Women and Work in Globalizing Asia by Dong-Sook S. Gills Nicola Piper

Author:Dong-Sook S. Gills, Nicola Piper [Dong-Sook S. Gills, Nicola Piper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415255868
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2001-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Productivity, ideology, and women workers

With political activity promoted as a priority, productivity in the factory during the period of socialist mobilisations was successfully portrayed as a patriotic pursuit. Training was once seen as an unparalleled opportunity for advancement into and within the factory. All workers entering the factory in the early days trained from six months up to two years in their production section. In the early days, this included political education as well as basic skills training. Workers were expected to be familiar with the work of other sections as well as their own and to be mobile between sections. This training period was lower-paid than normal, but included the same subsidies and benefits as regular work. This attitude towards training established an initial pattern that persists now, but disadvantages newly recruited younger women workers.

The biggest problem with production in these early days was the wave of American bombing campaigns in the north, which led to the factory being entirely evacuated twice, in 1965 and 1972. The various production sections were dispersed to different outlying areas of Hanoi, from where, in a prodigious feat of organisation, coordinated production continued to partially function, with thread rushed across town from one site to the weaving machines in another site (unfortunately, the contemporary result of this once-inspiring effort has been a further deterioration in the efficiency of the machines that were disassembled and moved several times). Self-defence brigades were organised in the factory, made up almost entirely of women workers, who went above-ground during air raids to try to shoot down American planes and to put out fires started by the bombing.

For all these reasons, worker morale is described as very high during the early days of the factory. Women workers were well aware of their increased status and privilege and, during wartime, factory production benefited from the unifying effect of fighting a common enemy despite the hardships endured in the process. The mobilisations and political campaigns helped to whip up enthusiasm for factory work, and the rewarding of individual innovations and demonstrations of expertise encouraged workers to participate actively in the production process. This is how these older women describe their experiences, when they were young and had a sense of purpose about their work. They had been successful in their involvement in the factory and viewed its patronage as a positive virtue, revealing sometimes nostalgic and idealised versions of this recent past.

The enthusiasm that is attributed to the early days of the factory waned quickly after the end of the war. General economic conditions that affected the Eighth of March workers worsened with the difficulties that accompanied national reunification in 1975, the occupation of Cambodia and the resulting border war with China in 1979. There was widespread over-reporting of production output and a precipitous drop in worker morale. The quality of the fabric produced at the factory was said to have fallen to the point that it barely held together. Even so, as the only commodity to which the workers had access, the fabric was also a tempting target for theft and resale on the black market.

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