Footwear Industry Calls For Normal Wage Growth Mechanism

Reporters in mid July, in the most densely populated Pearl River Delta area, found that the average wage of local workers increased by 20% this year, due to factors such as local minimum wage standards and recruitment difficulties.

Some enterprises in the Pearl River Delta have told reporters that in the long run, wage increases are inevitable. However, the minimum wage standards have been raised sharply, making the labor costs of enterprises significantly increased in the short term and increasing operating pressure. Therefore, we hope to establish a normal wage growth mechanism as soon as possible and reasonably control the pace of wage increase.

　 Workers seem to evaporate.

At the beginning of this year, when the owners of PRD and the Yangtze River Delta first met face to face, their biggest question was, "where have all the workers gone?" Originally, the main reason for the loss of employees in the PRD was that they went to work in the north, while the business owners in the Yangtze River Delta thought that the workers were developing southward, but when they met, they found that workers were like "human evaporation".

The difficulty of recruiting workers has come to prominence since the beginning of the year. After the Spring Festival, enterprises in Dongguan soon faced this difficult problem.

Jiaxun knitting factory is a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in Hongkong. Like other local textile enterprises, recruitment has become the most troublesome problem at the beginning of the year. Lin Xiaoning, deputy general manager of knitting factory, told reporters that "we were very optimistic this year, but suddenly found many workers vanished."

What is even more interesting is that in March, the top executives of Jiaxun knitting factory went to Hangzhou, Zhejiang and other places to investigate. They thought that the workers had been transferred to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, but they suddenly discovered that there was also a labor shortage. Business owners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang also wondered, did they not all run to Dongguan?

Labor intensive enterprises most concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta business owners suddenly found that workers like this "human evaporation".

The reform plan of income distribution has not yet been clear, and the minimum wage has been gradually expanded everywhere. The words "rising salary" and "income distribution reform" frequently give workers more expectation. Lin Xiaoning said that the media hyped up the hype of "shortage of migrant workers", to a certain extent, gave some migrant workers unrealistic expectations.

"At that time, there was a lack of people everywhere. The South was short and the North was short. There was no one everywhere, and there was no shortage of people in one industry." Lin Xiaoning said. At the beginning of the year, the difficulty of recruiting workers directly led enterprises to start raising their salaries independently before they raised the minimum wage standard locally.

Take precautions and become the "homework" that an experienced business owner must do. According to Lin Xiaoning, at the beginning of the year, in order to avoid recruiting people, enterprises also had a lot of appeasing policies before they started, including raising wages and improving welfare.

Ceng Xiaoqing, director of the personnel department of Shenzhen GuanFeng Technology Co., Ltd., told the workers before the Spring Festival holiday that they hoped to introduce their fellow townsman and friends to work in the factory in the future. This practice has also been successful. Guanfeng technology has escaped the shortage of migrant workers in March, though its actual wage has increased by 10%.

"Recruitment difficulties" boost wage increases

To this day, the "recruitment difficulty" has not been alleviated at the beginning of the year, accompanied by the endless large-scale recruitment of enterprises and a round of spontaneous wage increases.

"Made in China looks at Guangdong, Guangdong makes Dongguan." Dongguan, the first to undertake the world's industrial transfer and to hold many well-known brands in and outside the country, is well deserved to praise the "world factory". Now, Dongguan is also facing the plight of manpower shortage.

Shuttling through the Pearl River Delta Industrial Park, it is obvious that there are many recruitment advertisements, which seem to be no less than advertised by products. For example, in the main building of Dongguan Ju Sheng shoe factory, there is a huge recruitment notice. "Long term recruitment of general practitioners, men and women is not limited." Shenzhen Dongyu shoe industry also wrote on its factory wall "our company has long been recruiting general workers".

What is even more striking is that, at the doorway of many enterprises, there is a recruiting room parallel to the duty room and the security room. This indicates that long-term recruitment has become one of the daily tasks of many enterprises.

When the "recruitment difficulty" has given the owners and workers a general expectation, the change of supply and demand will give rise to a justification for salary increase. Lin Xiaoning said that since the beginning of this year, the actual wage of Jiaxun knitting mill has increased by more than 30%.

Lv Dexin, the vice chairman of Hongkong mirror Wei Co., Ltd., who is engaged in the furniture industry for more than ten years in Dongguan, told reporters that the minimum wage of factory workers has been raised by 20% this year, and the overall wages have been raised by about 5%, but it is still difficult to recruit employees. "Many of our workers are elderly, or have no special skills or are slower than ordinary workers, but we have no choice but to do so." Lv Dexin reluctantly told reporters.

At the same time, the "welfare card" has become a common means when the company raises salaries. Last Wednesday, the largest talent market in Dongguan, the Zhitong talent market, was as crowded as ever. The reporter observed that apart from the introduction of salary advantages, many enterprises have introduced the various entertainment facilities owned by enterprises in recruitment information. Some enterprises even published photographs of libraries, billiards rooms, table tennis courts and basketball courts in recruitment advertisements. The head of a company's personnel department said it was to attract more 80 and 90 job seekers.

Keep up with the wind and raise salaries, making enterprises unprepared.

Since the beginning of this year, 27 provinces and municipalities across the country have planned to raise the minimum wage standard. All over the place, the "pay surge" has also attracted applause. There is a view that a wide range of wage increases for the reform of income distribution is of great significance, which means that the reform fired the first shot.

This news has excited many people, but if it is equated with income distribution reform, it may be too simplistic understanding. In fact, the reform of income distribution is far more complicated than raising the minimum wage, and the wages of employees who are determined by market competition and supply and demand are far from the government's "visible hand".

