Guangzhou Textile Village Recruitment Difficulties Behind: "There Are Many Factories, Workers Are Not As Many As Before."

After sending away the last guest in the store, Lin Qing saw the news push of "Guangzhou textile village labor difficulty, monthly salary tens of thousands of strokes".

"The difficulty of recruitment is actually something I expected, but I didn't expect the situation to change so quickly."

Lin Qing told the Economic Observer network reporter.

Lin Qing from Shantou is more than 40 years old.

A year ago, she was running her own garment factory with her husband in a big village called "textile village".

In September of last year, Lin Qing and her husband switched off the garment factory, and opened the Chaoshan flavor restaurant near the mouth of the big Tong, due to a series of pressures, such as floating orders, increasing clothing factories and increasing costs.

Not only Lin Ching, but many garment factories in Datang Village are under similar pressure.

On the one hand, a large number of garment factories moved into big village, aggravating the struggle for orders and labor, on the other hand, the employment preference of workers has changed, and they do not want to work in garment factories.

The most direct expression of these problems is the fact that the garment factory has a high salary, but it is difficult to recruit suitable workers.

Experts pointed out that textile enterprises in order to solve the problem of recruitment difficulties, in the short term to improve the environment and improve welfare, in the long run, it should be upgraded to improve efficiency.

Small and medium-sized enterprises such as textile village should be pformed into a standardized industrial park under the guidance of the government.

Difficult employment

Less than 500 meters away from the restaurant of Lin Qing, the restaurant on the new street in south of Datang Village bridge has long been filled with garment factory workers.

They usually hold two things in hand, one is the sample of clothes to be made, the other is the card of the type of work and price.

On the road shuttle candidates, looking for their own work.

Datang Village is located in Haizhuqu District, Guangzhou. In the 90s of last century, a large textile processing workshop began to appear in the village.

Today, the village has been spread all kinds of clothing and textile mills, most of the residents directly rent the house to the factory.

On the first floor, there are many printing factories, embroidery factories and folding plants. The upper floor housing is smaller and is basically rented by small garment factories.

Because of the large number of textile factories and large volume of shipments, the village is known as the "textile village", attracting many workers every year to find jobs.

However, this year, the textile village encountered "unexpected" recruitment difficulties.

In fact, every year after the Spring Festival, Tai Tang Village will trigger a "war of grabbing people".

According to Lin Qing, the clothing factory's business can be divided into busy season and off-season. Every year before May 1st is the peak season, the number of orders is large, and the number of workers needed is also large. In the off-season, the demand for employment decreases with the number of orders.

Therefore, the current recruitment is mainly temporary workers, long-term recruitment is relatively small.

"Most of the factories here are recruiting workers, counting piecework salaries, one daily knot", said Liu Xin Yan, who opened the garment factory in the big pond village. "This year it is particularly hard to recruit. Last spring, at least 6 jobs could be recruited every day, and only 3 can be recruited this year."

According to Liu Xinyan estimates, the proportion of recruiters and applicants has reached three to one this year. "Maybe there are more factories, but fewer workers."

Zhou Wenfeng's factory is one of the new garment factories in Dang Tang village last year.

In 2018, Guangzhou launched the three year action plan for reconstruction of villages in Guangzhou, which will pform Nanpu villages and other urban villages.

Zhou Wenfeng originally opened a factory in Nanpu village, and the rental factory building was demolished. As with many garment factories in Nanpu village, Zhou Wenfeng moved the factory to the village of Datang.

His factory now has 8 workers, 5 of whom are his relatives, and the other 3 workers are temporary workers in these days.

Zhou Wenfeng introduced that he only recruited a temporary worker with a single wage of 2 yuan today. Skilled workers were hard to recruit.

Why is recruitment difficult?

As for the reasons for this year's fewer applicants, Lin Qing speculated that the order from the wholesale clothing market in Shahe and white horse in early 2018 has suddenly decreased a lot, and many workers left at the time because there was no work to do.

Guangzhou Shahe, Baima and thirteen lines are the three main garment wholesale markets.

A shopkeeper of the Shahe clothing wholesale market recalled that by the end of 2017, Taobao platform had strengthened the management and control of the quality of the platform. Many of the low-grade clothing Taobao stores in Shahe were directly closed as a base camp, resulting in a sharp reduction in orders in the first half of 2018.

In addition, the reduction in the cost of machinery and equipment is also a major factor in the increase in the number of garment factories in recent years.

Lin Qing told reporters: "originally purchased a machine needs tens of thousands, now twenty thousand yuan can rent four machines, people who open factories will naturally be more."

Earlier, an old worker who worked in her clothing factory earned some money and hired equipment, and opened a garment factory in big Tang village.

At the same time, applicants have higher requirements for garment factories.

Peng Kai, from Ganzhou, has worked in Guangzhou's garment factory since 2008. He is a skilled worker and a professional worker.

