The market is picking up and there is a shortage of workers, what should the garment village do?
Thanks to the stability of the domestic epidemic, the clothing industry market has quickly recovered.
In some garment villages in Guangdong, there is a shortage of workers.
"The factory used to pick workers, now it is workers pick the boss." The traditional employment relationship is quietly changing in this labor-intensive industry...
"I want to hire 3 workers today. I didn't hire them yesterday. I stayed up all night to catch the goods." On March 20, boss Chen of the Datang Village Garment Factory said tiredly while squeezing into the recruitment team. .
After the first lunar month, the garment village in Haizhu District, Guangzhou saw a "long recruiting queue": on both sides of the road about 3 kilometers long, there were full of recruiting garment factory owners.
They usually hold two things in their hands, one is the clothes samples to be made, and the other is the cardboard with the type of work written.
Candidates passing by, stop and go, picking their favorite jobs.
Clothing villages generally refer to urban villages such as Kangle, Lujiang, Wufeng, Datang, etc. in Haizhu District of Guangzhou. Due to its proximity to the largest cloth market in Guangzhou—Zhongda cloth market, tens of thousands of small workshops have been formed here. The garment factory attracts many practitioners in the garment industry to look for work every year.
However, unlike in the past when workers lined up for interviews in 500-meter long lines, in recent years, there has been a shortage of workers in clothing villages, which has quietly changed the traditional employment relationship.
In the spring of 2021 after the epidemic, due to the rapid recovery of the domestic garment industry market, since the tenth day of the first lunar month, many garment factory owners have lined up every day to wait for the favor of workers.
Status Quo: The boss is "picked" in line, and no one can be recruited with a monthly salary of over 10,000
For the boss of the clothing village, the key word in March of this year was "busy": recruiting workers during the day and rushing to work at night.
At 8 o'clock in the morning, Qiaonan New Street in Datang Village was full of hiring garment factory owners.
Like most people, Boss Chen holds samples and recruitment cardboards to greet the workers who come to look for work.
"There are more than 3,000 items waiting to be delivered in the factory, but there are only three workers."
Every year after the Spring Festival, Datang Village Garment Factory will encounter a "difficult time for recruitment."
According to Boss Chen told the "Workers Daily" reporter, before May every year is the peak season for garment factories, especially in the first month of the new year. Orders are large, but because the workers have not yet returned, there is a shortage of workers. phenomenon.
In order to complete orders on time and retain customers, the bosses of garment factories often increase their salaries and attract workers.
Boss Chen told reporters that he raised the labor price by 30% compared to the original price, and he could earn 600 yuan a day if he did it quickly, and he would earn more than 10,000 yuan a month.
"A lot of people came over to ask and left. The factory used to pick the workers, but now the workers pick our boss. We can't hire people, so we can only do it all night by ourselves at night."
Sister Liu, who was also queuing up on the street to recruit workers, had better luck. She had just recruited two workers and hoped to recruit two more.
"My clothes are simple in craftsmanship. His (Boss Chen) are shirts and shuttles. (Note: The shuttle is a piece of the loom that carries the weft and guides the weft into the shed. It does intermittent reciprocating motion on the traditional loom. , Make a continuous circular motion on a circular loom.) Workers don’t like to do it.” Liu Jie explained to reporters while greeting the workers.
A female worker stepped forward to inquire about the price, touched the clothes in Liu Jie's hand, and after some bargaining, finally sold for 5 yuan a piece, and quickly left the recruiting team with Liu Jie and went to the row of buildings.
During the visit, the reporter found that many bosses plan to increase the number of workers.
A boss surnamed Ma told reporters that thanks to the stability of the domestic epidemic, the clothing industry market has quickly recovered, and many large factories have unfinished orders flowing into small clothing factories such as Datang Village and Kangle Village.
Boss Ma, who experienced poor business last year, hopes that as many workers as possible, "As long as the workers are in place, I don’t have to worry about no orders for two or three months." Although Boss Ma is optimistic about the market, he has only hired one in the past few days. worker.
