Cheng Bo left hand pulling the cart, right hand pushing waist-high 41-inch suitcase, parked in front of a garment sewing factory on Botou Road, Humen Town, Dongguan, staring at the recruitment information on the roll-up door
Every day, in the streets and alleys of Dongguan, Guangdong Province or in the industrial areas where factories are lined up, all types of factories, including electronics, leather, sewing and toy factories, are hiring. Ten people are needed and usually 20 are recruited. Many factories lower their age requirements, as long as they are physically fit and able to work. Wages have also risen to 5,000 to 8,000 yuan per month, “uncapped”.
According to Wang Chao, who specializes in intermediary services for Dongguan workers, the average age of workers in the factory is about 22 years old, as long as they are willing to do, first take four to five thousand dollars a month, learning while doing, and when the master mechanic can have a 7,000 to 8,000 dollars, the premise is to stay up.
“As long as employees can stay in the factory for more than 10 days, my intermediary work is considered a success, but even so, I handled the new employees into the factory can do a full 10 days, less than 60%. “He said.
Young people are increasingly disinclined to enter factories, and are even fleeing them. They have many options, delivery, couriers, or even back home to open a small store.
Liu Wenping has been working in the factory for eight years, many times fled and many times back. Earn money only by working overtime, often for a month or two without rest. In the constant repetition of work, he did not have any growth, will more and more depressed. In order to break away from such an environment, almost every six months, he would leave the factory.
In their opinion, the root cause of the factory’s failure to recruit people is still the treatment and management problems. But some factories would rather have long-term empty posts than change, recruiting in large numbers in the peak season and dismissing workers in the off-season.
1
A month to change a dozen factories, each on two days of work
Red buckets stuffed with quilts, bulging out, padded with black duffel bags under the buckets, sitting together on a cart. Cheng Bo left hand pulling the cart, right hand pushing a waist-high 41-inch suitcase, parked in front of a garment sewing factory on Botou Road, Humen Town, Dongguan, staring at the recruitment information on the roll-up door, searching for “temporary workers ” three words: “recruiting temporary workers, piecework, monthly salary of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan, not capped, including food and housing. “
Cheng Bo is a lathe sewing worker, has been looking for work. He walked into the factory, a large workshop, hundreds of sewing machines only less than ten workers at work, sewing machines constantly emitting the harsh sound of rattling. A female worker told Cheng Bo that after the epidemic last year, many people did not come back to work. She puts two pieces of cloth in alignment into the sewing machine, and the bobbin turns up and down, tying the silk thread neatly and finely into the clothes.
To sew a princess dress, she has to complete three processes: pleating, sewing and hemming, and the piece rate given by the supervisor is 1 yuan and 50 cents per piece. Cheng Bo fondles the face cloth, veil and lining, and considers whether to stay. The temperature in the workshop was high and his back was soaked with sweat. The supervisor wore a mask, but his eyes were full of impatience.
Cheng Bo finally did not take the job and left with a bucket. “To see whether a factory is good or not, it depends on how many people are working and how good the leadership is. The process of making skirts here is complicated, and the price of $1.50 is a bit low. “
This is the tenth job Cheng Bo has interviewed in two and a half days. He did a full month in the last factory, the settlement of wages only to find that the price of work by the supervisor lowered, less than 3,000 yuan of wages. Because he was afraid of repeating the same mistake, he became cautious in looking for jobs and only wanted to find temporary jobs.
“As long as you try to do temporary work and have not been pitted, you will choose to do temporary work instead of regular work. “Wang Chao, who runs a labor agency called Wohui Enterprise Information Consulting Co., Ltd. in Dongguan, can well understand Cheng Bo. He now mainly does the service of temporary workers, “one is convenient to settle the accounts and take the money away, and the other is not to bet a month’s salary like the regular workers. “
Did not find a new job, stay one more day, food and accommodation and spending dozens of dollars, Cheng Bo went directly to the train station, took a bus back home. This time to leave the struggle for more than ten years in Guangdong, he will not return.
