd-job" mode of picking up work on the roadside in the wind and sun and relying on luck to find work, to a mode of waiting for work and receiving work in the odd-job station, making the odd-job employment channels more diverse.
Say goodbye to "squatting on the street", it is more convenient for residents to find jobs
"There is a job to replace the screens this afternoon. Do you want to do it?" At 10 a.m. on August 3, Wang Ping received a call from a staff member of the Occasional Work Station for the Elderly in Yanshan District, Fangshan District, Beijing. After confirming the employer's address and contact information, Wang Ping arrived on time in the afternoon and completed the door-to-door service. In fact, he receives two or three such calls every day.
Wang Ping, 54, used to work as a maintenance worker in a company. In February this year, he learned about the odd-job service station for the elderly in Yanshan area through fellow villagers, and came to register his information and became an odd-job worker with daily wages. "After the odd-job worker registers for the first time, the information will be automatically synchronized to the odd-job database. When we receive the employment demand, we will directly call them to inquire about their willingness, which saves more time." Zhu Yubin, deputy general manager of Beijing Jinri Dongfang Home Service Co., Ltd., which operates the station, told reporters.
It is understood that the Gig Station mainly targets flexible employment personnel and employers, providing job search and recruitment services for temporary, short-term and other non-full-time jobs.
"I think odd jobs are very suitable for me. I can earn pocket money, have freedom in time, and exercise my body." In addition to doing the maintenance work that he is good at, Wang Ping also participates in free training at the odd job station and provides home-based elderly care services such as bathing assistance.
"I earned another 500 yuan today, and the station also bought me a commercial insurance." Recently, Yin Baowei often went to the odd-job station in Huangshandian Village, Zhoukoudian Town, Fangshan District, Beijing, to help his fellow villagers in his hometown find suitable job opportunities. Due to personal reasons, he was unable to work full-time. He had just passed the welder certificate exam and learned about the odd-job station from the school WeChat group, so he signed up with his classmates. After working for a few months, he felt that the income was not bad. More importantly, the recruitment information provided by the odd-job station has been strictly screened to ensure authenticity and reliability, which made him feel more at ease and could recommend his fellow villagers to come.
In fact, in order to break down the barriers to employment information exchange, the Gig Station does not only rely on job seekers to register their information, but also collects employment needs in all aspects.
The Love Station for Odd Jobs in Youxian District, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province has been in operation for more than two years. Starting from 6 o'clock every morning, odd workers will come here to find work or wait for work, and there has almost never been an interruption.
In addition to helping job seekers register, the station staff also visited employers such as construction, housekeeping, and catering to collect demand information based on the direction and characteristics of part-time employment in the jurisdiction, attracting 1,761 employers to the station to register their employment information.
The Yanji Community Odd-job Station in the Linkong Economic Zone of Ezhou City, Hubei Province is based at the Yanji Community Service Center. Before taking over the work at the Odd-job Station, staff member Zhou Yumeng was in charge of employment in the community. As she often visits households to register residents' information, she has a better understanding of the employment situation of residents in the area.
She found that those who come to the odd-job stations to find jobs are roughly divided into unemployed people and unemployed people, such as mothers, retired but younger elderly people, etc. Therefore, many people do not have the skills required for the job. Therefore, odd-job stations in various places closely follow the employment needs of industrial development in their jurisdictions, and have carried out skills training to increase the "bargaining chips" for odd-job workers.
The Gig Station in Youxian District, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province guides designated training institutions to settle in the Gig Station, allowing interested gig workers to participate in special skill training such as rice noodle making, welding, and electrician work to improve their employability; the Yanji Community Gig Station in the Airside Economic Zone of Ezhou City, Hubei Province provides residents with employment training in baking, employment and entrepreneurship, housekeeping, and express sorting; the Yanshan District Gig Station for Elderly Services in Fangshan District, Beijing provides gig workers with training in supporting services for the home-based elderly such as childcare, dining, and cleaning.
