It’s already 2pm and she admits: “It’s been a slow day. No one has stopped by so far.”
The factory makes baby shoes for export to Europe. General manager Todd Cseng admits that the shortage of labor has become so acute and the cost of operating so high because of the strengthening Chinese currency and EU tariffs on Chinese shoe imports that his company is facing closure.
“They used to queue up outside for jobs, but now we have to advertise in the street for employees,”” Cseng said. “We have 500 workers here, and we have vacancies for 700 more, but I don’t see any way we are going to be able to fill them. The migrant workers simply aren’t here anymore.”
“Our workforce is getting older, and production costs are getting higher,”” Cseng said with a shrug. “We used to pay 500 yuan a month [US$71.50]. Now, even if we offer three times that with guaranteed overtime, we can’t get the people we need to fill the vacancies.”
He said the solution would be for his company to leave the increasingly expensive factory belt in southern China, where the first phase of China’s extraordinary industrial revolution was forged.
“We will have to move either inland or out of China altogether,” he said. “It’s not political, it’s economic. It’s just too expensive in southern China today.”
Houjie and other towns like it across southern China face becoming wastelands of concrete where no one lives. China’s leaders have acknowledged the looming crisis and are belatedly trying to encourage high-tech industry.
The prospect of an end to China’s sweatshop culture is welcomed by labor groups, which look forward to the emergence of a politically influential labor movement similar to the ones that shaped so much of postwar politics in the US and Europe.
“The working class in China will get stronger and bring about some major changes,” Chan said. “These forces from the bottom up are very important in making a better China, a China that is more democratic and participatory.”
Meanwhile, time stands stubbornly still at the Dingfu factory in Houjie. Behind the sealed iron doors, shoe boxes lie in untidy piles, dusty racks of unwanted clothes hang outside deserted dormitories and half-finished shoes sit on the production line waiting for an army of workers who will never return.
A few stragglers linger behind, stopping by from time to time to watch for the return of their runaway boss, whose 4x4 stands, coated in dust on deflated tires, in the factory forecourt.
““Is he here? Have you seen him?” a 40-year-old man asked in hope rather than expectation as he watches reporters emerge from the factory. “I just want the money he owes me, and I’ll keep coming back until I get it. I’m not frightened of him anymore. None of us is.”
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