The urban village factory under Xiaomanyao
In Guangzhou, Kangle and Lujiang Villages, not far from Xiaomanyao, are famous urban villages in Guangzhou. It can also be said that It is the vane of China’s ready-made garment market. Garment factories of all sizes are gathered here, forming a microcosm of China’s garment manufacturing industry in the past 20 years.
However, as the core of the garment industry industrial belt, when I walked in here, I found that the streets were full of recruitment for “parking workers, electric shears, cutters, and tail workers”. The streets were filled with people recruiting workers from garment factories, making it look like a rush of people.
Every year from March to April after the Spring Festival, it is the peak recruitment season here. Many workers left a year ago and never returned to the factory. The rework rate was very low, and orders from garment factories could not be completed. In order to catch up with the construction deadline, many factories had to choose to recruit workers in large quantities along the street.
In order to recruit people as quickly as possible, many factories have offered words such as “monthly salary 8,000, monthly income over 10,000” to attract workers. However, even with the promise of a high salary, only a handful of people came to apply. The experienced employees expressed their disdain for the high salary, as if they had seen through the routine long ago.
The difficulty in recruiting workers in garment factories has attracted the attention of many social media. An insider familiar with the Guangzhou market even said: “Currently, most of the workers engaged in the garment industry in Guangzhou’s urban villages are middle-aged. Young people are now unwilling to do this, and there may be fewer and fewer workers in the future.”
Some garment factory bosses even complained directly about the post-90s generation. Young people nowadays are too squeamish, can’t stand hardship, and don’t want to work in factories. Especially those born in the 1990s, many people would rather sit in an air-conditioned office and earn a salary of 2-3,000 yuan a month. There are also young people who want to start their own business and have no capital, but they are not willing to work as an assembly line worker. This kind of three-point and one-line life is too boring, and they cannot retain them no matter how high the salary is.
When we opened the recruitment website, we also saw that many garment factories in Shenzhen were also offering high salaries to hire skilled garment workers.
Conflicts behind recruitment difficulties intensify
Factory recruiter said: “Workers’ salary requirements are high , but the price of the entire market lags behind, and the price given by customers is too low. The customer pays 10 yuan for processing fee for a piece of clothing, and workers have to pay 6 yuan in wages. All workers recruited by garment factories are responsible for food and housing, and the annual rent Everything is constantly rising, and once the rent, water and electricity are paid, we really can’t make any money.”
An employee who applied for the job said: “Some bosses lure people into the factory with high salaries. If they work harder during the peak season, they can indeed earn more than 10,000, but in the off-season, they just People are being fired; and the efficiency of many garment factories is getting worse and worse. The salary of 7-8 thousand yuan is rare once a year, and the salary is generally 2000-4000 yuan. In addition, all basic employee protections are not available. If you work overtime until you vomit blood, your boss will tell you off.”
Difficulties of garment factories:
1. All costs have been rising in recent years, especially labor costs. Continuous annual growth of more than 10% puts great pressure on enterprises to survive. As a labor-intensive industry, it is very sensitive to labor costs.
2. Many garment companies basically used to receive zero profit from the orders they received just enough to cover workers’ wages. Some orders have to be paid back at a loss to support workers, and there are only 2-3 months of peak season in a year when normal production and profits are generated.
Workers’ difficulties:
1. The cost of living in Guangzhou is getting higher and higher. It costs 1,200 yuan to rent a single room.
2. Work is done on a piece basis in the factory. The unit price of a piece varies from a few cents to a few cents. The most is just over 1 yuan, but the price of 1 yuan Either the clothes are too difficult to make, or a batch of goods only comes out every six months.
3. If I want to get a monthly salary of 7-8 thousand, I must work about 15 hours a day. It’s also quicker to get started. Sometimes it will definitely scare you when you see how big the pile behind us is. The scary number is a trivial matter, but problems with the cervical vertebrae and busted buttocks are everyone’s problems.
Young people are unwilling to make clothes
1. Making clothes is a tedious and boring process. People who often go to garment factories can often see workers lying on dozens of rolls of cloth lying on dozens of rolls of cloth after staying up all night to make clothes, sleeping soundly. Many ironers iron clothes day and night, and their right arm is obviously becoming sick over time. Most of the new generation of young people cannot accept the noisy working environment and boring work content, even if it is a high-paying industry.
2. It’s not that those born in the 1990s can’t do it, but that there are many job opportunities and more choices outside now. Although the monthly income in the factory is over 10,000 yuan, the environment is not good, the weather is not breathable, and people often work overtime. Health is more important than that. I would rather pay a few thousand a month to save my life. Moreover, there are too many routines in factories now, and it cannot be entirely blamed on the reluctance of young people. If you want to retain people, you must have implementation measures and benefits.
3. The core workers currently engaged in the garment industry are middle-aged people who have the technology and connections in the industry. Clothing, a traditional handicraft industry, is showing a declining trend in China. Although food, clothing, housing and transportation are necessities for people’s lives, and there will always be a market for the garment industry, the garment industry…�’s production methods will usher in a transformation, and the upgraded garment industry will only provide new roles for young people.
The operating pain points of garment factories
1. In the era of large-volume orders, factories sell models one by one For orders of 10,000 pieces, during the production process, there is sufficient time for material procurement, data preparation, and production conversion cycles. The conversion frequency is once a month. The communication cycle of information at all management levels of the enterprise is long and the response is slow. The order model of multiple models, small quantities, and short delivery times has led to information disjoint and slow response in the management organization.
2. Most garment factories use large-package or whole-piece production. This model has higher production efficiency when producing large orders, but the production cycle is prolonged. , the quality response speed is too slow. When faced with small orders, production efficiency will be low and conversion time will be too long, seriously affecting the delivery date. Especially when there are off-peak and peak seasons, the factory production line has insufficient production capacity during the peak season, and there are too many people in the off-season, resulting in a lack of flexibility.
3. The threshold for the clothing manufacturing industry is low, a large number of people join, and cheap labor is exported, resulting in low-cost competition. However, the industry itself is a technical and labor-intensive industry focusing on cutting, sewing, and packaging. The real core is skilled workers. It takes 1-3 years for a garment factory to train a skilled worker. Such skilled workers Worker resources are the source of competition among major factories. Anyone who has been to a factory knows that a good pattern maker is someone who is older and has rich experience, and the patterns produced are more in line with the designer’s requirements.
Traditional manufacturing industry is in urgent need of transformation
The increase in labor costs is a major problem for traditional manufacturing industry The root of the impact. From Zara to Louis Vuitton, the production bases of brands such as Zara and Louis Vuitton have shifted to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia. It can be seen that our advantage of cheap labor no longer exists.
Competition in the garment industry has intensified. A large number of factories have closed down, a large number of outstanding garment workers have lost their jobs, and orders have flowed out. Both factories and garment companies are under the dual pressure of insufficient demand and rising costs.
For garment factories, in terms of retaining labor or upgrading machinery and equipment, they must be prepared not to make money. On the other hand, you must determine your main business direction and develop several ultimate single products to accumulate customers.
It is normal to have many models and small quantities in the market. How to make adjustments and adapt in the face of new markets is a matter of business awareness, management organization, and Transformation and innovation in production management. Adapting and accepting this challenge is also a way to improve your competitiveness! </p
