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Working conditions in the EPZ

Back in 1995 the Chinese government has adopted the first labor code, offering protection on wages, working hours, employment regulations and holidays etc. Yet it is rare to find that the code has been enforced. In most of the occasions, the labor departments simply turn a deaf ear to workers complaints, sometimes even goes so far as to hard press workers to give up their rightful claims. This greatly helps the TNCs and their sub-contractors to unscrupulously exploit workers, especially women workers, who make up the absolute majority of working population in EPZs.

The author once encountered a male worker who was looking for job in the EPZ of Shenzhen. He complained that it was too difficult to find a job, since plants in the EPZ always prefer female to male workers. As to my question ‘why is this?’ he replied, ‘ female workers are more easy to handle with’. For management, ‘handling’ male workers are more difficult, because they are less likely to endure the cruelty of sweatshops. Cases of violent fighting between male workers and the management were reported from time to time. As for women workers, since they mainly come from rural area where women has been oppressed for thousand years and therefore tends to be more obedient, they tend to be more tolerant even when unscrupulously exploited. In addition to tradition, the fact that they have little access to legal advice, have little knowledge of their own rights etc; make them easy preys of irresponsible management.

In EPZs the daily working hours is as much as 10-12. In times of rushing through orders, workers working from 8am to 10pm are common, and in some cases they may work until 2am. Many of them only have one day off or even none per month. That is much longer then the legal maximum working hours of 40 hours per week. Workers find it hard to cope with such hard labor, but refusing to work over time will result in firing. Only youngsters in their late teen and early twenties could endure such inhumane hardship. When they reach their late twenties they will find it hard to continue, and it is the time they have to leave on their own account, thus releasing the management the burden of paying any compensation if the latter fire them.

In EPZs women population far exceeds those of male, making women workers difficult to find a date. Even if one finds it, one’s family will oppose her choice if the man does not come from the same county. Moreover, some factories have rules that force women workers to resign if they get married. It is common for married couples who come to the same EPZ to live separately, each staying in their own factory’s dormitory. Even when the couple work in the same factory, they still have to live in separate dormitories, thus no normal sex life is possible. If women workers get pregnant, the only choice is resignation, because they simply could not do such hard work. The employers then need not pay any maternity leave, although they are liable to pay according to the law. In a word, women workers are seen as simple tools for the process of ‘value-added’, not as human.

In Shenzhen, the minimum wages is 480 RMB for the outer EPZ and 610 RMB for the inner EPZ in 2004 - 05. These are shamefully low wages. Yet majority workers do not even get this level of wages. Some may get as low as 300 RMB, which is not even enough for food.

Many women workers overwork at the expense of their health. In addition to this there are many more obstacle for workers to maintain their health: the management’s harsh policy of no sick leave, restriction on using toilets, and high medical expenses charged by both private and public hospitals etc. Thus women workers suffer from bad health. Most of them suffer from menstruation pain. One third of them are skinny. Many have nearsightedness, especially those who work in electronics plants. Much severe problem is occupational accidents and exposure to toxics. Apart from body health, women workers suffer from spiritual damages for having to separate from their families, few support group in the cities, sexual harassment etc. But being denied the basic civil rights and labor rights, they are robbed of the right to self-defense.

China is probably one of the most repressive states towards labor. Not only does her deny workers the right to organize, her labor department and official trade unions are so anti-labor that they often refuse to enforce existing laws when these laws are favorable to workers. Another means to control migrant labor is the Hu-Kou system, or household registration, which restrict the right of mobility across the country, particularly restricting the right of rural residents moving into cities. Migrant workers had to pay several hundred RMB in order to get a ‘temporary residential card’. Failure to produce the card would result in forceful and always violent repatriation to one’s home village. After a migrant college graduate who moved to another city to work was beaten to death for failing to produce the card in 2003, uproar swept across the country, and in response to this the new administration somehow relaxed the Hu-Kou system. The fee for the card was also substantially lowered. Still the basic principle of denying equal citizenship to rural residents is in place, and as such the migrant workers are still denied basic welfare, and their children denied education.

Then why then rural young women still flock to the cities to look for job? It is because the rural is slipping towards bankruptcy. The ‘scissors’ (price differential between agricultural products and industrial products) has been widening year after year, bringing enormous burden to small farmers. In addition to this is higher and higher taxes. It leaves farmers with little cash in their disposal. Having difficulties to pay school fees for their younger children, especially when they are boys, or to pay taxes, or to pay for industrial products, their parents have to send their elder daughters to cities for work. Moreover, young women with basic or secondary education also prefer moving to cities to find work. They see this as a chance for improving the lives of their families and for personal development. They like to say that sticking to farming is ‘having their chest facing the soil and their back facing the sky day after day, year after year’, implying that there is little room for personal development for remaining in the field. Hence millions of them migrate to look for jobs.

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