In addition to regularly matching gig workers' personal employment abilities and intentions with corporate employment needs, the Yanji Community Gig Station in Ezhou Airport Economic Zone also regularly organizes offline gig interviews to recommend job information to workers willing to do odd jobs and provide qualified gig workers to employers and units with short-term and temporary employment needs.
In addition to offline job fairs, job seekers who come to the Part-time Job Love Station in Youxian District, Mianyang City can also join WeChat groups online, scan mini-programs, and other methods to get recruitment information first.
The construction of a gig station will benefit not only job seekers but also employers.
In recent days, Fang Kuiming, manager of Beijing Century Fangming Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd., has been recruiting about five oil workers, welders, electricians, carpenters and other technical workers from the Odd-job Station for the Elderly in Yanshan District, Fangshan District, Beijing every day. "In the past, it was a headache for the company to have urgent labor needs. There were not many recruitment channels, low efficiency and slow progress. Since we started cooperating with the Odd-job Station, recruiting has been significantly faster."
Where gig workers gather, there is the post station
Tong Yaqin retired in June this year, and had been working as a domestic worker before. She was in good health and did not want to be idle, so she registered at the Odd-job Station for Elderly Services in Yanshan District, Fangshan District, Beijing, and received work orders every day. The most common orders she received were for home-based elderly care services such as childcare, meal assistance, cleaning assistance, walking assistance, and accompanying the elderly.
Yanshan District is the home of the old state-owned enterprise Yanshan Petrochemical. According to the relevant person in charge of the Employment Promotion Section of the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Fangshan District, the aging rate here has reached 37.06%, and elderly care has become an important social issue. At the same time, most of the elderly in the area are retired employees of the enterprise.
In areas like this where the "acquaintance society" is more obvious, at the beginning of this year, the Fangshan District Human Resources and Social Security Bureau guided the construction of the Yanshan District's odd-job service station for the elderly, combining the odd-job market with elderly care services, and providing mutual assistance in elderly care by having younger elderly people serve older elderly people, making it a model that adapts to local conditions.
Beijing Jinri Dongfang Home Service Co., Ltd., as the operator of the post station, was commissioned by four streets in Yanshan District to operate four elderly care posts. In his daily operations, the company's deputy general manager Zhu Yubin found that there are more than 20,000 elderly people aged 60-80 in Yanshan District, many of whom are in good health and willing to work.
What are the specific needs of people who live at home for the elderly? When can young elderly people go out to work? The company conducted a social survey in Yanshan area and selected 2,000 people from more than 20,000 elderly people for a questionnaire survey. "Which service do you think you need most in the 'Xianglao Home Nursing Home'?" "Are you willing to return to work and continue to make use of your remaining energy?" ... 80 questions not only found out the family needs of the elderly, but also grasped their willingness to participate in the silver economy.
On one side are the elderly who have various daily needs for home care, and on the other side are the "active elderly" who are willing to work. The Yanshan area elderly service odd-job station connects the two sides and radiates services to 10,443 elderly people at home in 11 communities in Yanshan. While solving the elderly care problems of the elderly, it also allows the "active elderly" to have jobs and income.
"The post station should be built wherever part-time workers gather." Tao Xiaolin, deputy chief of the Employment Promotion Section of the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Mianyang City, said that part-time workers in Liuli Village, Youxian District, began to gather spontaneously in 2011, and the number has increased year by year. By 2017, a roadside job market for part-time workers in Liuli Village had been formed, with the number of people gathering at peak times reaching about 600. Liuli Village is a major traffic artery with many vehicles passing through. The large number of people gathering not only causes traffic congestion, but also poses a major safety hazard.
"We should create an exclusive area to guide and concentrate these odd jobs more effectively." Tao Xiaolin said that in 2022, Mianyang City built the first odd-job station in the province, the Youxian District Odd-job Love Station, to provide workers with employment guidance, rest and rest, conflict mediation and other services. The station covers an area of more than 700 square meters and can accommodate more than 500 odd workers at the same time. Since the station was put into operation on February 16, 2022, it has served more than 54,000 workers in total.
