A long march: Employment of people with disabilities in China

I attended a seminar today organised by the Inno Community Development Organisation, a NGO based in Guangzhou, on employment of people with disabilities in China. It is part of a programme funded by the British Consulate General Guangzhou and there were NGOs and media representatives at the seminar. It’s not a big scale one, and around 15 people attended the seminar (I should say it is more like a roundtable) as employment of people with disabilities is a comparatively new topics in China. The organiser tried to invite more NGOs to join but there are not many NGOs interested in the topics. Nevertheless, this is an emerging topic which causes potential social issues. According to statistics, there are around 83 million people with certain disabilities in China, in which 32 million of them are at the age of employment. However, more than 1.26 million of them are unemployed. There are lots of reasons behind, in spite of the Chinese government’s regulation on 1.5% of the total job openings of an entity should reserved for people with disabilities. One of the major reasons is the lack of enforcement on the policy for employment of disabilities, and even on anti-discrimination.

To be frank, I am not an expert on this topic but the organiser believes there is no other choice in China who can speak on what companies can do on encouraging employment of disabilities. Therefore I were there J Showing the business case of multi-national corporations on hiring people with disabilities, managing diversity and inclusion, bla-bla-bla is easy, and people tend to like to listen to those so-called business cases. However, in the Chinese setting, do these successful business case work? In China, workplace diversity is still a very very advanced topic and NGOs are still working on non-discrimination rather than encouraging companies to manage their workplace diversity like what European countries do. It may not be so realistic to talk urge Chinese companies to understand the business incentives behind before the government strengthening its enforcement on certain regulations. However, maybe NGOs in the future can persuade companies to hire more people with disabilities by using those business cases I shared today. Like what Julia, the consul of politics at the Consulate General of UK in Guangzhou, said no matter in UK and China, and no matter what kind of laws, acts and regulations are in place for encouraging employment of people with disabilities, the social attitude towards people with disabilities still determine whether their employment is successful and workplace diversity and inclusion are managed successfully by employers.

After having the seminar on the topic, Inno the NGO will work on a hotline for people with disabilities who want to look for a job and provide them free consultation. In addition a job engine for employment of people with disabilities will be launched (and I have seen that some employers have put job ad on already) so that people can upload their resumes and search suitable job opening. Inno has a quite realistic and mild target – to help 1500 people with disabilities to find a job. It will be a big step for the long march in China.


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Blog in English: brianckho.blogspot.com
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“New Citizenship”? What can be done at the supply chain in China?

I met with Dotti Hatcher, the Executive Director, P.A.C.E. Global Initiatives (http://www.gapinc.com/content/csr/html/Goals/communityinvestment/our_program_in_action/advancing_in_theworkplace.html) , Gap Inc last week in Hong Kong coz we have some involvements in their program last year. I can say Gap is one of the few brands which have started to work on such innovative programs for workers in China.

I’m rethinking in the past 1-2 years on the question whether the so-called CSR initiatives at the global supply chain are making an positive impact on the living of workers. We always see brands working on capacity building of factories, no matter on productivity, working hour, overtime, etc. But the issue is that whether workers (who are the targeted groups of beneficiary and also cause of brands being monitored) are benefited by those program. My feeling is “NO”.

I’m happy to see leading brands such as Gap to launch program such as P.A.C.E (Personal Advancement & Career Enhancement) program in China. We see Foxconn is doubling the salary of workers. But does it really help? Do we know what the workers want? When we talk to workers regularly, we found that most of those want to stay in the cities, become an urban citizen, have more sense of belongings to the city, have the kid being educated there. But they need to understand more about the culture and expectation of urban citizens before having such achievement. There are some NGOs that I know in China are promoting the concept of “New Citizenship”. I suppose to most of the non-Chinese, it is a bit weird to hear about such concept. Due to the Chinese government policy’s on urban and rural household, lots of problems such as migrant children, stay behind children and social security exist and these problems are all linked to the so called CSR at the supply chain.

Most of the migrant workers are having the rural household, and that means they cannot enjoy the social welfare as an urban citizen. But they are staying in urban area as a resident due to their job. There are always misunderstanding and even discrimination against them in the urban area due to cultural differences. They are being seen as “uncivilized” (not a good term to use…), impolite, lack of education, etc.

