At first glance, the smart young man on the upper-berth of the train to Beijing, appeared much like one of the ?call-centre crowd? in India. Smartly dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, he combed his fingers through his streaked hair, shuffling the play-list of songs on his phone. At a brief stop, he sprinted to the platform stall to buy a can of coke. On board, he introduced himself: ?Fei Ling?but you can call me by my English name, Charles?. Charles, twenty-something, was on the road, after having chucked his job (electric wiring, in remote counties in the mountainous Yunnan province). The job, he described, was ?too taxing? and could hardly be called lucrative, with a pay-packet of 1,000 yuan a month. It turned out that Charles was the regular quitter and mover?quitting jobs and moving provinces, in constant search of greener pastures. Charles symbolises a new reality of China?s labour demographic, of a ?second generation? of migrants, who provide a clue about the dynamics of China?s labour market.
The ?second generation? migrants, such as Charles, were born in the 1980s and 1990s, decades characterised by declining fertility rates (the current average fertility rate is between 1.4 and 1.8 according to China Daily), and constitute a generation that is increasingly choosy about the type of work that they do. According to China?s Labour Statistical Yearbook (2009), 29.1% of China?s urban workforce is under the age of 30. Those who attended either school or college constitute 54% of the urban workforce, the latter due to a phenomenal increase in post-secondary education. According to sinologists Zhao Litao and Huang Yanjie, this generation possesses a very ?different set of values?, a point stressed by the Hong Kong-based NGO China Labour Bulletin, which says that they are more ?confident and self-assertive?.
The ?second generation? of migrant workers are a marked departure from the relatively subdued ?first generation? of migrant workers, following the initial two decades of economic reform and relaxation of hukou (household registration) strictures. The ?first generation? put up with the appalling squalor of the ?dormitory labour regime? and the grind of assembly line function in factories. They worked long hours, on a shoe-string pay-scale, in factories that run on razor-thin profit margins, making cheap toys and textiles that are sold from Karol Bagh to Target in America. But that is changing?The Economist attested that China?s labour force is at par with Thai and Filipino peers, in terms of wages.
Inside China, there is a new spin to the word san gao or three ?highs? (used in a derogatory sense during the Cultural Revolution 1966-1976, to signify the bourgeoisie?high income, salary and living standards). Today san gao yi di (three ?highs? and one ?low?) is commonly used to describe this generation that has high education levels, high expectations of their career, high demands on material and spiritual enjoyment and exhibits low tolerance at work, which partly explains the current labour shortage in the coastal belt. The Strait Times (2011) reported that factories are having problems hiring and are offering ?hard-cash, year-end bonuses and annual pay rises?, and quoted Mainland Headwear Holdings deputy chairman Pauline Ngan as saying, ?They (workers) are kings?.
China?s young labour force seems to diminish the general ? happiness? factor that the Party has so recently espoused in its National People?s Congress (NPC, 2011) and its recent Twelfth Five Year Plan (2011-2015), as well diminish the importance of state-backed trade unionism for the following reasons. First, while the new buzzword ?let happiness take off among the masses? (replacing the earlier buzzword ?harmony?) is desirable, it is not forthcoming, what with labour-related disputes constituting the bulk of the much publicised ?mass incidents?, which by admission numbered 87,000 in 2005. In fact, youthful migrant labourers constituted the backbone of the volatile labour strikes in May 2010 (in Foxconn, Honda and Nikon factories from Guangzhou to Beijing), challenging the wage-freeze of pre- and post-recession times, and successfully negotiated an adjusted minimum wage rate upwards. In the much publicised Foxconn suicides, it emerged (and this has been widely quoted) that ?for every Apple iPhone selling at $599 that Foxconn produced, Foxconn got a mere $11.20, and assembly line workers got next to nothing?. This has changed, what with Foxconn currently paying almost double the wages, and the rest in the industry line have also revised wages. Despite this, 67% of the companies in the regional coastal powerhouse Jiangxi (province) expect to have hiring difficulties this year, and Guangdong (province) is likely to face a shortage of over a million workers.
According to sinologist Yew Chiew Ping, unlike in the past, when the Labour Contract was the point of contention, what statistical trends increasingly show is that the disputes are increasingly centred on remuneration. Such disputes doubled from 108,953 in 2007 to 225,061 in 2008, almost at par with labour contract disputes. Sinologist Jian Qiao, in a survey of 1,811 trade unions, found that individual disputes have given way to collective ones.
Second, and notably so, leaders of the strikes were outside the ambit of the party-backed ?sole and legal? trade union in China?the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Instead, the strikes were coordinated and strategised using QQ (instant messaging), chat rooms and mobile phones. They posted videos on the Internet showing the heavy hand of the state/management in action, to mobilise popular nationwide support.
Technically, the ACFTU constitutes a ?social pillar? that promotes economic and political stability, and manages a labour environment to foster investment and attract investors. The ACFTU has an estimated 212 million members (2008), up from an estimated 95 million in 1978. China?s union density is 73.7%, making ACFTU the world?s largest trade union with more members than those of the rest of the world?s trade unions put together. As sinologist Qi Dongtao points out, under the ACFTU auspices as of 2008, there were 1.73 million grassroots trade unions, 31 federations of trade unions at the provincial level and 10 national industrial unions.
Representing both the state and the workers is not a happy job, as the ACFTU is discovering. In the Foshan Honda plant strike, workers clashed with trade union members, who were siding with the employer. Workers criticised the trade union for not fighting on their behalf and went further in suggesting that trade unions should be constituted by elections. The ACFTU?s mouthpiece Workers Daily is perceived as more aligned with the party line, by the workers themselves. While the ACFTU has made major contributions such as in the drafting of the Labour Contract Law, which took effect in January 2008, it seems that workers themselves are treating it as more of a paper tiger.
The younger, aspirational demographic profile, however, does not add up to the complex and lingering labour crisis in the Pearl Delta and the clusters located in the coastal regional economies. This also has to do with the shortage of skilled labour, a segmented labour market (where surplus is co-existing with shortage) and also the development of second-tier, inland cities such as Chongqing (municipality) and Wuhan (Hubei province) where lower wages are compensated by lower costs of living. In fact, a CASS researcher Cai Fang, in his study, suggests that older working hands are reluctant to move, which is significant, given that China?s working population (in the cohort 15-24 years) will fall by 30 per cent in the next ten years. Pointing to a Lewisian turning point (wages rise when surplus labour tapers) is the commonly quoted US census bureau statistics which suggests that China?s working age population will increase from 977 million in 2010 to 993 million in 2015?a mere 0.35 per cent growth a year.
The shortage portends a silver lining ?it has ignited debates about China having to move up the value chain, and the need for social reform, particularly in addressing the welfare of migrants. One can only imagine the power of the world?s largest working class, Poland having set a precedent. For now, China?s new-age workers, as publication Yazhou Zhoukan (Asia Weekly) said, is a case of, ?The silent lamb (is) no longer silent.?
The author is a sinologist based in Singapore and is currently Visiting Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. Views are personal