Yanji Community is a centralized resettlement community for the Huahu Airport construction project in Ezhou City, Hubei Province. It mainly resettles the people relocated from eight villages and groups, including the airport core area and the Huama Lake water system management project. Most of the residents in the community are landless farmers, and many residents can do crafts such as plastering, bricklaying, and carpentry. In addition, due to the construction of Huahu Airport, the demand for labor in the area has also increased.
In light of the characteristics of this region, in December 2021, the Yanji Community Gig Station was deeply linked with the Yanji Community, embedding gig services into the community, extending services to the grassroots, actively connecting with the labor needs of the Huahu Airport construction, and helping community residents to reasonably match gig jobs.
According to incomplete statistics, as of now, 24 provinces, cities and autonomous regions including Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Hebei, Henan, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Shandong, Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi and Shaanxi have incorporated gig economy stations into the construction of the public employment service system, helping to improve the quality and efficiency of employment services.
It is both a physical space and an equity space
During the interview, the reporter found that in addition to the employment information release area and recruitment activity area, most of the odd job stations also have rest areas equipped with rest chairs, water dispensers, mobile phone charging devices, bookshelves, refrigerators and other facilities. These odd job stations allow flexible workers to drink water when they are thirsty, cool down when they are hot, warm up when they are cold, and rest when they are tired, making job hunting more "warm".
The gig station not only provides a physical space for "street gig workers" to shelter from the wind and rain and rest, but also a rights and interests space, striving to ensure the labor rights and interests of flexible employment personnel.
The Leisure Workers Love Station in Youxian District, Mianyang City, has set up a joint mediation center for the protection of the rights of workers in new employment forms, providing a one-stop service of policy consultation, legal aid, supervision and law enforcement, dispute mediation, and itinerant arbitration for all workers, including those in new employment forms. So far, the center has successfully mediated 34 labor and personnel disputes and recovered 18,780 yuan in unpaid wages.
Ren Fengjiao, general manager of the post station, remembers that on November 4, 2023, a 66-year-old man came to ask for help. He was owed wages by the employer and had failed to get them back after several requests. After checking his WeChat chat records and other evidence, Ren Fengjiao and the staff contacted the employer to recover the money, and successfully recovered 1,216 yuan four days later.
The Yanji Community Odd-job Station in Ezhou City also provides labor rights protection services for workers. On the one hand, it regularly visits employed people to learn in detail whether the work content, working hours, salary and benefits of the companies they work for are consistent with those at the time of recruitment; on the other hand, it promptly handles labor-capital disputes and successfully resolves 6 disputes by inviting public interest lawyers, community police and other forces to coordinate and intervene in a timely manner.
In March this year, Mr. Li, a part-time worker, reported to the part-time worker station that a project site outsourcing company owed him two months' salary. After finding out the situation, Zhou Yumeng and other staff members jointly intervened with the village lawyer and the district labor inspection department. After organizing three mediation meetings, the outsourcing company finally promised to give priority to paying the wages of part-time workers.
The construction of gig work stations has moved "street gig workers" from under overpasses and on the side of the road to regular buildings. Along with the "displacement" of location, the connotation of "gig work" itself is also changing.
According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 200 million people in flexible employment in my country. Among them, there is a clear distinction between "new" and "old". In addition to "migrant workers", there is also a large number of people in new employment forms, such as photo retouchers, data engineers, and online anchors. This group of people is growing rapidly.
Therefore, for gig stations, it is obviously more important to achieve compatibility between the "new" and the "old" and to protect and support flexible employment space.
So far, Mianyang City has built 10 odd-job stations, covering all counties and cities, and has achieved flexible employment for 146,000 people. "Next, we will further optimize services, pay special attention to youth preferences on the basis of collecting traditional jobs, and actively expand job information in emerging industries such as express delivery and logistics to meet the diversified employment needs of the people." Tao Xiaolin said that the audience of odd-job stations will be extended to new employment groups, achieving full coverage of employment services from "odd jobs" to "flexible employment personnel".
China Youth Daily·China Youth Network Intern Reporter Chen Xiao Reporter Xu Ge
(Source: China Youth Daily)
