The author | Bai Qian
Edit | Tsukimi
"Nearly a thousand blood sellers, who have traveled more than five hundred kilometers, from Zhejiang to Jiangsu. Spanning a dozen counties, their blood was sold to the highest price he could ever know. ”
In his work "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", the writer Yu Hua describes a group of thousands of blood sellers who travel between different regions to sell blood to higher-priced hospital blood banks. And their income from selling blood once is thirty-five yuan, which is equivalent to engaging in half a year's agricultural work.
In the novel, the blood seller's journey stems from the different prices in the market. The "blood slave" incident that has recently triggered a hot discussion on the Internet is that the fraud gang lured ordinary people to Cambodia in the name of recruitment to forcibly draw blood in order to sell it for profit.
Relevant reports show that since February 14 this year, articles on the rescue of a Chinese by the First Hospital of Cambodia in China and Cambodia have been circulated on the Internet. The article shows that the victim Li Yaming was coerced into smuggling to Cambodia by a fraud group after believing the false recruitment advertisement of the same city network, and was detained, blood drawn, and three bottles of blood were drawn every one and a half months. When he was admitted to the hospital, Li Yaming was already showing swelling all over his body and his body was densely covered with needles. Because so much blood was drawn, the nurse who treated him couldn't even find a blood vessel to transfuse his blood.
It is worth noting that behind this tragedy, in addition to Li Yaming, there are seven or eight people who have suffered blood draws. This means that more people may be hurt in this recruitment scam, and the contradictions behind the blue-collar job search have also been exposed.
01 58 Same City, an outrageous site
After the fermentation of public opinion on the blood slave incident, 58 Tongcheng said that it expressed deep sympathy for the victim's suffering, and at the same time urgently communicated to the relevant departments, knowing that the case is under continuous investigation, and it has not yet been determined that the victim is in the recruitment information seen in 58 Tongcheng, and 58 Tongcheng has not found the recruitment information released by the corresponding enterprise.
This is not the first time that 58.com has been caught up in the question of false information. According to the surging 2018 report, data from the China Judgment Document Network shows that in recent years, in 60 cases of fraud suspected of false recruitment information in 58 cities and catch-up networks, there were more than 5,500 victims, and the amount of fraud was nearly 100 million yuan, and some victims fell into prostitution and fraud dens.
Behind it is the strong influence of 58.com in the field of blue-collar recruitment. A head logistics enterprise recruitment person in charge of "new entropy" said that among the employees responsible for recruitment, the proportion of employees from 58 city channels reached 52.83%, and the recruitment channels ranked second to fourth were internal recommendation, other channels, small advertisements and intermediary cooperation. Among them, the internal recommendation (including blue-collar workers' hometowns with fellow villagers) accounted for 32.09% of the entry channels.
In this data on the proportion of entry channels, a large number of white-collar jobs are included, such as finance, data statistics, vehicle stowage and other personnel required by logistics companies. In the case of pure consideration of blue-collar recruitment, the proportion of 58 cities will increase significantly. The head of recruitment said that 58.com and other head platforms use various routines to require recruiters to increase recruitment capital investment, but the company is still reluctant to withdraw from these platforms, because the head platform has mastered more blue-collar user groups, even if the investment is increased, the input-output ratio of enterprises recruiting on these platforms still has an advantage.
But that doesn't mean that the cake of blue-collar hiring won't be re-divided.
On the one hand, the post-90s group is becoming the main group of a new generation of blue-collar workers, and the popularity of mobile Internet makes them more inclined to obtain more job search information through the Internet, rather than traditional offline intermediaries; on the other hand, more and more Internet-related occupations are entering the public vision, such as takeaway riders, courier delivery workers, online ride-hailing drivers, real estate agents, etc., which provides more paths for young people to find jobs.
For example, short video live broadcast is becoming a new market for blue-collar recruitment, Kuaishou APP recently launched a quick recruitment product, business owners to provide business licenses, human resources licensing service certificates and other materials can become certified accounts, and through live broadcast to complete recruitment. For job seekers, the two sides do not have a resume to submit this project, only through the contact information to complete the job delivery and follow-up communication.
But that doesn't mean the risks in the blue-collar hiring market are addressed. On the 58.com mobile terminal, the threshold for operators to publish recruitment information is to provide relevant information such as enterprise name, enterprise registration number, legal person name and ID card number, but the platform still lacks the review of job information released by enterprises. In short video platforms, similar phenomena are also happening, operators have the ability to whitewash and exaggerate job information, but the platform is unable to identify this.
02 Who speaks up for blue collar workers?
In 2020, the explosive article "Takeaway Riders, Trapped in the System" brought the complex contradictions between takeaway riders and takeaway platforms to the world. The article's observation is more inclined to the market competition demand of takeaway platforms to drive them to strengthen the management of riders by algorithms, and riders are increasingly taking on the risk of algorithm loopholes.
Prior to this, "New Entropy" had communicated with a number of takeaway riders, who said that the contradictions faced by takeaway riders were complex. Overall, algorithms plan an idealized income system for riders, but real-world factors always break this architecture in various ways. For example, consumers who refuse to communicate, businesses that eat very slowly during rush hour, mall security and community security that refuse riders access, and traffic management that is poorly routed due to chaotic parking space planning all limit riders from impacting their idealized income. Behind it is the three-dimensional contradiction between takeaway riders and groups such as platforms, merchants, and consumers.
