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China news tagged with: factory workers (4)

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Jobless Migrants Flood Back to China’s Villages

With more factories in China closing as a result of the global financial crisis, sacked factory workers are heading home early for the holidays. From The Associated Press:

The migrants’ homecoming is flooding villages where wrinkled grandparents and ruddy-faced schoolchildren are the only residents for most of the year. The masses of unemployed and underemployed pose a major challenge for the Chinese government, which must cope with sinking economic growth while calming vast swaths of countryside that have grown used to large transfers of money from migrants working in factories and construction jobs in urban areas.

Migrant workers have an average annual income of about 8,000 yuan ($1,170), while farmers make about 4,800 ($700), said Zhang Jianping, an economist at Minzu University of China. Research from the People’s Bank of China says migrant workers contribute 65 percent of their rural family’s income.
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- January 19, 2009 12:42 PM
China Factory Closure Leaves Workers Asking: Now What?

Reuters reports that how the financial crisis affects workers after many exporter factories are closed down.

Like tens of millions of young Chinese before her, Yu Juan left China’s hinterland for factory work near the coast four years ago with the dream of getting rich.

An acquaintance from her hometown of Dazhou in Sichuan province told her about an exporter in Dongguan, an hour-and-a-half north of Hong Kong, that was hiring.

The Hejun Toy Factory was large, Hong Kong-owned and paid well and on time. It also had an imprimatur that Yu and others working there thought was a virtual guarantee of job security: a stock code.

See an old CDT post on the impact on exporters and suggested actions to minimise losses.

Please also read: 1,500 jobless as another China factory shuts: Report on the India Times:

Hong Kong-listed appliance maker shut its southern China factory on Monday, state media reported, making it the latest victim of the world economic slowdown’s impact on Chinese manufacturing.

The closure of Bailingda Industrial Co.’s electrical appliance factory in the export hub of Shenzhen has left 1,500 employees jobless, Xinhua news agency reported. It follows the failure on Friday of another Hong Kong-listed firm, toymaker Smart Union, which shut its factory in the nearby city of Dongguan in Guangdong province, throwing about 7,000 out of work.

The situation has highlighted the growing risk of instability in China’s coastal manufacturing hubs as factories face financial difficulties leading to large-scale layoffs. Xinhua said more than 1,000 of the laid-off Bailingda employees had gathered outside the factory on Sunday, demanding government intervention to secure unpaid wages. The report made no mention of any disturbances.
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- October 20, 2008 12:41 PM
Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector

T.A. Frank, an editor at the Washington Monthly and a former sweatshop inspector, ruminates on sweatshops worldwide — with a particular focus on China — and the companies they supply with cheap products. From the Washington Monthly:

I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage—orange peels, tea leaves—and the only way for anyone to bathe was to fill a bucket with cold water. In a country where workers normally suppress their complaints for fear of getting fired, employees at this factory couldn’t resist telling us the truth. “We work so hard for so little pay,” said one middle-aged woman with undisguised anger. We could only guess how hard—the place kept no time cards. Painted in large characters on the factory walls was a slogan: “If you don’t work hard today, look hard for work tomorrow.” Inspirational, in a way.

I was there because, six years ago, I had a job at a Los Angeles firm that specialized in the field of “compliance consulting,” or “corporate social responsibility monitoring.” It’s a service that emerged in the mid-1990s after the press started to report on bad factories around the world and companies grew concerned about protecting their reputations. With an increase of protectionist sentiment in the United States, companies that relied on cheap labor abroad were feeling vulnerable to negative publicity. They still are. (See “Disney Taking Heat Over China” in the Los Angeles Times this March.)

Towards the end of the article Frank suggests some tips for consumers interested in finding out whether or not a given company — like Nike or Walmart — is conscientious of its factory workers:

…ordinary consumers searching on company Web sites—Walmart.com, Nike.com, etc.—can find out almost everything they need to know just sitting at their desks. For instance, just now I learned from Wal-Mart’s latest report on sourcing that only 26 percent of its audits are unannounced. By contrast, of the inspections Target conducts, 100 percent are unannounced. That’s a revealing difference. And companies that do what Nike does—prescreen, build long-term relationships, disclose producers—make a point of emphasizing that fact, and are relatively transparent. Companies that don’t are more guarded. (When in doubt, doubt.)
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- April 30, 2008 3:28 PM
How Li Luyuan Became Middle-Class

The magazine section of the Financial Times had a fascinating article this past weekend by Alexandra Harney, author of The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage, that follows a woman living in Shenzhen from her humble beginnings as a factory worker to a competitive and moderately successful young real estate agent. From the Financial Times (you’ll need to register to read it, but registration is free):

Selling real estate turned out to be a lot harder than sewing sweaters. As Shenzhen property prices rose – by 30 per cent in 2006 – real-estate agencies opened thousands of branches around the city. In every district, agents stood on corners, squinting in the south China sun, distributing flyers of available properties. Three agencies occupied Luyuan’s block alone, each with its own army of commissioned youth.

Luyuan’s new colleagues didn’t talk much, but she felt sure they would all become friends. They sat in the agency’s tiny office reading the newspaper, waiting for customers and wishing the phone would ring. When it did, the first person to pick it up got the business.

Alternately brutally competitive and boring, the job nonetheless thrilled Luyuan. Work that allowed you to sit and read the paper hardly seemed like work at all. She marvelled at how quickly her life changed. “At the factory, our social circle is limited and we don’t communicate with anyone other than the people we live with,” she said. Life was confined to the narrow, colourless strip between factory and dormitory. Now, her customers came from a mixture of backgrounds and income levels. And her days were no longer measured by the number of sweaters she sewed. “I like the freedom and the lack of restrictions,” she said.

But over the next months, the reality of life outside the relative safety of the factories sank in. Luyuan’s new apartment was across the highway from room 817, down a dark, pungent alley in the red-light district. She shared a dirty common area with the residents of six other rooms. The grease-stained communal kitchen and bathroom with metered tap water disgusted her. The cardboard walls were so thin she could hear everything her neighbours said, every television programme they watched. Her room was dominated by a rickety bunkbed. For this, she paid $39 a month, her entire first month’s salary.
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- April 8, 2008 1:00 PM