“To mention the most red barrel, the great fortune. “Dongguan’s working boy Liu Wenping said he also left the factory for six months, and decided not to enter the factory.
According to last year’s “Dongguan manufacturing talent development research report”, in Dongguan, there are more than 4.2 million people engaged in manufacturing, whether in the large industrial areas of steel forests, or small workshops hidden in alleys, factories are recruiting every day, attracting young people from all over the country to enter the factory. Some people, like Cheng Bo and Liu Wenping, also choose to escape from the factories.
Buckets are a necessity for every factory boy, and they playfully call leaving the factory “running with a bucket”.
Liu Wenping is 1.6 meters tall, round face, small eyes, thick lips, from the mountains of Guizhou, speaking Mandarin does not distinguish between flat and warped tongue and front and back nasal sounds. He came to Dongguan from 2013, working in the factory for 8 years, 9 times to carry the barrel run. Delivered, did intermediary, but also do self-publishing. Now he lives in Dongguan 230 yuan a month in a rental house, every day to eat, sleep, Internet, the future is very confused.
He is 28 years old, graduated from high school, vocational high school dropout, into the factory for 8 years, from the general workers in the electronics factory to the printing plant machine master, the monthly salary from 3,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan. During that time, he carried a bucket to run nine times, in each factory for a maximum of three months, the longest but a year.
In the view of intermediary Wang Chao, Liu Wenping, who can stay in a factory for three months, is already considered down-to-earth. Frequent bucket running, is now the norm for many young people into the factory.
This year after the Spring Festival, Wang Chao 16-year-old nephew does not want to continue school, from his hometown of Chongqing to work in Dongguan, Wang Chao is responsible for finding work for his nephew. The nephew changed a dozen factories in a month, each factory dry two days to leave. He served a 21-year-old Guangdong boy, who entered the factory in early April to work for only one week, asked Wang Chao to borrow two hundred dollars, then left the factory and lost contact.
Wang Chao found that because of the continuous loss of young workers, some large factories have a serious fault line of workers, the number of workers in the team from more than 1,000 to 4,000 to 5,000 – the middle is gone, the first few are more than ten years old employees, the back is the cooperation from the technical school to sign the student workers.
Every summer, a large number of student workers from technical schools are pulled to the factory by a bus. They work 10 hours a day, from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, a month without rest, and less than 4,000 yuan.
“Now young people are more impatient, are the only child in the family, if there is no class, a call to parents, borrow some living expenses, and a few days. “Wang Chao said that many factories are left with only two types of people, one is to come just out of society to seek transition of young people, dry a few months to go; the second is already married thirty to forty years old, on the old and the young, do not dare to lose their jobs, into the factory to seek stability.
2
Working 12 hours a day and being deducted from wages
In 2012, Liu Wenping graduated from junior high school. He is the second oldest in his family, with his younger brother and sister below. His parents are illiterate farmers, and because of the poverty in the family, his elder brother graduated from middle school and went out to work, giving the opportunity to his younger siblings. Liu Wenping did not do well in high school, so he asked his mother for 1000 yuan and took the train to Chongqing for the first time to study at a vocational school in Wanzhou, thinking that he could pay for his studies by working in the future.
After half a year of study, Liu Wenping found that he could not learn any knowledge or skills in this vocational school. All the students around him came here because of bad grades, fighting and smoking every day to mix up their lives, not only no learning atmosphere, exams are also encouraged by teachers to spend money to buy answers. Every student who graduated from the school was arranged to work in a factory, and the school charged an agency fee.
In the second half of 2012, Liu Wenping entered a Japanese motor factory for work-study. He did testing work on the assembly line, and the price was 9 yuan and 50 cents per hour, and his monthly salary came to more than 2,000 yuan.
He thought, since sooner or later are dry assembly line, why bother to read a few years, so he dropped out of school and went to Dongguan, where his brother was looking for work.