Reporters in the Pearl River Delta research found that some business executives believe that this round of "wage surge", in fact, there are factors that follow the trend of comparison, not to take the initiative to proceed with the reform of income distribution. Reporters also learned from relevant researchers that during the process of raising the minimum wage standard, some cities in the Pearl River Delta region did not investigate, but directly compared with other coastal cities.

"Some cities simply do not know why the minimum wage standards should be raised, but only when other cities are raised, will they be followed up." These people pointed out that such a blind increase in standards did not take into account the actual situation of local enterprises, nor did they know how high the enterprises were, which would easily lead to inconsistency in labor relations.

In fact, not only do some cities increase their standards to follow suit, but many workers continue to improve their expectations. When Lin Xiaoning talked about some workers' reasons for asking for a raise, he cried and laughed. "Our factory has a general worker. Last year's salary was 1300 yuan. This year, when the workload has not increased, it has increased to 1450 yuan. In fact, it has risen by more than 10%, but he is very unhappy. He came to me and said, "why did the other people add 300 yuan? I only added 150 yuan."

Faced with this large scale of "wage surge", many enterprises in the Pearl River Delta have been overwhelmed. Reporters found that many enterprises in Dongguan, Shenzhen and other places were very puzzled and helpless when talking about "raise salary", because before the "raise salary", enterprises not only did not expect the local government to raise the minimum wage standard substantially, but also did not expect workers to substantially raise their salary expectations.

"In recent 3 years, the wages of our factory have been increased by more than two times, especially since this year, wages have increased by more than 30%. But in the past 7 years, the cumulative salary increase was only around 15%. Chen Ming, director of operation of Jiasun knitting factory in Dongguan, sighed with reporters. The wage cost suddenly rose sharply, and the enterprise was caught unprepared.

Chen Ming felt the same way, and Lu De Xin. According to him, this year, the company still used last year's raw material prices and workers' wages as the basis for calculating the cost to quote the customers, but in fact, when there was an order, they were afraid to take it, because the price of raw materials and the wages of workers were rising, and the rate of increase was much higher than expected.

Take Dongguan as an example, the city raised its minimum wage from 770 yuan to 920 yuan in May this year. The reporter investigated the wages of employees in Dongguan electronics, home textiles, light industry crafts and other industries, and found that the average salary was 1800-2000 yuan, which was double the minimum wage.

Ceng Xiaoqing introduced that the average monthly wage of the general worker's technology has reached 2000 yuan or so; the chairman of Pioneer Electronics Dongguan Co., Ltd., Li Shaoxi, said that the average worker's bag was wrapped up and the monthly salary was about 1800-2000 yuan; the manager of Ye Zhenbo, the manager of Run Feng metal plastic Co., told reporters that the average salary of the enterprise in May this year was about 2350 yuan, and that the average wage of the workers in the ordinary line was about 1800-1900 yuan, and that the workers with technical content were over 2500 yuan.

During a visit to the largest talent market in Dongguan, the reporter also found that in the recruitment market of the talent market, the words "the average wage increase in this city has risen 20% this year".

According to Chen Ming, the profit margin of the textile industry is about 5%-6%, but because of the 30% increase in wages this year, the gross profit margin has dropped to below 4%. "Wage rise is a big trend. It is very reasonable and inevitable. But for our labor-intensive and low margin businesses, this year's rise is too urgent for them to bear. Chen Ming said.

Located in Gongming town of Shenzhen City, Shenzhen Hongyu Electronics Co., Ltd. also felt the cost pressure caused by the huge salary increase. According to the person in charge of the company, in order to recruit enough workers, the average wage of the company's workers has increased by 23% this year, and the profit margins have been squeezed.

Calling for normal wage growth mechanism

Zhang Yi, a researcher with the Institute of population and labor economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters that recruitment difficulties made many enterprises take the initiative to raise wages. However, if we want to raise the minimum wage standard to help the optimization of the income distribution pattern, we must satisfy one condition, that is, the income growth of the low-income people is faster than that of the high income earners.

In addition, when many enterprises implement the minimum wage standard, they often adopt the method of increasing normal working hours and reducing overtime wages, and allowing workers to reduce overtime time. So it seems that raising the minimum wage level can not play a big role in raising workers' income. Moreover, the minimum wage standard is mainly carried out in cities, and the effect is very small for low-income farmers in the vast rural areas.

It is undeniable that for a long time, because the labor market has been in the buyer's market, the price of labor is rising very slowly. This round of the 27 provinces and cities, including the Pearl River Delta, has substantially raised the minimum wage standard. However, such a long period of downturn and short term inflation are not healthy and are not conducive to optimizing the pattern of income distribution.

Ye Zhenbo said, "wage rise is a trend. We agree with it and will do it according to the relevant requirements of the state. But the most important thing is to hope that the government can control the pace of the minimum wage increase and not raise the standard sharply. "

Besides the minimum wage standard should be steadily raised, the normal wage growth mechanism for workers and staff members also needs to be established. In this round of income distribution reform, the departments concerned also clearly realized the importance of establishing a normal wage growth mechanism. The Ministry of human resources and social security recently pointed out in a report that we should focus on promoting the collective wage consultation system, accelerate the establishment of a mechanism for workers' democratic participation in the decision-making of wage distribution in enterprises, and continue to strengthen the guidance of classification, so as to promote the establishment of a mechanism for increasing the wages of workers and staff members with economic benefits, and promoting the production of normal workers and workers in the battalion to share the fruits of development rationally.

What is the normal wage growth mechanism? Gu Yan, a researcher at the national development and Reform Commission's Social Development Research Institute, wrote that the so-called normal growth is to ensure that the rate of increase in wages exceeds the rate of inflation; two, to achieve continuous improvement in the living standard of workers; three, it will not cause obvious deterioration of employment situation; four, it can play a role in increasing the proportion of labor income.