PRD Garment Workers Return to Hometown Garment Factory

During the Spring Festival each year, mainland laborers return home in succession, labor shortages will occur in the Pearl River Delta region. This year, due to rising raw material prices, corporate profits decline, and the pre-holiday "work shortage" situation is serious. It has always been the heavy-duty garment industry. At the end of the year, it was at the time of export orders and cargo clearance. The situation of "labor shortage" was even worse.

Labour shortages have spread in many areas of the Pearl River Delta. The person in charge of a garment factory who has been investing for nearly 10 years said: "At this time, raw and cooked craftsmen walked 10%, and they had to go back to the New Year in advance. A large number of urgent orders were exported, forming a very tense situation. The remaining employees worked overtime every day. They are also willing to work overtime and make more money to go back to their hometown festivals. However, they are not competitive and have limits. Overtime efficiency is not high, costs are greatly increased, and corporate profits are not very high."

The person in charge said that in order to ensure that the employees return to work after the holiday, in addition to back-sale allowances, the use of holidays to refurbish dormitories and upgrade facilities to attract employees back to the factory will intangibly increase company costs. ”

After the New Year's Day, the lowest temperature in the Pearl River Delta is only 5 degrees Celsius, close to the low temperature during the 2008 snow storm. Many migrant workers are worried that they can’t return home, so they decided to return home early for the New Year.

In many cities in the Pearl River Delta, including labor-intensive industries such as catering, construction, and clothing, this year's "labor shortage" is still serious.

Wu Yi, a professor at the Guangdong Business School who has long studied the Pearl River Delta region’s economy, said that worrying about the cold current is only a random disturbance. It is an accidental factor. There is no cold current, and labor shortages will also appear. The rise in raw materials and the decline in the profit of corporate orders have led to low economic returns and insufficient attractiveness of companies. This is the basic reason why workers return home in advance.

Rising labor prices have become the norm. In 2010, the salary and welfare of the labor force in the textile industry generally rose by more than 10%, and wages in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other places rose by as much as 20%, and the salary increase of the entire industry was greater than that of other manufacturing industries.