Following a sharp drop in the number of migrant laborers returning to the Pearl Riverand Yangtze River deltas after Spring Festival, however, competition for staff has becomeintense.
Experts say companies are being forced to raise salaries and offer extra benefits asworkers look to cash in on a sellers’ market.
“Migrant workers are a lot more fussy than before,” said He Suwei, chairman ofHangzhou Weibang Airflow Spinning Co in Zhejiang province. “They don’t just talkmoney; they talk about working environments, holidays and other fringe benefits we havenot even heard of before. Workers have more say than us now because they have a widerchoice.”
The textile factory, which lies on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Hangzhou,employs about 100 workers and has been doing roaring trade in the last several months asthe nation continues to recover from the global economic meltdown.
He Suwei wants to recruit about 10 more people to meet the increased workload, buthe is not alone. Many neighboring factories have also posted advertisements to entice staffwith attractive benefits.
“We have no choice but to match all offers. Offering bigger salaries is a trend we mustfollow, otherwise we face huge losses due to late deliveries,” said He.
Workers at the factory will each receive an extra 150 yuan (20) in their March wagepacket, pushing their salaries up to about 2,000 yuan a month - 40 percent higher thanbefore the onset of the global recession, said He. The boss has also thrown in free lodgingand lunch subsidies to sweeten the deal.
At nearby Hangzhou Maria Textile Co, a company with a 20-year history and morethan 200 staff, owner Cao Yakun said about 10 percent of his employees - mostly skilledworkers - did not return after the Lunar New Year holidays in January 2009.
“I had no choice but to raise the salaries of my less experienced workers from 750yuan a month to 960 yuan,” said Cao. “Also, to make sure the workers who did returnstayed, I boosted my skilled workers’ pay by 10 to 15 percent.”
A poll of more than 300 companies impacted by the labor shortage showed almost90 percent had increased wages to either keep or attract staff, said the Beijing-based TaiheConsulting Company. About 75 percent had opted to lower their criteria for new recruits,and 27 percent enhanced training for workers, the poll showed.
Cao complained that the increase in labor costs, coupled with a spike in prices forraw materials, is seriously eating into his company’s profits. But these conditions are muchbetter than the alternative: having to shut down production.
“We have had to suspend two of our processing lines because we cannot find peopleto work on them,” said a manager surnamed Huang at Quanyi Shoe Machinery Co Ltdin Lishui town, close to the city of Foshan, one of the Pearl River Delta’s largest industrialhubs in Guangdong province.
The factory restarted operation in late February but only 70 percent of its staffreturned to work. “Not only have we lost our existing workforce, we’re also struggling likemany factories in Foshan and neighboring cities to attract new workers,” said Huang.
Liu Yonghao, one of China’s richest men and a member of the Chinese People’sPolitical Consultative Conference, welcomed the labor shortage because it putsmigrant workers in a stronger bargaining position, as well as forces companies to beless discriminatory when recruiting. “The labor shortage is a very good thing. Migrantworkers are being paid 10 to 20 percent more than before, while those aged 30 and olderare finding it easier to get jobs,” said Liu, chairman of New Hope Group, an agribusinessenterprise based in Sichuan province. “Employers are now less picky about the sex of newworkers. Also, some companies used to only recruit workers from certain provinces. Theydare not do that now.”
Factory boss He in Hangzhou, who said about 80 percent of his staff come fromSichuan and Anhui provinces, explained that many businesses were now looking to hireworkers aged 30 to 40 because “they are usually more matured and stable”.
At a State-run labor market in Shanghai’s Minhang district, many of the jobseekersscanning the screens for the latest vacancies - mostly in construction and security - saidthey were looking for a job with a “little bit extra”.
“A job is really easy to get now so I want higher pay,” said Yu Mao, 28, a migrantlaborer from Hubei province who has worked in the metropolis - part of the YangtzeRiver Delta - since 2003. “I’m looking for about 2,000 yuan a month.”
In both the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas, where cheap migrant labor has fueledrapid economic development over the last three decades, recruitment firms say they have areal job on their hands.
More than 400,000 positions were up for grabs across Zhejiang in the first week afterSpring Festival, up 19 percent over the same period in 2009, showed human resourcesstatistics released by the provincial government. However, the number of registeredjobseekers was just 106,800, representing a fall of almost 30 percent.
At a job fair in early March in the city of Zhanjiang, usually a major source oflabor in southwest Guangdong, more than 250 companies from Dongguan, Zhuhai andZhongshan sent representatives to fill about 39,000 jobs. Less than half of the 10,000applicants they managed to attract were hired, sources with the provincial labor authoritytold China Daily.
Guangdong alone is short of about 900,000 workers, according to Liu Zhigeng, Partychief of Dongguan, who explained that his city needs almost 200,000 more hands. Thosemost in need are clothes manufacturers, printing and packaging firms, the service industry,and transport companies, said labor officials.
