From Overseas Press

Chinese factories now compete to woo laborers (chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2010-07-14 15:59

China's manufacturing industry is facing a worker shortage that is forcing employers to compete for new workers and prevent seasoned ones from leaving for better salaries, said an article in the New York Times on July 12.

The article revealed that many factories in Guangdong's Zhongshan are "operating with vacancies of 15 to 20 percent," "compelling some bosses to cruise the streets in their BMWs and Mercedeses" in a desperate move to hire workers.

The shortage of workers showed two realities, one of which is "the supply of workers 16 to 24 years old has peaked and will drop by a third in the next 12 years thanks to the family-planning policies," said the article, and the other is that "young Chinese factory workers, raised in a country with rapidly rising expectations, are less willing to toil for long hours for appallingly low wages like dutiful automatons."

The article quoted Guo Yuhua, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, as saying that these young workers were "better educated, Internet-savvy and covetous of the urban niceties they discovered after leaving the farm." They do not want to go back to being farmers.

Stanley Lau, deputy chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Industries, said in the article that he had been "advising factory owners to offer better salaries, to treat employees more humanely and to listen to their complaints." He added that "the young generation thinks differently than their parents, they have been well protected by their families, and they don't like to 'chi ku.' "

Although "chi ku," or eat bitterness, is a "time-honored staple of Chinese culture," for young people, it is no longer "the badge of honor that an older generation wore with pride," said the article.

It added that "one factor in the expanding consciousness of migrant laborers is an astounding rise in education." Lin Yanling, a labor specialist at the China Institute of Industrial Relations, believed that "a growing number of young people are ambitious, optimistic and more aware of their rights," and their cellphones, e-mail and Internet chat "connect them to peers in other factories." "When they bump against unfair treatment, they are less afraid to challenge authority," she said.