Choice: Workers like day-to-day jobs, and the younger generation loves the service industry more
According to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total number of migrant workers nationwide will exceed 285 million in 2020, a decrease of 1.8% from the previous year.
Among them, more than 169 million migrant workers were migrant workers, a decrease of 2.7%; local migrant workers were 116 million, a decrease of 0.4%.
The downward trend in the number of migrant workers has been particularly evident in the clothing village bosses in recent years.
"At the end of last year, when the wages were settled, an elder sister told me that they might not be back next year, and their hometown has also built a factory." Liu said that such workers are not alone, and more and more workers choose to be nearby. Employment, the number of workers returning to the garment-making village is decreasing year by year, and it is difficult for garment factories to recruit long-term workers. Workers prefer “daily settlements”, which makes garment factories have a long-term demand for recruitment during peak seasons.
Sister Zhang from Hubei told the "Workers' Daily" reporter that she has been in the clothing village for more than ten years and can do complex types of work. During the peak season, she could make more than 10,000 yuan a month. "My hands and feet are swift. You have to work about 14 hours and only have 2 days off a month to get this salary." Zhang Dajie patted her waist and said that this kind of intensity work can only be absorbed when she is young. Now that she is older, how much work will he work for? Take a rest tomorrow.
Although she didn't earn as much as before, like many of the workers around her, Sister Zhang is more willing to do odd jobs.
High-intensity work discourages aging workers, and at the same time makes young people resist working in clothing.
After 90, Xiaolin entered a garment factory in Kanglecun a month ago, but the long working hours from early to early morning gave him the idea of leaving.
"My friend delivers food in Tianhe for seven or eight thousand yuan a month. Although it is more work and more money, time is more free."
The attractiveness of manufacturing to young people has become weaker, and takeaway riders with freer working hours and higher incomes are becoming a priority career choice for more and more young people.
According to relevant media reports, the domestic and international sales industry has grown rapidly. In 2019, the total number of delivery staff has exceeded 7 million.
In the first half of 2020, Meituan and Ele.me added over 2 million takeaway riders. Nearly 30% of them came from manufacturing workers and over 80% were young people under the age of 40.
Change: The "old reform" of the garment village is imminent, and smart manufacturing has become a trend
On March 20, a reporter from the Workers’ Daily visited Kangle Village and Datang Village and found that as workers continued to return to work, the recruitment team was gradually shortening, and the "difficulties in recruiting" had been eased.
Large and small factories in the clothing villages, the roar of machines, stepped up production, and gradually increased the number of orders.
However, there are also some garment factory owners who are preparing to transfer the garment factory.
"The rent has doubled and labor costs have risen. I heard that we will build a science and technology industrial park in the future. We will either change our business or change our business." Boss Huang is posting information on his transfer of the garment factory on the bulletin board, intending to sell it during the peak season. Good price.
It is understood that in December 2020, Kangle Village, Lujiang Village, and Wufeng Village in Haizhu District of Guangzhou will be listed for publicly recruiting cooperative renovation partners. This project with a total area of about 1,127,100 square meters and a planned renovation investment of about 34.667 billion yuan will be It has become the old village reconstruction project with the largest total investment in Guangzhou.
According to the time node in the investment plan, in the next three to five years, the garment village will usher in the "old reform", focusing on the introduction of a new generation of information technology, new digital infrastructure, biomedicine and other strategic emerging industries and modern service companies , If all goes well, this prosperous clothing village may become history.
Peng Peng, a researcher at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences in Guangdong Province, believes that for labor-intensive manufacturing, first, it must be intelligent and automated, and replace workers with machines; or through the improvement of corporate efficiency, it can afford the relevant treatment of front-line workers. .
Regarding the "old reform" and industrial transformation, the owners of some small workshops in the clothing village said that they have been in clothing for decades and do not know how to operate in other industries.
If the garment industry wants to upgrade its industry in the future, it is hoped that it will receive proper resettlement and supporting guidance.
Ye Xiaozhong
Ye Xiaozhong