It is worth noting that in the process of conflict outbreak, riders often lack sufficient feedback channels due to factors such as cultural level. A rider told "New Entropy" that after a car accident, because they do not understand the intricate liability determination and insurance compensation mechanism, the rider is often responsible for his own compensation. After being punished by the platform, the riders often vent their emotions by complaining, and rarely form opinions to feedback to the platform side.
To some extent, this has similarities with the contradictions of the blue-collar recruitment market. The evolution of an industry ecology is inseparable from the full game of all stakeholders, which includes both obtaining benefits from the ecology and making concessions to other stakeholders to make the overall efficiency of the industry operation better. In the takeaway industry, due to the unequal bargaining position, the algorithm has always adjusted to a more favorable perspective for the platform and consumers, and the riders who lack a voice channel have borne too much efficiency costs, which has ultimately caused a "hard landing" of frequent accidents, media forces involved, and the platform being forced to rectify.
The blue-collar recruitment industry is the same as the takeaway industry.
For example, blue-collar occupations such as takeaways, couriers, online car drivers, real estate agents and other blue-collar occupations generally have the characteristics of low basic wages and high performance wages, and recruiters in these areas often hold a "no refusal" attitude. As the head of logistics company recruitment above pointed out - enterprises need to find the blue-collar recruitment channel with the best comprehensive cost performance, as long as the entry efficiency is high enough, the company is willing to consume more money for this. Individual job seekers with a more dispersed and more replaceable degree face huge information asymmetries, and their job search requirements often cannot affect enterprises and platforms.
For recruitment platforms, because their revenue comes more from recruitment companies, their nature has also shifted from neutral third-party platforms to service-oriented media, which also explains why platforms tend to roughly manage the qualifications of recruitment companies. The reason is that the characteristics of non-standard products recruited above white-collar workers are more prominent, while the standard characteristics of blue-collar recruitment are more prominent, and the recruitment efficiency of scale supply is higher than that of fine and prudent one-on-one negotiations. Therefore, the platform itself is reluctant to intervene deeper in the recruitment process, thus throwing more contradictions to the supply and demand sides, which also promotes more fraudulent groups to obtain customers from blue-collar recruitment platforms.
03 Who oversees blue collar recruitment?
Although the relationship between the Blood Slave Tragedy and the 58 Same City Platform is still uncertain, there is still a possibility of further occurrence of related events. In the relevant recruitment platforms, there are still a large number of abnormal recruitment information. Some netizens summarized the overall characteristics of this information - simple job seeker skill requirements, significantly exceeding the market average salary. In a way, these job postings have the potential to be a source of risk for the next tragic event.
Even for the platform, similar recruitment salary fluctuations are difficult to discern, and the probability of being deceived will become higher for job seekers who lack judgment.
First of all, from the perspective of enterprises, a variety of factors may prompt enterprises to offer salaries for ordinary blue-collar jobs that are higher than the market perception. For example, individual stores and small workshops may be paid high salaries due to growth space, location and work intensity; in addition, the market environment will also have an impact on the employing unit. After the spread of the new crown epidemic, a large number of factories have offered high wages to attract people to return to the city to work. It is difficult for the average job seeker to see from limited materials whether the relevant position is reliable.
In addition, from a personal point of view, the information in the hands of blue-collar migrant workers is generally lacking, and they lack the relevant knowledge of fraud prevention and fraud prevention. In these groups, herd mentality is more common, and once a migrant worker has achieved a higher income, it will lead to more inquiries about the relevant position. At the same time, the blue-collar job market has long had the habit of "hometown with fellow countrymen", and the WeChat group between its relatives and friends and neighbors and the interpersonal walking around every New Year's Festival will become an important scene for blue-collar groups to form a cognition of the migrant market. Among the recruitment channels of the above-mentioned logistics enterprises, more than 30% of the employees are recruited from similar internal promotion channels, especially at the time of returning home years ago, enterprises will repeatedly publicize the relevant rules of internal promotion commissions for employees.
In addition, blue-collar recruitment platforms have long lacked authoritative platforms and authoritative information. 58.com occupies the main market share of blue-collar recruitment, but it adopts a relaxed route of enterprise supervision, which is more difficult to achieve the effect of prior prevention. In addition, there are very few platforms that pay attention to mid-level blue-collar recruitment, and there are few platforms for worry-free future, Zhaopin recruitment, Liepin, Lagou, boss direct recruitment, paying more attention to the recruitment of white-collar and above groups, which makes it more difficult for job seekers to compare across platforms.
In addition to fraudulent, pyramid schemes, prostitution and other illegal recruitment information that threatens personal safety, the blue-collar recruitment market also faces the problem of high information asymmetry between operators and job seekers. For example, job seekers' adaptation to the work environment, work intensity, personnel relations, and charging for uniforms, tools, insurance, and other products.
Still taking the takeaway rider industry as an example, among the riders that "new entropy" contacts, "high job hopping rate" and "coming and going" are their keywords. For example, newcomers often join the industry against the high-income cases of head riders given by the platform, but after actually practicing, they find that the work intensity of case riders is often not something that ordinary people can bear, and the cost of vehicles makes their dream of "making a quick buck" shattered. Therefore, in the eyes of many old riders, the rush of new riders is very common.
The overall progress of the industry still needs to be adjusted as an important subject of the recruitment platform, including providing more job search information, industry information consultation, and practitioner exchange mechanisms to minimize the information asymmetry between supply and demand. Blindly starting from the needs of enterprises may repeat the tragedy of the takeaway industry.