呦呦鹿鸣｜The world has suffered from “labor dispatch” for a long time, and abolishing the labor dispatch system is imminent

Who is harming the country and the people?

Photo by Mostafa ft shots from Pexel

In April 2026, two small events occurred.

Because the events were small, they were not much noticed by the “mainstream crowd”, especially those within the system. But I, on the other hand, am accustomed to paying attention to small details, perhaps a glimpse of the truth is just a fleeting moment? I report to my friends as follows:

The first event happened in Henan, in the ancient city of Luoyang.

There was a man surnamed Lu, born in 1979, a native of Luoyang. In 2011, when the new hospital of the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Science and Technology opened, he applied to be an ambulance driver. He earned seven or eight thousand yuan a month and has been working there ever since. Counting it, it’s been more than a decade. During the pandemic, he was awarded the title of “Most Beautiful Reverse Walker”.

In the blink of an eye, it was January 2024. The hospital notified him to sign a labor dispatch agreement with a third-party company. He refused because he believed he had worked for the hospital for 13 years and, according to the law, should have a “labor contract with no fixed term” as a formal employee.

This refusal resulted in this public tertiary hospital not arranging work for him, and he was not allowed to accompany the ambulance on calls. From this month on, his salary was reduced to 2700. By the beginning of 2026, he was notified not to come to work, and even his basic salary was not paid, which meant he was fired.

A reporter from Huashang Daily went to ask Mr. Lu and learned that this hospital had more than 1,000 “temporary workers” like Mr. Lu who were transferred to third-party labor dispatch, and Lu was the last batch.

The second event happened in Guangdong.

A dozen people in Yangjiang City spent 28,000-45,000 yuan in “brokerage fees” and finally became high-speed rail security inspectors in Guangzhou, the provincial capital. After taking the job, they found out that it was labor dispatch, with a monthly salary of 2,500 yuan and working more than 16 hours a day.

2,500 yuan is the minimum wage standard in Guangzhou. In fact, for the same position, some people’s salary is 1,750 yuan, and it also includes the personal contribution part of social security.

If you do the math, with such a labor dispatch job, it would take two years without eating or drinking to earn back the brokerage fee.

In the news circle, you often hear the phrase: “Reality is more magical than fiction.” Indeed, try to ask, which novel dares to make up, or can make up such a plot?

But reality just happened like this, happening around us.

The common point of these two events is labor dispatch.

Previously, I had no personal experience with the labor dispatch system, I didn’t know much about it, and I didn’t pay much attention to this “marginal” issue. After noticing this keyword, I did some homework these days and found that: the labor dispatch system has quietly and rapidly expanded and spread to every corner of this society in recent years. There is no official statistical figure for the workers working under this system, but multiple sources say that it has reached tens of millions.

For example, I didn’t expect that cities across the country, including many provincial capital cities, are using labor dispatch systems in large numbers when recruiting teachers for primary and secondary schools. And it is clearly announced in the recruitment announcements, with positions for teachers of Chinese, mathematics, physical education, music, and various other subjects. The following is a case I randomly found (the picture is posted at the top of the comment section, please check it out):

There have been many discussions within the circle about the treatment of teachers in primary and secondary schools in major cities under the labor dispatch system. For example, as early as 2023, someone used “Research on the Incentive Problems of Labor Dispatch Teachers in Public Primary Schools in Shijiazhuang” as a graduation thesis and obtained a master’s degree from Hebei Normal University.

Of course, this is not surprising, because Shijiazhuang began to promote the recruitment of teachers under the labor dispatch system in public primary and secondary schools in 2016. The local education bureau’s requirements for these teachers are: bachelor’s degree or above, holding a teacher qualification certificate, passing written and oral examinations, and passing a physical examination. Most of these teachers are between 22 and 30 years old, mostly young people, and the contracts they sign have a term of 1-5 years.

How much are their salaries? According to the “2021 Announcement of Public Recruitment of Dispatch Teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools in Xinhua District, Shijiazhuang”, the probationary period is 3 months, during which the monthly salary is 2,836.86 yuan, which fully includes all the fees required to be paid by the unit and the individual in the “five insurances”. After the probationary period, the monthly salary is 3,186.63 yuan in the first year, 3,469.76 yuan in the second year, 3,752.64 yuan in the third year, 4,139.24 yuan in the fourth year, and 4,446.66 yuan in the fifth year. These figures all include the unit and individual contributions to the “five insurances”.

Generally speaking, the net salary actually received by these teachers is around 3,000 yuan.

Reading the heartfelt words of these labor dispatch teachers during interviews, I couldn’t help but feel sad. They are doing the same work on the front lines, but not only are their salaries much lower, but they are also isolated from the salary grades, performance wages, housing subsidies, and holiday benefits enjoyed by teachers in the same position within the establishment. Moreover, labor dispatch teachers are not eligible to be evaluated for job titles.

Interviewee 1: Let me tell you, I am dispatched by Xinhua District, and I have been working on dispatch for nearly 6 years. In the fifth year, the salary I received was 3,100, and it increased by more than 200 yuan each year, but it stopped at 3,100. It doesn’t increase anymore, 3,100 is the top. Maybe you’re better off at school, with monthly benefits. If you are a homeroom teacher or you have a lot of tutoring, then you might get around 4,000. The basic amount you can get is 3,100, and the rest is the school’s subsidy. And our dispatch teachers pay the five insurances through the human resources company, and it’s still based on the lowest contribution base.

