1 overview
With the deepening of China's enterprise reform and the continuous improvement of the socialist market economic system, deepening the reform of state-owned enterprises and getting rid of the overall predicament of the state-owned economy is an important way at present and in the future. To do these two state-owned enterprise system reforms well, an important aspect is to solve the re-employment problem of surplus employees and unemployed people in bankrupt enterprises. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: first, the reform of state-owned enterprises in China is bound to be accompanied by technological progress and market-oriented allocation of labor, as well as a large number of unemployment caused by mergers and bankruptcies in the process of reorganization, restructuring and asset reorganization. According to conservative estimates from various sources, the resulting unemployment is about 20 million. According to 1995 calculated by China Statistical Yearbook, 1995 shows that the number of hidden unemployed people in urban enterprises (mainly state-owned enterprises and collective enterprises) in China reaches about 3 16 10000. In addition, according to the statistics of relevant departments, by the end of 1995, there were144.08 million employees in state-owned and urban collective economic units nationwide. In some areas where large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises are concentrated, the surplus employees of enterprises to be divested account for13 of the total employees. Based on this calculation, 40 million to 50 million surplus personnel will be stripped from the public-owned economic units in cities and towns across the country. According to the conservative calculation of the existing industrial technology level by the relevant departments, there will also be 20 million to 30 million surplus personnel; Second, according to the forecast of the national authoritative department, the Ninth Five-Year Plan is the peak of population growth in China. During this period, about 54 million new urban laborers in China need employment, while the number of people who can be arranged in cities and towns in China is about 38 million in the same period.
2. At present, the main reasons for the great pressure of unemployment and the rapid increase of unemployed people in China.
2. 1 is related to the basic national conditions of China. China is a populous country and a developing country with a low level of economic development. Due to the large population and large population base, there are many new laborers every year (China produced nearly 300 million people in the 1950s and 1970s), which has a vital impact on today's unemployment and will take decades to be alleviated). The low level of economic development fundamentally determines that the newly added labor force greatly exceeds the growth rate of the means of production, so it is impossible to provide enough jobs for a large number of newly added labor force in a short time.
2.2 It is related to the rapid exposure and release of the contradictions accumulated in China for decades. In the decades of economic construction, China has adopted the policy of "low wages and high employment" for various reasons, and accumulated surplus personnel within enterprises for a long time. Under the condition of planned economy system, this contradiction was covered up by "big pot rice" With the deepening of economic system reform, enterprises have changed from government-led to market-led, and the mode of economic growth has also changed from extensive to intensive, mainly relying on improving technology and management, improving the efficiency of resource allocation and utilization, paying attention to quality and variety, saving and tapping potential, technological progress and improving the quality of workers. In this situation, in order to survive and compete, enterprises must reduce costs and improve labor productivity, forcing enterprises to adjust the structure of labor stock under the long-term planned economy system and divest a large number of surplus personnel accumulated in history. Enterprises should not only discharge surplus personnel to the labor market, but also reduce the number of recruits. In this way, the long-standing phenomenon of "three people do five people's work and three people eat five people's food" can no longer be maintained, and the long-term accumulated contradictions are quickly exposed and released in a short time.
2.3 It is related to the adjustment and transformation of China's industrial structure. Under the condition of long-term planned economy system, China's industrial structure is seriously unbalanced, which directly affects the healthy, sustained and stable development of the national economy. After the reform, in the process of adjusting the industrial structure by a large margin, some industrial departments that had developed unilaterally and abnormally in the past had to cut their excess production capacity, which led to a large number of enterprises in these departments losing money, going bankrupt and closing down, thus causing a sharp increase in the number of unemployed enterprises. At the same time, some old industrial bases are facing the exhaustion of resources or too single industry, and structural transformation has become the key to regional economic development. In the process of structural transformation, there will also be a large number of unemployed people. For example, Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, which used to be an important coal base in China, has exhausted its minable coal seams, making it necessary for 400,000 coal workers to relocate. Benxi, known as the "city of coal and iron", is also facing the same dilemma. The unified coal mine needs to be fully transformed into production, and the number of employees in Benxi Iron and Steel Company during the Ninth Five-Year Plan period is 1/4 to 1/3.