In 2013, the national minimum wage is 1310 yuan a month, which is the vast majority of factories in Dongguan’s base salary. At that time, Dongguan is already the world’s largest electronics manufacturing base, known as “Dongguan traffic jam, the world shortage of goods”, the electronics factory is a lot of young people with little education, and no technology The first choice to enter the factory.
Liu Wenping also followed his hometown, into an electronics factory as a general laborer, responsible for assembling the brightness of the cell phone screen lights. 10 yuan an hour, two shifts, the day shift is 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. every day, the night shift is 8:00 p.m. to 12:00 noon the next day, he first experienced the “standing can fall asleep “.
The conveyor belt constantly transported parts, Liu Wenping’s hands mechanically repeatedly assembled, his ears were endless machine roar, he felt his brain blank, hands practiced to conditioned reflex. Working 10 hours a day, there is no time to communicate with the next person, do as he is told and perform, he follows the conveyor belt as if he becomes a machine together.
In the factory, all the time is strictly cut. From 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, there is a 10-minute break every 2 hours, and from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm is the meal time, some factories are big, the workshop is far away from the canteen, running slow, and there is a long queue when they arrive at the canteen. After eating back to the workshop, lying on the machine or lying on the floor to rest for a while, and then to start working.
The workers work in two shifts, day shift and night shift, and the assembly line is non-stop day and night, and the night shift is overnight, plus 5 yuan, and they have to leave if they don’t want to do it. Every day is very tired, back to the dormitory just want to lie down.
If you want to go to the bathroom during work hours, you have to ask the line manager to take over. There was only one line manager for a line of more than a dozen people, so workers had to be careful when going to the toilet. The small number is 5 minutes, the large number is 10 minutes, each person has a limit on the number of times, and it has to be registered in the book.
After less than a year of work, Liu Wenping carried a bucket and ran away. He wanted to find another job, but the education can not take. Out of the factory, he still like a fresh secondary school student into society, nothing, the whole person has no self-confidence, more introverted than before, can not find a better job than the factory workers.
Seeing that the money is almost spent, Liu Wenping entered an electronics factory again, dry for a year. 2016, he once again raised the barrel to run away and switched to a printing factory as a general worker, every day to insert the charger paper box, or like the previous electronics factory, do mechanical repetitive work.
In the factory, the boss used upph (unit personnel capacity) to measure employee work performance, filled with the atmosphere of more than speed, until it reached the human limit. Liu Wenping folds tens of thousands of paper boxes containing chargers every day, and his fingers are worn to blisters, but he still keeps adjusting the direction of his thumbs and the amplitude of his arms, hoping to speed up. “But you work fast hand speed, the assembly line tuned faster, you bored to do, the foreman also desperately pressed. “
There is no end to everything. He has to compare with himself, the day before made 9,000, the next day to do 10,000; to compare with colleagues, if someone does more, to exceed the next person. Every night, the line manager has to meet to do a summary, leaving no room for public criticism of workers who do it slowly.
Although Liu Wenping had not been pitted, some friends told him that the payroll was very different from the initial expectation. Although many factories recruiting write, general workers monthly salary of 3,500 yuan to 9,000 yuan, team leader monthly salary of 4,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan, the top is not capped. But the boss will find all kinds of reasons to deduct wages, such as late, do not participate in the reunion, performance or poor performance, a deduction is hundreds of dollars. After a month of work, someone clearly counted 8,000 yuan of salary, but less than half of the hand.
Some people keep leaving the factory, “in addition to a bunch of game equipment skins and membership cards, an injury, the only remaining housing fund, before the beginning of the end of the emotions, nothing. “One person who left the factory wrote this.
Liu Wenping worked in the printing factory for a year, and left again. Each time he left, he was determined not to enter the factory again. But in the end, when the money was almost spent and he couldn’t find another job, he still had to return to the factory.
3
Learn technology, do part-time work, delivery, but all failed
“In fact, there is no dry assembly line without suffering, not only the physical suffering, the greater suffering is the lack of hope. Many people want to jump out of the factory, but there is no direction. “Liu Wenping summed up his factory life this way.
