Salary Surge Hits &Nbsp In Pearl River Delta; End Of Low Labor Cost Mode

[extreme] the combination of extreme events and workers' actions forced sudden changes in the development mode of the low labor cost in the Pearl River Delta to a sudden change within a week.

In June 7th, Foxconn announced the pay increase plan again: the monthly salary of the first line operator through three months' assessment can reach 2000 yuan.

Only five days ago, in June 2nd, Foxconn announced that the minimum wage standard was raised from June 1st, and the standard pay for front-line operators increased unconditionally to 1200 yuan. The increase in salary is over 33%.

Two times, and such a rise in salary, even Foxconn employees feel suddenly. "I don't think so. Is it acceptable? "Luo Jun, a pseudonym from Qinzhou, Guangxi, wears a Foxconn blue blue T-shirt and relies on the east gate of Shenzhen Longhua factory area, told reporters.

This is the morning of June 9th. In the drizzle, the iron gate of Foxconn's general recruitment office across the road was closed, and twenty or thirty silent young men and women stood at the gate. One of them was a female worker who came from the nearby three strong electronics factory. She told this reporter that she came for nearly 2000 yuan wage of "exaggeration". "The work is the same. I can only take 900 pieces there, and I want to try it out."

But the "warm reminder" of the recruitment point told her that Foxconn began to suspend recruitment of general practitioners from May 29th.

At this moment, for Foxconn 2000 yuan "high salary" suspicion, puzzled and dare not ignore the five sense of complexity, is in Shenzhen, and even the entire Pearl River Delta Industry fermented.

"Foxconn's salary increase may be a word game." Zhuang Li, deputy general manager of the giant electronics factory in Daling Town, Dongguan, said: "in the Pearl River Delta, wage growth is unlikely. We will not follow suit to raise wages. "

But on the other hand, the labor action in this area is also breaking the "manpower cost advantage" of the "world factory" - almost at the same time of Foxconn's salary increase, the South China Sea Honda workers in Foshan, Guangdong have paid a 35% increase in salary with half a month's peaceful strike. The followers followed.

"We also have the pressure to raise salaries," said Wu Zhihao, deputy general manager of China marketing, LCD automation equipment division, Shilin electric and Electronics Group.

In fact, since the 21 order issued by the Ministry of labor and social security in 2004, the staff salaries have been continuously raised. In June 8th this year, Shenzhen raised the minimum wage of local workers to 1100 yuan per month, and realized the unification of internal and external standards. A month ago, the minimum wage in Guangdong was the first to break through the 1000 yuan mark.

No matter what psychology, business owners in the Pearl River Delta have to realize that both extreme events and workers' conscious struggle are working together to push the development mode of low labor cost in the Pearl River Delta to a blind alley. The era of cheap labor is accelerating.

This is the same as the local government's industrial spanformation from top to bottom, but it also means the hard game.

Re pricing

The wage increase of Honda workers in the South China Sea, together with Foxconn's conciliatory salary increase, will push the entire Pearl River Delta to the reasonable pricing of labor force.

In June 7th, it was time for Foxconn employees to get paid. Luo Jun, a Foxconn employee from Guangxi, told this reporter that at this time, many people would take money and leave, but this month there was something special.

"Now that there is a raise, no one has left." Luo Jun said.

After the base salary is added to 1200 yuan, the overtime pay of workers also rises according to the corresponding increase. Before June, overtime was 7.8 yuan per hour and 10 yuan at weekends. After raising salaries, the two figures increased to 10.6 yuan and 13.6 yuan respectively.

It is not just workers' wallet that has been adjusted. After the fall of the building, Foxconn began to straighten out the work and rest system, and asked to ensure that every worker had one day off a week, and the "three shifts" work system in the past was adjusted to "two shifts", that is, 12 hours in the day shift and the night shift. In addition to 8 hours' standard working hours, there are two hours of rest and meals in each class, and overtime in two hours.

This more regular "automatic overtime" arrangement is more popular than eight hours' three shifts'. On the basis of regular daily work, plus a weekend class, employees reach the upper limit of 80 hours overtime. According to the above salary adjustment, the monthly income can be about 600 yuan more than before.

It is not hard to foresee that if the basic salary of 2000 yuan becomes a reality, the monthly income of frontline operators can be easily close to 3600 yuan under the same intensity, which is not far from the average wage of 3893 yuan in 2009 in Shenzhen.

In the past, like Foxconn, a manufacturing factory outside Shenzhen, the wages of front-line workers, mainly migrant workers, mostly pressed the minimum wage standard line, which was very different from the average wage level of urban employees. Taking 2008 data as an example, the ratio of minimum wage in Shenzhen to the average wage of urban employees is 27.61%.

As a matter of fact, the trend of wage increase in the PRD processing enterprises was opened as early as the new labor contract law was promulgated in 2008. By the latest adjustment in May 1, 2010, the four types of urban standards for the minimum wage in Guangdong were more than 30% before the 2008 adjustment.

However, from top to bottom, the "guidance price" still suffers from "there are policies and countermeasures." Especially in the financial crisis since 2008, the enterprises in the Pearl River Delta are struggling to meet the minimum wage standards.

Liu Kaiming, director of the Shenzhen Institute of contemporary social observation of the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta factories, told correspondents that 90% of the factories, large or small, were providing false labor cost documents to labor departments and customers.

"The total number of wages is not false, it is working time. They also calculate the overtime pay to the basic salary that the customer sees, and change the length of work to 8 hours. Liu Kaiming said that after the basic salary and overtime pay of the general workers are above the local minimum wage standards, the minimum wage standard is not significant for enterprises.

Such a practice would have been "quietly erased" which should have been a rigid wage rise. With the increase of corporate profits and the increase in the income of migrant workers, the income gap between workers and local workers in cities and towns is widening, and labour disputes in the Pearl River Delta have occurred frequently.

In his paper published in February 2010, Liu Kaiming revealed that in 2008, the number of labour disputes in Shenzhen reached 52140, accounting for 7.45% of the national total. Arrears of wages, overtime and unpaid overtime pay have become the focus of labor disputes, of which 99% of the labour dispute cases are parties to foreign workers.

Quantitative change finally leads to qualitative change. The vibration industry is the Guangdong South China Sea Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co (hereinafter referred to as the South China Sea Honda) strike. More than 1000 Honda workers in the South China Sea have been saying "no" to low wages with a strike lasting 18 days, which has directly led to the shutdown of four Honda assembly plants in China and the loss of 240 million yuan per day. During this process, the workers and the management negotiated several times, and finally, with the help of Ceng Qinghong, general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Group and Professor Chang Kai of Renmin University Law School, reached a salary increase of 35% yuan or 500 yuan with the management through the way of democratic election of worker representatives.

Similar protests followed. During the Honda workers' struggle in the South China Sea, another Honda supplier in the South China Sea took a long strike and asked for a raise. In June 6th, Taiwan's electronic parts factory in Shenzhen also suffered a two hour stoppage and eventually raised 16.7% of the basic wage of workers, that is, the increase from RMB 900 yuan to RMB 1050 yuan.