Photo: VCG

An online employment ad for cleaners has prompted controversy and public discussions recently due to suspected age discriminations against candidates aged 35 and above.

The publisher of the employment ad, an agency affiliated with government department in Foshan, South China’s Guangdong Province responded on Tuesday that the recruitment requirements have been corrected.

The agency in Nanzhuang township in Chancheng district, Foshan is to recruit a number of new hires including cleaners, cooks and security guards. 

According to the recruitment advertisement released on October 9, the application requirements cleaners include that the applicants should be female, at the age of 35 or below, 1.58 meters high or above, have a secondary school education background or above. Candidates with work experience in catering services will be preferred. 

According to job descriptions, apart from cleaning the venues, the personnel at this position should also be responsible for the reception work of conferences and events. 

The recruitment ad soon sparked heated discussions since the age requirement on job applicants goes against the public’s common impression on cleaners, who are usually middle-aged or elderly women and men. 

Many netizens questioned why the position for cleaners requires the candidates aged 35 or below and whether they are really hiring cleaners. 

The staffers from the agency of Nanzhuang township replied on Monday to the public queries that the position also involves reception work for meetings and events, and the salary received is more than 3,000 yuan ($410). 

On Tuesday, the agency further replied that the previous recruitment ad was inconsiderate and the relevant information had been corrected. 

Experts pointed out that the reason why the issue sparked heated discussions due to the public concern over the “35-year-old threshold” at workplace, initially at IT companies, that has become generalized and is spreading to industries that are generally considered more suitable for middle-aged and elderly people. 

The “35-year-old threshold” has always been questioned for its rationality since both China’s Labor Law and the Employment Promotion Law clearly stipulate that workers should not be discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, race, sex or religious belief, experts said. 

However, the phenomenon of the “35-year-old threshold” still exists either implicitly or explicitly. 

A nationwide survey conducted by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions in 2022 showed that 54.1 percent workers aged between 35 and 39 worried about unemployment, 70.7 percent worried about their professional skills no longer unqualified for their positions, and 94.8 percent feel pressure, all accounted for the highest proportions in each age group.

In fact, China’s macro demographic situation no longer supports too many age limits on the labor force since China has entered the aging society, with the elderly aged 60 and above accounting for 19.8 percent of the total population as of the end of 2022, experts said. 

At present, the elimination of age discriminations in employment has long become a social consensus. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) emphasized the elimination of unreasonable restrictions and employment discriminations that affect equal employment, so that everyone has the opportunity to achieve their own development through hard work. 

This year, the “35-year-old threshold” in the civil servant exam has also begun to loosen. On October 15, the registration for the 2024 civil servant exams for central government and its directly affiliated institutions officially began. For the 2024 fresh postgraduates with masters’ degrees and PhD holders, the age limit has been extended to below 40 years old. Similar policies are also implemented in many provincial-level civil servant exams. 

Global Times