A JIAN: I often dream about going to some factory for a job interview. A typical dream goes like this. I go to the factory’s staff department. There’s a girl who asks me to fill in a form, then she takes my ID card and goes to another office. After a while she comes back and tells me the company can’t hire me because I’m on the black list. Not only can they not hire me now, they will never hire me. I ask her why, how can this be? I did nothing wrong. Then she tells me it’s because I sued my former employer. “You are morally declined, that’s what your former employer says,” she tells me. “So can’t hire you.”
    I’ve had this kind of dream many times. It’s a problem that I’m really bothered about, so it always shows up in my dreams.
    This whole black list thing started when the company I was working for wanted to cut jobs. They used various methods, such as salary cuts, demotion and salary re-negotiations to drive us out of our jobs. They wanted to make us quit our jobs so they wouldn’t need to pay us any compensation.
    We, the employees, were very upset about this and reported this case to the labour bureau. After that, the company made this black list. They said we had sued them, so we were morally declined. They put us all on the black list and sent it to the Association of Jewellery Manufacturers, and the association sent it to every factory. So now we can’t get a job in this industry because the factories won’t hire anyone who’s on the black list.
    Some of us have been working as jewellers for dozens of years; we have a lot of experience. It would be a pity if we couldn’t find a job in this industry. It would be very hard for us to change our profession after so many years. We hope we can solve this problem through some legal means.

BELOVED
ASPIRATION
TENSION
SUDDENLY
DISILLUSION
HARDSHIP
MOVEMENT
PERSISTENCE
ACHIEVEMENT
DESOLATION