2.4 It is related to the progress and improvement of the production technology level of enterprises. Since the Second World War, with the occurrence of the third scientific and technological revolution in human history, science and technology have developed at an alarming rate. The extensive use of a large number of mechanized and automated machinery and equipment in the production process not only liberated mankind from the heavy manual labor in the past, but also caused large-scale unemployment in traditional industrial sectors due to the rapid improvement of the organic composition of capital. The nearly 20 years of China's reform and opening-up are also 20 years of rapid progress and improvement of production science and technology. With the rapid progress and improvement of the production technology level of enterprises, enterprises will inevitably reduce the cost of employing people and reduce the number of jobs as much as possible. Therefore, in a relatively short period of time, large-scale machines have crowded out workers in China. In addition, in recent years, with the implementation of the reform strategy of "grasping the big and letting the small" in China's state-owned enterprises, a large number of enterprises merged or merged in the process of "grasping the big", which made the capital scale of enterprises expand rapidly. In this way, the law of expanding capital scale → improving organic composition of capital → increasing unemployment also appeared in a relatively short time.
2.5 It is related to the smooth progress of China's rural economic system reform and the fact that some urban workers' concept of employment has not changed. As we all know, China's rural economic system reform is quite successful, and the word "one package" quickly stimulates and mobilizes farmers' enthusiasm for production. With the smooth progress of the rural economic system reform, a large number of rural surplus labor forces have emerged rapidly (according to the calculation results of working days, experience and human units by relevant experts, the current rural surplus labor force in China is about 65.438+0.5 billion), and these rural surplus labor forces have basically entered cities and towns in disorder, competing with urban workers for few jobs. At the same time, the vast number of urban workers in China have not been liberated from the concept of employment and job selection formed under the condition of "big pot" in the past. They still unrealistically hope that the state can arrange a comfortable, relaxed, well-paid and relatively stable job for them, so they are unwilling to compete with the rural surplus labor force who squeezed into urban employment. In this way, once they lose their jobs, it is impossible for them to change jobs quickly, thus staying in the unemployed army as unemployed people.
2.6 It is related to the reform of investment priorities and industrial policies in China, and the further reduction of labor demand. During the Ninth Five-Year Plan period, China's investment will focus more on safeguarding agriculture, water conservancy, energy, transportation, communication and pillar industries, as well as key construction projects such as science and technology, education, national defense and housing, which are generally industries and industries with large investment and few employees. This means that the capital investment necessary to create new jobs increases, or the ability of unit capital investment to create jobs decreases.
Measures we should take to solve the unemployment problem
Unemployment is the inevitable product of developed commodity economy. At the same time, because necessary and reasonable unemployment can play a regulatory role in the process of social reproduction, it is unnecessary and impossible for us to completely eliminate unemployment. What we should do is to take effective measures to control the unemployment in our country within a reasonable and moderate range.
3. 1 Necessary measures should be taken as soon as possible to speed up and deepen the reform of state-owned enterprises, change the operating mechanism of enterprises, and realize large-scale loss reduction and profit increase of state-owned enterprises. In this way, it can not only reduce the number of laid-off workers in state-owned enterprises, but also increase the effective demand for labor. Here, we want to focus on the important influence of the relationship between expanding the decision-making power of entrepreneurs and strengthening the democratic management and supervision of employees in the reform of state-owned enterprises in China. In the process of enterprise reform in China, it is understandable to expand the decision-making power of entrepreneurs, but how to ensure that this power is not abused is an unavoidable problem for anyone, and it has not been solved in fact. In real economic life, because the state and employees can't control the behavior of factory directors (managers), and many people actually have no management ability or even sense of responsibility, it is a common phenomenon that enterprises make mistakes in business decisions and then go bankrupt. More seriously, when the power of the person in charge of the enterprise expands or even gets out of control, it often leads to corruption. In fact, there are quite a few enterprises in trouble or bankruptcy, and the responsibility of the person in charge is quite great. In this way, it is extremely abnormal and inappropriate for employees to bear the risks and consequences of laid-off unemployment when the behavior of the factory director (manager) is beyond their control. Therefore, in order to make state-owned enterprises turn losses into profits in a large area and make the rights of employees commensurate with the risks they take, it is necessary to strengthen democratic management and supervision of employees.
3.2 The role of the government should be strengthened in solving the problems of unemployment and reemployment. We believe that, in general, a government management system should be established to coordinate employment with economic and social development, and the employment issue should be included in the macro-control policy and the management system of capital construction, technological transformation and joint venture and cooperation projects. Specifically, the strengthening of the government's role should be mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, the government should take effective measures to cultivate new economic growth points as soon as possible to increase the effective demand for labor; Second, the government should vigorously develop various free employment agencies, dredge employment information, communicate employment channels, standardize some private employment agencies that charge fees at present, and resolutely ban those fraudulent private employment agencies; Third, we can consider increasing the government's investment in re-employment training for unemployed workers, establishing employment training guidance centers in various industries and industries, improving and improving workers' professional skills and adjusting their knowledge structure and technical structure by strengthening vocational training; Fourth, as a short-term measure, we can consider holding various public construction projects by the government in the near 2-3 years when the reform of state-owned enterprises is crucial, so as to temporarily alleviate the pressure of re-employment; Fifth, we can consider helping some workers move from old industrial cities and regions with serious unemployment problems to new economic growth areas and cities; Sixth, as a short-term measure, we can consider appropriately limiting the disorderly and excessive inflow of surplus labor to towns and regions with serious unemployment problems in recent years, so as to reduce the jobs with limited competition with urban labor.