Interviewee 2: Every year, the benefits that the teachers in the establishment have, we don’t have.

Interviewee 3: I majored in computer science, and as soon as I was admitted, I was asked to be a homeroom teacher. I don’t know how to teach Chinese and mathematics, and I’m not very good at communicating with strangers. My temper and personality are also quite straightforward. I often communicate with parents and deal with class affairs, which makes me feel very stressed.

Interviewee 5: The regulations for us are different. Sometimes the same mistake may result in one person being fined, while another may only be reprimanded by their superiors.

Interviewee 10: The helplessness of passing the buck, especially when it comes to taking leave. Everyone will have an emergency, and it’s very awkward to ask for leave at this time. You must ask the labor dispatch company for leave, and the school will not approve your leave. Especially for maternity leave, it has nothing to do with the school. If you go to the leader to communicate, the leader will tell you to go to the third party, you are not responsible for the school. When communicating with the labor dispatch company, they will also ask you to communicate with the school. The right to renew the contract is the school’s right, and in the end, you are left helpless.

Interviewee 13: It’s definitely unfair. We do the same work as others. This semester, I teach English and I’m assigned 16 classes a week. A friend of mine is on labor dispatch at another school, and she teaches art, and she only has 14 classes a week, and our salaries are the same. When I first started, I felt very unbalanced, but later I slowly came to terms with it. What can you do?

Interviewee 14: I don’t have children now, and fortunately, my family is from Shijiazhuang, so I don’t have to rent a house. My parents are still working now, but if I have children in the future, their expenses will definitely increase after they retire, and I am currently not making enough.

Interviewee 16: We rarely have job transfers. Only when a deputy teacher leaves and leads to a shortage of personnel will personnel be transferred. There is almost no transfer, not to mention career development. Now, I get a headache when I think about going to work and seeing the WeChat messages sent by parents.

Interviewee 17: Since both my husband and I work here, the pressure of life is inevitable. The total price of the property we jointly purchased exceeds one million yuan, and we have to repay nearly five thousand yuan of loans every month. Considering that the income of the couple is obviously insufficient, we can only rely on the support of our parents.

Especially, when I switch my perspective from the teacher’s point of view to the student’s point of view, a terrible, even chilling feeling immediately emerges: Try to ask, in a school, if they treat their teachers differently, can they treat their students differently? Try to ask, if a teacher is long-term oppressed by the labor dispatch system and feels unfair in their heart, can they educate students well and teach classes well? This phenomenon, the teacher is the first victim, and the student is the indirect victim. And many parents are also unaware of whether their children’s teachers are labor dispatched.

Labor dispatch, harming the country and the people.

Look closely at the law. Article 66 of the “Labor Contract Law” revised in 2012 clearly stipulates:

“The employment of labor contracts is the basic form of employment in our country’s enterprises. Labor dispatch is a supplementary form and can only be implemented in temporary, auxiliary, or alternative work positions.”

“The temporary work positions mentioned in the preceding paragraph refer to positions with a duration of no more than six months; auxiliary work positions refer to non-main business positions that provide services for the main business positions; alternative work positions refer to positions that can be replaced by other workers for a certain period of time when the workers of the employing unit are unable to work due to off-the-job study, vacation, etc.”

Article 4 of the “Interim Provisions on Labor Dispatch” of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2014 clearly stipulates: The number of dispatched workers used by the employing unit shall not exceed 10% of its total employment.

However, now, a large number of primary and secondary schools, state-owned enterprises, banks, hospitals, and other institutions use labor dispatch in large numbers, not only exceeding the limit of 6 months in time, but also using it in a large number of frontline main positions, which has long broken through the four hard constraints of temporary, auxiliary, alternative, and 10% stipulated by law.

The dignity of the law, it is hard to say that it has disappeared, at least it has been washed away.

More importantly, the naked reality of labor dispatch also directly undermines the “equal pay for equal work” stipulated in the Constitution. This system creates a large number of injustices in reality and brings many hidden evils to society. It is already a tumor in this society.

This labor dispatch system is already so rampant. It beautifies itself as “hospital reform” and drives out the ambulance driver who has worked for more than a decade. It packages itself as a “stable job” and demands tens of thousands of yuan in entry fees from high-speed rail security inspectors with a monthly salary of one or two thousand yuan. Under its power, teachers working on the front lines are trembling and helpless.

At the legal level, although there are four limitations on the labor dispatch system, there are no corresponding checks and balances and penalties for those in power who break these limitations. Therefore, the territory of labor dispatch is getting bigger and bigger, and its power is becoming more and more arrogant. At the same time, the workers who suffer from it, especially the young people, are on the margins and have nowhere to speak, and no one hears them when they speak.

Oh! After the labor dispatch system was introduced, it has rapidly degenerated and deteriorated in its implementation, becoming the root of social injustice and a quagmire of good visions. In a word, the world has suffered from labor dispatch for a long time!

I have repeatedly pondered the real entanglement of this system and found that it is difficult to have room for improvement after self-adjustment or passive adjustment.

Based on the above, I hereby sincerely suggest and speak for the people who are deeply harmed throughout the country: Amend the “Labor Contract Law” and abolish the labor dispatch system.

Youyou Luming 20260418