When he first came to Dongguan, he wanted to make a name for himself, but when he entered the factory, he saw at a glance the end of his life – someone in the factory had been doing it all his life, promoted to line leader and team leader, and his salary was a few hundred dollars higher than the employees. Not only that, they stay up late all the time, repeat mechanical work, dark circles under the eyes, some people are young hair gray, vitality is lost.
Liu Wenping was afraid that he would become like that in the future, so he began to seek a way out. With the first month’s salary, he bought a computer, learned the basic operation of the computer, as well as graphic and animation design, website construction, basic video photo processing techniques …… He built his first website in life, on which he wrote about his factory life, and made some friends by the way.
Later, Liu Wenping began to do optimization website, do seo (search engine optimization) ranking, hang advertising to win, help some small factories to create websites and collect fees. 2015, he did up to a dozen websites at the same time, can rely on this part-time job, leaving the factory to live.
But it didn’t take long before his website was attacked, resulting in the AdWords blocking his account, and his income became unstable again, so he had to go back to the factory again.
In the factory, he also met a lot of hardworking people. One worker who had been in the factory for many years worked actively every day, even when others were on break. Later, when the position of line leader in the factory became vacant, he thought he could take it, but a young man who had just joined the factory and had a good relationship with the team leader took over. The worker stumbled and worked slowly, and the team leader began to find fault with him for various trivial things, and he left not long after.
Liu Wenping had seen too many examples of general workers being eliminated, so he worked hard from general workers to technical positions. After entering a printing factory, his hometown transferred him from the assembly line to the machine as an apprentice. A factory often has only one or two machines, corresponding to one or two masters. The master taught the apprentice master will be eliminated, so in addition to good relations, the master generally does not teach people. Liu Wenping began to learn secretly at the side, when the end of the day to organize the material, adjust the machine, the master went to work directly to operate, he had the opportunity to follow the learning. Over time, the master saw him diligent, but also willing to say a few words.
Others learned to operate the machine in a month, Liu Wenping learned a few months, finally in 2017 to be able to operate the machine. He carried a bucket to run for a factory and became the master of operating the machine. At this time, he has been able to get more than 8000 a month’s salary.
The new printing factory, however, closed down in six months. This printing factory was originally a small factory, the boss received a large order, so expand the scale, buy new equipment, the staff also increased from a few people to a dozen people, but soon because of financial turnover, can only lay off staff, first lay off the cooking aunt, replaced by the boss’s father to cook, then lay off the general workers, and finally to the operation of the machine master Liu Wenping.
After leaving the factory, Liu Wenping delivered take-out. But the accident constantly, sometimes cut into other people’s cars, sometimes the car was detained by the traffic police.
Once early in the morning to deliver food to catch up with the time, coupled with dim street lights, he did not pay attention, even the car with a person planted in a pit, palms and arms are rubbed with blood, sent drinks spilled on the ground, roast chicken fell out far. In accordance with the provisions of the take-away platform, he can only pay for himself. Small injuries can not afford to go to the hospital, Liu Wenping home to clean up the wounds, in order to reduce some losses, he broke the take-out eat, while eating bitter smile.
Some years ago, he saved some money by working part-time, listening to the advice of an online friend, buy virtual coins and money plate, every month to invest wages into, but encountered fraudulent companies, more than 40,000 yuan of savings all lost.
Because of the lack of money, he had no face to go home for three years, and did not dare to tell his parents. Last year, the National Day holiday, Liu Wenping finally home, he renovated the old house, while and a divorced woman with children dating, but was rejected by the other party.
4
Insurmountable structural labor shortage
“The general workers are 4,500-5,000 yuan a month, as long as they can do it, and those in their 50s are accepted. ” This is the recruitment information offered by Peng Xiaojun’s shoe factory. His shoe factory is located in Dongguan’s Daojiao Industrial Zone, north of Guangzhou, and has been established for more than a decade, mainly doing the rubber and midsole processes of shoe soles.
