A Chinese company plans to demand that its employees seek approval to get pregnant and fine those who conceive a child without permission, reports said, provoking a media firestorm yesterday.
“Only married female workers who have worked for the company for more than one year can apply for a place on the birth planning schedule,” read a policy distributed by a credit cooperative in Jiaozuo, Henan Province.
“The employee must strictly stick to the birth plan once it is approved,” it said. “Those who get pregnant in violation of the plan such that their work is affected will be fined 1,000 yuan [US$161].”
News portal The Paper published a screen shot of the document, adding that a company representative had admitted the lender sent the notice to its staff but said it was only a draft seeking employees’ comment.
Violators will not be considered for promotion or awards and their incentives and year-end bonuses would be canceled “if their pregnancy severely hindered their work,” the policy said.
The circular triggered scathing criticism from Chinese media, with the China Youth Daily lambasting it as bizarre.
INHUMAN
The company “does not regard its employees as living human beings, instead it treats them as working tools on the production line,” it said.
Official interference in personal matters has a long history in China, with the one-child policy birth control rules, which were imposed in the late 1970s limiting most couples to a single offspring, being the most well known.
Under the rule of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), workers normally needed their employers’ permission to marry.
A worker at a different bank in Henan Province told the Global Times newspaper that their company asked employees about their pregnancy plans at the beginning of every year.
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