Although brands and factories cannot do much in terms of influencing the policy on the household, program such as PACE can provide workers alternative views on their personal life and to understand what they want to achieve in long term if they want to stay in the urban area, and also eliminate those cultural difference by telling workers what urban people are expecting from them. Rather than spending the time on internet café for online games or chit-chat through QQ, workers can have a clear idea on how their future can be. In my opinion it is also a soft approach for workers to understand their own rights (legal rights, labour rights, etc.) and then create changes in long term. And it is more acceptable for factories to implement the program as well.

Of course, there are not so many brands that are similar to Gap, and we cannot expect responsibilities of manufacturers to be taken by the brands. Demonstrating the business case of having such New Citizenship programme to the factory is very curial. Brands and NGOs can work together on such aspect. We need more successful cases on this matter, and I believe there are NGOs starting to work on that now.

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Blog in English: brianckho.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @brianckho
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APP’s charity programme boycotted by NGOs in China

APP’s charity programme boycotted by NGOs in China

Brian Ho 何智权

10 June 2012

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Greenwashing is becoming a hot topic in China, especially in the social media. Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), which is “well-known” because of being accused of deforestation of tropical rain forests and destruction of ecosystems in Indonesia, is suspected to green-wash itself by supporting charity programme in China.

Named as the APP Youth NGO Internship Programme, it was initiated and managed by a SIFE team (a well-known student organisation on social innovation) at the Shanghai International Studies University, and financially supported by the Dei Ek Tjhong Foundation (Dei Ek Tjhong is the founder and chairman of APP). The programme aims at encouraging university students to be summer interns at grassroots NGOs as to build the capacity of civil society in China. Since 2010, the programme has been running for 2 years, but people working in the NGO field didn’t recognize it until Weibo (the Chinese twitter) has become so popular now.

At Weibo, some NGOs and bloggers criticize APP is trying to green-wash itself by supporting NGOs in China but ignoring its own issues on deforestation and damaging eco-system. The criticism reached the highest level once APP is being awarded as “Excellent Case Study of Multinational Corporations on CSR” (yes, “CSR”) and “the Ten Most  Outstanding Corporate Charity Programme in China” by the China Philanthropy Times (《公益时报》) and Global Charity (《环球慈善》), a newspaper and a magazine on charity in China, respectively.

Some NGO practitioners and bloggers started to lobby those 28 NGOs, which are beginning to involve in the APP’s programme, to stop all-kind of cooperation with the company through weibo, email and phone. In 5 days time, among 28 NGOs which agreed to involve in the programme, 7 of them public announced that they will stop the cooperation. Other NGOs remain slient but bloggers (involving me) agree that we should not blame and shame NGOs due to various reasons.

Besides from the issue itself, it also led to the discussion about the bottom-line of NGOs in co-operating with business on programmes. Due to the limited resources and source of income of NGOs in China, partnership with company is one of the major means for financial sustainability. However, this issue makes many NGOs rethink what should be done when similar case happened. We can also see the attitude of people involving in the issue through a small survey. China Development Brief, the most popular website for civil society in China, initiated an online vote regarding people’s attitude towards the issue (http://vote.weibo.com/vid=1763361&source=feed_voted). As you can see from the result above, over 62.7% of participants think NGO should not work with APP and this kind of “Greenwashing” behavior should be boycotted. 20.9% of participants said we should make the decision after listening to the opinions of NGOs which work with APP on the programme, and 17% of participants said the act shows APP is also working on its CSR and we should give them the chance.

The issue also linked to the definition of the term “Greenwashing”. Does it only mean “Green”? Or in this case, the public should urge the company to improve on its core issues rather than spending time and resources on charity programme? I’m also kind of supporting the latter case. As a personal involved in the boycotting action, I forwarded all the posts and encouraged NGOs who worked with APP on this programme to withdraw.  Reason behind is simple: I don’t think a company should start its charity (the concept of community engagement and charity is always mixed in China) programme if it hasn’t responded to the international society’s criticisms on core issues such as environmental performance. As a active blogger and CSR practitioner in China, I believe there are responsibilities for me to tell the NGOs which doesn’t know much about APP to understand what is the real situation.

At a certain extent this case is quite controversial. What are your opinions on this? 

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Blog in English: brianckho.blogspot.com

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Twitter: @brianckho

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Email: brian.ck.ho@gmail.com