China's factories stealing workers pay -- Ascending Light

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Date Posted: 11:47:49 09/10/04 Fri
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 172.174.102.60
Subject: China's factories stealing workers pay
In reply to: Weird_Enigma 's message, "Three Gorges dam forces water to fill with sewage, junk, chemicals" on 12:36:11 05/03/04 Mon

REGION GROWS | WORKERS DON'T BENEFIT

China's factories go short on labor

Low pay, wage defaults and poor conditions drive migrants away

TIM JOHNSON
Knight Ridder

DONGGUAN, China - A large number of migrant workers in the region known as the "world's factory" are getting fed up with their low-paid jobs and are shucking the assembly line, creating a significant labor shortage.

It's an unusual, and somewhat startling, occurrence in a nation with an excess of workers.

The Pearl River Delta became the fastest-growing region in the world over the past quarter-century as peasants, untethered from their collective farms, migrated to the delta's factories. Guangdong province, which surrounds the Pearl River Delta, saw its economic output soar 64-fold over the past quarter-century. For anyone observing, it was like a high-speed video of a region rising.

But some of the 30 million or so migrant workers providing the Pearl River Delta with its industrial muscle say they haven't shared in the bounty. While industrialists earn buckets of cash, joining gated country clubs and gambling away fortunes on junkets to the nearby casino mecca of Macao, wages for migrant workers over the past decade haven't grown at all, workplace economists say.

Earlier this year, some factories found the pool of job applicants drying up. Exacerbating the situation, many workers who went home for the Chinese New Year holiday never came back. Some estimates put the labor shortage in Guangdong province at up to 2 million workers. In cities such as Dongguan, 60 percent of factories need laborers. Banners stream over factory entrances, promising that the companies won't default on wages, as they have in the past, or that they're improving work conditions.

The labor situation in southeastern China is worth watching for reasons far beyond the economy. Workers have few ways to voice dissatisfaction in China. They can't form independent labor unions. So worker discontent is one of the many wildfires around the pillars of Communist Party rule after more than five decades in power.

Experts pinpoint a number of factors for the sudden shortage of laborers in small- and medium-sized factories.

Among the obvious reasons are that workers have grown weary of forced overtime, wages of $50 a month, rampant workplace injury, disregard for labor law and frequent nonpayment.

Another possible explanation of the shortage is that migrants have sent word home about abuses in the Pearl River Delta region.

Liu Kaiming, the head of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a nonprofit group in nearby Shenzhen that monitors workplace issues, said researchers of the Dongguan Communist Party Committee found in a survey this year that 100 of some 300 local factories questioned had defaulted on wages to workers. Moreover, 60 percent of workers in Dongguan must toil an average of 120 hours of overtime per month (or about 30 hours a week), he said.

A less obvious reason for the shortage, perhaps, is the coming of age of a more independent-minded generation of young workers born since 1979, when China began a family planning policy that limited urban couples to one child and most rural ones to two.

"They've grown kind of picky about their jobs. They haven't gone through the hardships that their parents did," Liu said.

Another factor is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, epidemic that spread from Guangdong in late 2002 and eventually left 800 people dead worldwide. The outbreak spooked parents of migrant laborers.

Along the alleys of this city, the third-largest export hub of China, labor discontent is evident.

Outside the Esteem Industries electric fan factory, about three dozen workers quickly swarm a visitor inquiring about conditions.

"By October, 50 percent of us will leave here," said Tang Hua, a 23-year-old with dyed spiky blond hair. He said as many as 16 workers are crowded into each room in the dormitory provided by the factory. Guards barred a photographer from entering.

"The food is terrible and it is not clean. That is the main reason we want to stop working here," said Li Tianxin, a migrant who came from Hunan province.

Many of the 8,000 or so workers at the factory say they make less than the $55 a month required by local labor legislation.

"According to labor law, we should be paid more. But the factories don't follow the law," said Zhou Deqing, 26.

City and provincial officials declined to talk about the labor shortage.

In lectures to factory managers, Zhang Youhuai, a management expert at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, said he encourages them to treat workers better, comparing the workplace "to a big ship ... The workers are the crew. If you want the ship to go fast and in the right direction, you have to be nice to the crew."

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Replies:

Chinese factory workers being poisoned -- Weird_Enigma, 23:11:47 11/12/04 Fri