Opinion

Lesson of labor crisis

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-22 13:17

The lack of workers immediately after the Spring Festival in coastal areas is in striking contrast with the redundancy of migrant workers more than a year ago when the areas' processing industry was deeply affected by the economic meltdown.

But is there really a shortage of migrant workers? Where are the workers who were there in prior years? Why are they reluctant to return?

It is impossible for the millions of migrant workers concentrated in coastal areas more than a year ago to have withdrawn from the job market in such a short amount of time. A likely answer is that the areas' processing industry is no longer that attractive. Perhaps the migrant workers can make the same amount of money by finding a job in their hometowns or fashion a better living by farming their fields.

The message is that the country's efforts to develop the underdeveloped central and western regions have paid off. So have the central government policies to promote domestic consumption. The accelerated urbanization and industrialization in the inland areas have created an increasing number of jobs.

As a result, they can absorb a larger percentage of rural labor and rural villagers do not need to travel thousands of miles for a job in the developed coastal regions. Even if they are paid a little less than in the Pearl River Delta cities, the living costs are much lower to work near their homes.

So for those factories in such coastal regions as the Pearl River Delta, they must now think about making their jobs more attractive to migrant workers. The factories used to be notorious for providing villager-turned-workers with horrible working and living conditions. Some were sweatshops that made workers work extra hours without extra pay. Some kept workers' payment in arrears at the end of a year for fear that they would not come back.

They have failed to show enough respect for the workers either in the amount of money they pay them or in the way they treat them. The increasing difficulty in recruiting workers should have sent employers there a message that they need to reconsider the way they treat workers.

Zhejiang province in East China chartered three planes to send more than 100 migrant workers back home in Sichuan province free of charge early this month before the Spring Festival. It has sent a gesture to migrant workers nationally and all over the province that migrant workers will be treated well if they do a good job.

Competition for labor will undoubtedly help push employers to show more concern for workers' working and living conditions. To make them feel at home where they work will soon become a concern for employers unless they don't want their factories to prosper.

The lack of vision in the treatment of workers in the past decades underlies the labor crisis today. For sustainable development in the long-term future, employers in coastal areas should upgrade their industries and improve working and living conditions for workers. That may be the lesson employers in the coastal areas learn from this labor crisis.