Peng Kai's demand for salary is relatively high. The target salary is daily wage of more than 600 yuan. "This line makes more money, and I have rich experience. I can do complex work clothes and work for 14 hours a day, and I should get 600 yuan."

Pang Kai estimates that during the peak season, hardworking skilled workers can get nearly 20 thousand yuan a month's wages, even if the workload is low in the off-season, they can earn 10 thousand out of a month.

During the interview, he received a call from a garment factory. The salary he gave him was estimated to be 700 yuan per day. He no longer paid attention to the recruitment crowd and went directly to the appointed factory to start work.

It is not only the big village, but also the difficulty of employment in Guangzhou in recent years.

Li Hanzhang, an HR center in Guangzhou, said in an interview that the company needed 164 thousand and 900 workers to fill up after the Spring Festival, accounting for 1.9% of the city's employment. The demand for laborers was mainly experienced, and the demand for primary skilled workers increased.

Analysts pointed out that the liquidity of the general practitioners is relatively large. Many enterprises will lose their jobs before the Spring Festival. A lot of new manpower will be needed in the new year to make up for the productivity. Especially after the holiday, many manufacturing industries will enter the peak season for production, and the demand is even more urgent.

As for the textile industry, the Research Report of the China Cotton Textile Industry Association shows that the problem of recruitment difficulties in Guangdong cotton textile enterprises has become increasingly prominent. There are three main reasons: first, the decline in the number of labor force brought about by the imbalance of population structure; the two is the change of employment concept; the employment of young people is mainly considering the factors such as working comfort and environment, and the three is the increasing population mobility due to the increasingly convenient pportation and unbalanced regional development.

In addition, industrial migration has also aggravated the labor shortage problem in Guangdong's garment and textile industries and traditional manufacturing industries.

Liu Yingdan, Deputy Secretary General of Guangdong Textile Association, told the Economic Observer network: "a lot of enterprises move the production sector to the outside of the province, set up factories in other provinces and cities, so that a part of the labor force will be employed directly in their hometown, leading to the loss of some foreign labor force in Guangdong province."

Way to break through

In order to cope with the difficulty of recruitment, garment factories can only raise the wage level of single products to attract applicants, which will lead to an increase in production costs.

"The wage cost of the dress like me is raised by more than 1 yuan, and no one is willing to do it."

Zhou Wenfeng told reporters.

According to his calculation, now he deducts the rent, water and electricity and labor costs, he and his wife earn only twenty thousand yuan a month on average, "profits are getting thinner, and sometimes they do not earn more than one worker."

In this regard, Liu Yingdan said that at present, Guangdong's textile enterprises are generally faced with the problem of rising production costs and reduced profits. Raw material costs, labor costs, land costs, environmental protection inputs, energy costs and innovative R & D investment increase year by year, resulting in reduced profit margins and less bargaining power.

In addition, rising costs and lower profits will exacerbate the problem of financing. "Enterprises want to finance to expand their scale or upgrade, but because they can not guarantee profits, they will not dare to raise funds because of cost accounting."

"In the increasingly difficult recruitment problem, upgrading and improving efficiency may be the only way out for textile enterprises", the Chinese cotton textile industry association wrote in its research report.

In the short term, Liu Yingdan suggested that textile enterprises could start with improving the working environment, improving workers' welfare and establishing incentive system.

In addition, if the clothing factories in the villages of the city want to seek breakthroughs in pformation, Liu Yingdan has provided two ideas. On the one hand, if the factory already has a certain scale, it should go to the road of standardization and industrialization; on the other hand, the spontaneous industrial agglomeration area like Datang village should actively pform into the industrial park.

"Of course, the establishment of industrial parks requires local governments to carry out industrial layout planning and provide support for infrastructure and industrial support."

Liu Yingdan added.

The reporter noted that the "outline of the development plan for the Great Bay area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao" clearly put forward the development of Characteristic Towns: "cultivating a number of attractive towns with distinctive advantages, improving municipal infrastructure and public service facilities, developing characteristic industries, and inheriting traditional culture, forming an important support for optimizing the development pattern of the region."

Prior to that, Guangdong has established Chikan, Huilong, Yanyang, Beijiao, ancient towns, ancient bamboo and other characteristic towns, but all are developing cultural tourism industry.

Liu Yingdan believes that if Guangdong can establish a town featuring clothing and textile production, sales and exhibitions, textile village may win the chance of pformation.

In textile villages, the textile workers are also exploring new ways.

Peng Kai told the Economic Observer network that many of his workers chose to switch careers or go back to work in recent years.

"A lot of friends have made money to go to a shop to be a boss, or to go back to work in their hometown, and now there are many factories there," explains Peng Kai.

As a former garment factory director, Lin Ching has also completed his own pformation. "Now that the factory is too busy and the competition is too big, people can't get it, so it's better to do something that they like."

Lin Qing said with a smile that she felt happier to open a restaurant than to open a garment factory.