3.3 Adopt some preferential policies and vigorously develop "labor-intensive" industries, especially the tertiary industry. It should be pointed out that China has great potential to develop the tertiary industry. According to statistics, from the perspective of the number of employed people, among the total number of employed people in the tertiary industry in China from 65438 to 0994, the proportions of several countries are: 72.8% in the United States, 62.7% in Japan, 59.4% in Germany and 56% in Russia, while only 23% in China. In the development of tertiary industry, vigorously developing regional economy and community economy is an optional scheme.
3.4 Vigorously develop flexible employment forms such as flexible work, part-time work and hourly work, and broaden employment channels.
3.5 Intensify publicity. Change the concept of workers' job selection and employment, free them from the mindset that a considerable number of people have too high expectations for employment and unrealistically hope to find comfortable, relaxed, well-paid and relatively stable jobs, and enhance their sense of competition in job selection. At the same time, the government should implement necessary preferential distribution policies for hard, dirty, tiring and dangerous jobs, such as reducing or exempting some taxes of these departments and industries, so as to attract workers to work in these departments and industries.
3.6 Pay off the labor relations of laid-off workers. As we all know, enterprises in China used to implement the policy of low wages. Under this system, wages are actually only a part of the labor remuneration that workers should get, and the rest, together with the value created by workers in surplus labor, have accumulated. It can be said that China's huge state-owned assets are actually the crystallization of the labor of the broad masses of workers. Theoretically speaking, the crystallization of this kind of labor should be used to ensure the combination of workers and means of production, so as to work and obtain labor income. When we talked with many laid-off workers, they almost invariably asked the same question: we have worked in the enterprise for many years, but now we are old, our ability to find a job is limited, and the enterprise has lost money or closed down, so we have to find our own way. How to calculate the old account? In fact, this is a clear claim for compensation for labor relations. We believe that this problem should never be ignored as nonsense, and the laid-off workers should be paid off. Specific measures can be one-time liquidation, such as one-time buyout of services in Guangdong province, or installment payment; Both monetary payment and non-monetary payment such as creditor's rights, equity and even housing of state-owned assets can be considered. Or, under the principle of voluntary employees, appropriately concentrate this part of the funds to establish a training fund for unemployed employees, provide loans for unemployed people to start their own businesses or provide mortgages and guarantees for them to borrow from banks. We believe that implementing this method has at least two advantages. First, it can enhance the economic ability of unemployed workers to re-employment (for example, unemployed people can use this part of the currency to start their own businesses, or they can use this part of the currency to invest in shares and re-employment in "joint-stock cooperative" enterprises. ); Secondly, it can solve the hidden unemployment problem that some laid-off workers have actually been re-employed, but they still receive a certain income in the original enterprise, and the pressure on enterprises has not actually been alleviated. It should be pointed out that this kind of termination of labor relations can never be regarded as the loss of state-owned assets. Theoretically, this is only taken from the people and returned to the people. "
3.7 Increase the number of unemployment insurance funds, expand the coverage of unemployment insurance, and standardize the management and use of unemployment insurance funds. At present, the collection ratio of unemployment insurance funds in China is too low (the part paid by enterprises and the part paid by individual employees only account for 2%-3% of the total wages). Therefore, the collection ratio of unemployment insurance funds should be increased, especially in unemployment insurance benefits, which should be paid through legal procedures, and any enterprise or individual should pay, otherwise it will be illegal. At the same time, the government should also increase investment in the unemployment insurance fund (the theoretical basis for the government to increase investment in the unemployment insurance fund is the same as the above-mentioned theoretical basis for solving labor relations). On this basis, it is necessary to expand the coverage of unemployment insurance (at present, many places only pay compensation for several special types of unemployed people). In the management of unemployment insurance fund, effective measures should be taken to prevent the fund from being used for other purposes.
In China's socialist countries, the broad masses of workers are the owners of the whole means of production, and their overall interests are consistent with their long-term interests. As long as we take various practical and effective measures, we will certainly be able to control the unemployment in China within a reasonable and necessary range and give full play to the positive role of unemployment.
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