DSV is a global supplier of transport and logistics services and is currently one of the largest such companies in the world.
It was created in 2006 from the merger of the Danish DFDS Transport and Dutch operator Frans Maas. It trades under the brand names DSV Road, DSV Air & Sea, DSV Solutions and can trace its origins back over 150 years.
The largest part of the company is its European road transport (trucking) network. Following that is its air and sea freight forwarding business, which it is aiming to expand through acquisitions. The group also has a growing Europe wide contract logistics business.
DSV's head office is in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Group has offices in 50 countries all over the world. Supplemented by partners and agents, DSV offers services in more than 100 countries.
The group employs 19,000 and maintain a worldwide annual turnover of €4.4 billion.
The company is listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.
Nokia China hit with discrimination suit
By Mure Dickie
Published: March 13 2007 21:30 | Last updated: March 13 2007 21:30
A Chinese job applicant -on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Nokia alleging that a local unit of the Finnish telecommunications equipment company refused to employ him because he is a carrier of the Hepatitis B virus.
The highly unusual lawsuit underscores moves by Hepatitis B carriers to use legal channels to challenge what they say is endemic discrimination against the estimated 120m Chinese infected by the virus.
Chinese companies routinely refuse to employ people who carry the Hepatitis B virus, even though it is mainly transmitted at birth, through sexual contact or by contaminated needles.
However, the job applicant, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Li, said he had been surprised when the Nokia unit in China’s southern city of Dongguan cancelled plans to hire him after a company-ordered medical examination.
“I thought that as a big company, Nokia would have a better understanding of this issue,” Mr Li said. “But they still said that because I was a [Hepatitis B] carrier, they had to reject me.”
Mr Li on Tuesday filed a lawsuit at a Dongguan court calling on it to order Nokia to hire him and to pay Rmb500,000 ($64,540, ￡33,370, €48,830) in compensation for “mental suffering”.
Nokia stressed its global policy did not allow hiring decisions to be affected by whether an applicant was suffering from a chronic disease, such as Hepatitis B, unless the condition would render the employee incapable or would pose “considerable risk” to others.
“We are looking into this case,” said Thomas J?nsson, director of communications for Nokia China. “If a mistake has been committed, we will follow up and take whatever measures are required to correct it.”
Mr Li’s case has emerged at a time when a growing number of Chinese are taking companies and even government departments to court over issues such as discrimination. Such litigants often face laws that are ambiguous, courts that rule inconsistently and patchy enforcement of rulings.
Lu Jun, a health activist who runs a website for Hepatitis B carriers, said Mr Li’s lawsuit appeared to be the first of its kind against a western company. Anti-discrimination lawsuits against local companies were also very rare and often failed, in part because of China’s contradictory legislation on Hepatitis B, Mr Lu said.
Officially, discrimination against Hepatitis B victims is banned under a sweeping but vaguely worded 2004 law and the health ministry says carriers can live, work and study “normally”. However, those infected with the virus are banned by official regulations from working in sectors such as the food industry and are sometimes blacklisted even by government departments.
Last year, a top school in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region expelled 19 children after discovering they were infected with the virus.
A lawsuit brought by parents of the children against local education authorities was abandoned under what people familiar with the situation said was heavy pressure from officials.
Unlike the less serious but more infectious Hepatitis A virus, Hepatitis B carriers pose little risk to co-workers or fellow students.
But fear of the disease, which leaves most carriers unharmed but can cause serious liver damage and death, has been stoked in China by widespread advertising by medicine vendors.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/85791c1c-d1a6-11db-b921-000b5df10621.html
With the efforts of many HBVers right fighters, discrimination in kindergarten, school and college became fewer, though still exist. Several days ago, it was heard a child HBV carrier was refused entry into a kindergarten, which is a private kindergarten.
The most difficult problem every HBV carrier has to face is to get a job and keep it.
The key point is that before you becoming a regular staff, you must take a physical examination, which includes a blood test. If you were found out to be a HBV carrier, you'll be rejected to get the job, even if you are a healthy carrier, whose liver function is normal. For some people who already got a job will be fired if he or she was found out to be a HBV carrier, no matter what kind of job they have even if they are a software developer or mechanic. Crazy! Don't you think so?
Those who as HBV carriers should be protected by law in many other countries turned out to be deprived of right to work in China. Let me show you some example, below are some snippets in "Code of practice on the Management of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis at workplaces" from Australian Department of Consumer and Employment Protection.
* Pre-employment medical screening of employees for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B or hepatitis C should not be carried out unless relevant for assessment of medical fitness for work.
* Any information pertaining to an individual's HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B or hepatitis C status should be kept confidential.
* Unless the work poses a danger to the employee, other employees or the public, the employer need not be informed that an employee is infected. The employer is not obliged to inform anyone should they become aware that an employee is infected.
Now it's almost 11:30 PM in China, let's call it a day. I'll tell you more details in the later posts. Thanks for your support.
