New Prospect Of Guangdong Job Market

In March, the temperature in Guangzhou has soared, and the atmosphere of summer heat is gradually showing. Just as hot as the weather is, there are street job markets in some urban villages. These places have become the gathering places for small factories and migrant workers to select and match each other.

In a village in the city near the Zhongda cloth Market in Haizhu District, a "long recruitment dragon" is different from what people often see: on both sides of the road, which is about 3 kilometers long, full of garment shop owners holding recruitment signs waiting to be "selected" by workers.

As one of the most concentrated "front shop and back factory" cloth clothing market in China, there are tens of thousands of small workshop based merchants and more than 100000 migrant workers.

From "boss chooses worker" to "worker chooses boss", is labor market inverted? Why do workers like "daily calculation and daily settlement" street employment? What economic phenomena do this phenomenon reflect? Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporters launched an investigation.

Why does the boss line up to be picked?

After the Spring Festival, it is the traditional peak season of the clothing industry. However, after the tragic epidemic situation last year, the post Festival peak season of Zhongda cloth market seems to have come earlier and more fiercer than in previous years.

In March, all the stalls for cloth, clothing and fabric have been opened and operated, and people are swarming everywhere. Small carts carrying goods shuttle back and forth between the stalls like little bees.

At 8:30 a.m., on both sides of the road, there are full of employers of garment factories in Kangle middle, near Kangle bridge. They stood on the roadside shouting with various samples of clothes and holding up the recruitment signs of "four lines" and "flat cars" (different processes of garment making).

On both sides of the sidewalk stand dense, it is difficult to have a "foothold", ears are full of the voice of wage bargaining, as well as the cacophony of trumpets constantly urged by the flow of people.

Standing in the recruitment crowd, sister Xu is the boss of a clothing factory and a hot drill factory. She said that due to the epidemic situation last year, there were no orders from abroad, and the domestic clothing industry was squeezed. Only by selling at low prices could they earn money for materials. It was very difficult to do business and almost had to close down. However, after this year's Spring Festival, the market has recovered rapidly, and customers are often "placing orders today and asking for goods tomorrow", so they can't be busy at all.

"If there is too much to do, the boss will find more factories to do it together. So we recruit workers in the morning and customers in the afternoon, and we are producing all day and night. " Sister Xu, who stayed up all night, was tired but energetic. She had seen the depression of last year. The noisy roads, the incessant bargaining noise and the lights of her own factory day and night made her feel steadfast.

Around the cloth market of CUHK, the surrounding villages spontaneously formed dense small clothing workshops. The large rented a farmer's house and employed 20 or 30 workers, while the small one had one room, two couples and two sewing machines. These workshops mainly undertake the outsourcing orders of factories and are the "nerve endings" of the garment industry chain.

Large and small factories and workshops have given birth to a large demand for garment workers. The road employment market here has existed for many years. Most of the garment workers come from Hubei Province. Therefore, there are many "Shanzhai passenger stations" to and from Xiantao and Honghu counties in Hubei Province. In the past, the supply and demand of this road market has been booming, but this year, under multiple factors, it is showing an unprecedented blowout.

"Big rivers have water, small rivers are full.". At this time of last year, the clothing industry was in dire straits due to the epidemic situation. However, after the Spring Festival this year, the market recovered rapidly, and orders from some large factories quickly flowed into these small factories. Before and after the Lantern Festival, the shortage of orders and the time difference between workers returning home and not returning to the city led to a sharp increase in recruitment difficulties.

Why do workers like to do odd jobs in the form of "day clearing and daily settlement"?

Xu Wenge, 29, and Jin Jia, 31, are Hubei villagers. The two people came out at 2:00 p.m. and stood in the area where part-time jobs were concentrated near Kangle bridge. Less than 3 o'clock, they negotiated with a boss holding a "four line" sign and entered the processing workshop.

The boss found a good machine and work station for the two people. After a brief greeting of three or five words, he was busy going out to count the goods. Xu Wenge skillfully string the thread on the machine and began to be busy. He could make a dress in about a minute or two. However, after less than half an hour, Xu Wenge asked Jin Jia to leave.

"In the clothing industry, we mainly rely on piece by piece. The price of each piece here is $1.5, and the price is OK. If you make 300 pieces a day, you can earn four or five hundred. But the edge of the cloth here is too narrow to make it fast. In such a day, you can't make much money. It's not cost-effective. " Xu Wenge said.

Xu Wenge has been working in Guangzhou garment industry for more than 10 years. He said that since 2015, he did not enter the factory and worked in odd jobs. "Entering the factory is a stable point, but the working hours are long and not free. Now I work part-time. If I'm not happy, I'll change to another one. In any case, I worked hard and worked hard, and I earned almost as much as I did in the factory. In peak season, you can earn tens of thousands a month, and you can earn four or five thousand in off-season. "

CUHK cloth market provides "soil" for a large number of garment mills and temporary labor market. According to the reporter's observation, tens of thousands of merchants here are mainly engaged in the end process of the garment industry, such as sewing sleeves and necklines, ironing, sewing, etc. These processes are difficult to automate. Some large enterprises in the Pearl River Delta have produced the block parts of energy production and sent them to these small workshops for final integration, reducing the dependence on labor. And a large number of small factories and garment workshops have become an indispensable part of the industrial chain.