Peng Xiaojun remembers that more than ten years ago, two to three thousand dollars was not a problem at all to recruit young people. At that time, 90% of the urban residents in coastal cities were the children of workers, and young people had to ask acquaintances for gifts to get into a good factory; some big factories had various interview exams, with requirements for gender, age, and even province and ethnicity, and some factories did not even want employees with dyed hair, tattoos, or long nails.
Around 2014, there was a recruitment shortage in Dongguan, and although some factories raised workers’ wages and changed factory sites, the labor shortage has become a structural problem and has not been improved.
Now, news of closure of friends’ factories comes every day, and Peng Xiaojun sighs that it is not good to be a boss. In his factory, there are 100 workers in total, and the employees are basically 40 years old and younger, with stable jobs. However, the motivation for these old employees to struggle is that their children do not want to enter the factory as workers.
“There are one or two children at home, and they are all babies. So children do not want to enter the factory, some came to work for a few days, a couple of months and then left. “Peng Xiaojun factory administrator said he also has only one child at home, will not want to let children into the factory.
Last year’s epidemic, orders and income are unstable, Peng Xiaojun’s factory did not update the equipment, but the future replacement of manpower with machines is an inevitable trend. Typically, a machine of several hundred thousand yuan, can replace two skilled workers, the original two workers to do a day’s volume, a machine half an hour to complete.
And in order to recruit people, factory managers like Peng Xiaojun are more and more inclined to cooperate with employment agencies. Intermediaries, caught between factories and workers, can better glimpse some irreconcilable problems under structural recruitment difficulties.
Wang Chao’s agency, mentioned above, is a subcontracting company. On one side, Wang Chao docks workers to the labor dispatch company, which has a number of factories and sends them wherever there is a shortage of workers; on the other side, he signs temporary agreements with the employees, agreeing to do the full work period and get the wages at the price of work.
The agent gets a commission for every hour the worker works. When the agent takes orders from the factory or labor dispatch company, for example, the factory originally gives 20 yuan an hour, but after a few hands, the agent takes a yuan or 50 cents, and the labor dispatch company takes a little more, and the layers of subcontracting may be 17 yuan an hour in the hands of the workers.
In the past four years, Wang Chao has witnessed hundreds and thousands of buckets, leaving and coming back. Some people followed him from the moment he joined the industry and steadily worked in a factory for more than a year. There are also “three and the god” similar people, each other no WeChat, no cell phone card, usually never contact him, until the day of payroll, will try to find a place Connected to Wi-Fi, using Alipay to send messages to the wage, 2000 yuan can be used for six months.
Wang Chao thinks that the factory is not unable to recruit people, but can’t afford to improve the treatment, and lacks skilled workers and hard labor types. “For example, although the recruitment notice says that the monthly salary is 8,000 yuan, but in reality it comes to 4,000 or 5,000 yuan. Another example is that the employees make comments that the overtime hours until one or two o’clock in the evening are too long every day, and your factory does not change, even if the temporary workers go, they will leave. Some factories only give 14 yuan an hour, others give 18 yuan, then surely workers have to go to 18 yuan there. “
Although young people are not well arranged, but Wang Chao did not feel the labor shortage, the newborn labor force is still coming to Dongguan in a steady stream. During the interview, a WeChat voice call came in hastily from a young man from Heyuan, Guangdong, who left without saying goodbye in early April. He left the factory and was lost for nearly a month, but now he suddenly came back to look for a job, and brought two friends, a brother born in 2003 and a cousin not yet 16 years old. He hopes Wang Chao help him find connections, the three together into the factory.
While the young man sought the opportunity to enter the factory, Liu Wenping returned to his hometown in the mountains of Guizhou at the end of April. Because his parents are illiterate and can not register, he had to take his mother, who had pain in her legs, to the county hospital 70 to 80 kilometers away to see a doctor. He thought, after a busy period, will return to Dongguan, perhaps to open a Guizhou lamb noodle store near the factory area, and then try not to enter the factory can also live here.
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