Labour in China: Post-Socialist Transformation by Ngai Pun;

Author:Ngai, Pun;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2016-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

To keep the workers productive and prevent labor turnover seem to be the priorities of management from the above quote. The ‘confinement’ of the workforce in relatively good living conditions, under stricter management control, was paradoxically deemed a company strategy to retain workers who were often mobile and unreliable. The labor turnover rate in foreign or private-owned enterprises in China is particularly high, ranging between 30 and 90 percent each year (Smith 2003).

Labor mobility was a top concern not only for management, but also for the Chinese state when it has to deal with millions of rural migrants flooding the cities seeking job opportunities each year since the mid-1990s (see Cook 2002; Fan 2003). Ninety percent of the workforce in China Silver Garments were rural workers from villages or towns in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, two near-hinterland provinces of the Shanghai region. The remaining 10 percent were local workers who lived at home. More than 70 percent of the workers employed in China Silver Garments were women. Most were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Accommodation of these workers thus was a sensitive problem for the company as the new dormitory provisions were still not ready.

The spatial hierarchy served to constitute a workforce hierarchy not only in terms of wage, work position, and status, but also living provisions (Rofel 1999). Global capitalism was built upon spatiality of differences and hierarchies, and was crystallized in the microforms of the labor process and dormitory provisions, at least in the transnational workplaces in China. The huge difference in accommodation provisions between the managerial staff, technical and clerical staff, and the production workers represented a spatial hierarchy that served to reinforce segmentation of the labor force. The company was renting flats and dormitory rooms in three different locations nearby. Two-bedroom flats were rented for managerial staff, forepersons, and office clerical staff whose living conditions were far better than production workers. A shared dining room, kitchen, toilet and bathroom with hot water facilities were provided in the flats. Dormitory rooms rented from government-built premises housing 8–16 workers were for production workers. Living conditions were generally poor and far from meeting the Corporate Code's requirements concerning minimum housing standards. No kitchen and bathroom were provided; a shared toilet used by more than 10 workers did not provide adequate sanitary conditions. Potable water was not provided to the workers, who had to buy it on the ground floor. Fire drills and emergency lighting were nonexistent and fire extinguishers were either completely absent or out of use.

Contrary to the Code, the workers were not provided with their own storage space for their clothes and personal belongings, which they had to hang over their beds. Generally, no fans were installed, even in the 16-bed double bunk dormitories on the upper floor of one building, where temperatures soared in summer. As hot water and showers were not available in some places, workers had to go to the public baths to get a shower, at a cost of RMB 5. Under pressure from

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