At the same time, urban villages like Kangle village also provide low cost of living for garment factories and workers. The bed here is generally 12 yuan / night, and the lunch box of three meat and one vegetarian is 15 yuan, which attracts them to stay here for a long time.

According to incomplete statistics, tens of thousands of garment merchants and more than 100000 migrant workers gathered near the cloth market of CUHK.

Hidden worry of "supply and demand booming" in recruitment and employment

In the evening, the reporter followed the workers through the winding alleys and walked into the "handshake building" of the village in the city. The garment processing factory of Zhang Huahui, the boss of Sichuan Province, is located among them.

A shop less than 100 square meters is divided into two floors. On the first floor, a large table with a length of more than 10 meters is stacked with clothes that workers have just locked. On the second floor, more than a dozen machines were arranged in two rows, and several workers were busy sewing.

"We have five or six long-term workers here, and most of them recruit odd workers and settle their wages on a daily basis." Zhang Huahui said that the clothing industry's weak and peak season is obvious, and generally after the Spring Festival is the most prosperous time of the year. It's not cost-effective to recruit long-term workers. Part time jobs can alleviate the temporary shortage of labor. When the order is small, we don't have to raise so many people.

"Some time ago, the workers didn't come back and there were many orders. It was really difficult to recruit. After the Lantern Festival, most of the workers have come back, and now the recruitment is much better. " Zhang Huahui said as he was busy with his work.

According to the survey, the relationship between supply and demand of recruitment and employment can be roughly balanced, but in the long run, both employees and workers have their own worries.

In terms of the nature of the work, the garment workshops at the end of the industrial chain are engaged in manual work, which requires long-time work, which is not popular with young people. Zhang Huahui is not worried about recruiting at the moment, but he thinks it will be more and more difficult. "No matter in the factory or the workshop, sitting in front of the machine repeatedly works for hours. Today's post-90s young people have better family conditions than the previous generation and are not willing to suffer from this hardship. "

At the same time, engaging in garment making is not a simple and repetitive labor, but a technical activity, which requires cost learning and practice. Zhang zhanxiong, a 28 year old garment maker, said that he had no place to learn. He was taught by his relatives and friends. His hands were clumsy and slow. It was not as fast as other industries to get money. "I had an occupational disease when I was young. It's better to send takeout easily."

The reduction of industry profits also makes small workshop owners complain incessantly. Zhou Yulan, who recruits for her family, said that processing one piece of women's long sleeves can earn 10 yuan and give workers 8 yuan. Now the rent in Guangzhou is rising year by year, and it is also said that villages in the city are going to be demolished. "I'm over 50 years old. I don't want to work any more. I'll go home and do something else. After a hard year, I worked for the landlord in the end. "

Let "nerve endings" be healthy and active

The clothing industry road market is particularly lively under the "bumper year". The "order driven" reflects the recovery of the whole industry, driving the strong orders, increasing production capacity and accelerating the pace of the whole industry chain, which is a gratifying sign of the overall recovery of the economy.

Tens of thousands of garment factories, like the "nerve endings" of this industry, have shown strong market flexibility under the impact of the epidemic: when the epidemic comes, many small workshops "lie down on the spot" and close down at the lowest cost. Once the market recovers, they can quickly organize production, and "the spring breeze is green on the South Bank of the river".

At the same time, a large number of flexible employment personnel "the host does not beat the west" lack of security and other concerns, but also calls for the system as soon as possible to study countermeasures to keep these "nerve endings" healthy and active.

Xu Wenge said that although he worked part-time jobs for a long time, his monthly income was more than 10000 yuan, but there was no guarantee in the long run. The workshop owner would not buy social security. "Except for some large-scale factories, they will buy social security for their workers. For example, we can only wait until we have saved enough money to buy social security and guarantee ourselves. "

The reporter interviewed a number of workshop owners and found that the employment of casual workers is flexible employment, without labor contract and any welfare protection. This means that once there are problems, they will become social support, including accidental injuries in production safety, industrial accidents, and social security for old workers.

Nerve endings are the key tissues in the body. From the perspective of garment industry chain, although the trend of industrial transformation and upgrading and intelligence is obvious in recent years, a large number of end processes can not be intelligent, and the workshop type garment factory with flexible employment has become an important part of the industrial chain.

The more active the market is, the more flexible employment tends to be. Industry insiders point out that China's flexible employment is on the rise, involving 200 million people. In the face of this trend, we should provide more effective protection for this group from the institutional mechanism.