A 352 hour wage line: How the "stable income" of workers in South China is based on the cost of time

The social platform recently leaked an employee salary tagged as "Northern Central" line: 30 days of work in the month, 352 hours of accumulated working hours, a salary of 11364.17 yuan. In the same group of posts, there was a video of workers lying directly on the ground after work late at night

• under the head with a plastic bottle, next to the factory passage and workwear.

If you look at only $11,364, this is not a low monthly income in the manufacturing industry; if you put 352 hours together, it presents a different picture: 30 days of full work a month, an average of almost 11 hours and 44 minutes a day. The wage is not increased for nothing, it is replaced by a large amount of personal time, rest and physical consumption of the worker.

The report begins with a payline, because it illustrates a reality in China’s manufacturing industry more than a slogan: Income “stability” often depends on overtime to sustain.

352 hours, what does it mean?

The current labor law of China stipulates that the standard working time in principle does not exceed 8 hours a day, the average week does not exceed 44 hours; due to the need for extension of working hours in production and operation, the general daily should not exceed 1 hour, in special circumstances, the daily should not exceed 3 hours, and the extension of work time must not exceed 36 hours per month.

Even without an unproven inference about the specific working hours and the integrated working time system,30 days of continuous work and 352 hours of total working hours are sufficient to indicate that working hours are at an extremely high level.When compared roughly with the standard 8 hours of work, 352 hours of work equivalent to 44 8 hours of work days are pressed into a natural month.

The question, therefore, is not just “does there be overtime pay,” but a more basic question: “Why does it take a worker to spend so much time to get that so-called “stable” income?”

Founded in 1990, its related enterprises are the national manufacturing industry single champion enterprises, national high-tech enterprises and national intellectual property demonstration enterprises, products cover containers and a variety of special transportation equipment. enterprises define themselves as an important manufacturing base in the field of global special logistics equipment, and stress "continuously trusted by customers, government welcomed, social respect and employees loved."

Because it is not an unnamed small factory, this wage line is more representative.The problem of overwork in China's manufacturing industry can not always be explained as the management chaos of a handful of small enterprises. When workers in the national manufacturing championship enterprise system also earn thousands of dollars in exchange for hundreds of hours of labor, the problem has entered the industrial competition model itself.

The higher the salary, the more it can not hide the time the price is under pressure.

The $11364 is easily the end point of discussion: some would think that “earn more than 10,000 a month is fine,” and some would see it as the result of workers’ voluntary overtime.

Monthly wages can be increased, but a person always only has 24 hours a day. 352 hours means that work takes up a large amount of waking time in a month, and the rest takes over travel, eating, washing and sleep. Family life, social, caring for older children, and time that can really be freely managed, is compressed to very little space.

For manufacturing workers, the so-called “multiple-time” often becomes a structural option: Basic wages are not high enough, and only overtime can push income to levels that can cover housing, household and living costs. Thus, overtime from the temporary need of the enterprise to the norm for workers to maintain income.

This also explains why simply saying “workers can refuse overtime” lacks a realistic sense.When income structures have turned overtime fees into a part of the living budget, refusing overtime means actively accepting lower incomes.Formal options exist, and economic options are very limited.

The law says 36 hours, but the reality says 352 hours.

Working hours, rest days, overtime limits and overtime salary standards are all clearly written.The real weakness is whether workers have the ability to bind these provisions within the enterprise.

In China, there is no room for workers to organize independent trade unions freely. The official trade union system is within the framework of the General Trade Union of China, and the grassroots trade unions are often highly institutionalized between enterprise management and local party administration. For ordinary workers, when hours, performance, wages and renewals are in the hands of the enterprise management system, it is difficult for individuals to form mutual negotiations around working hours and management.

Labor supervision and arbitration of course exist, but they occur more after the labor relationship has deteriorated. What can really restrict the working hours of the enterprise in daily production, should be the collective pricing ability continuously owned by the workers. Without independent organizational rights, the law is easily degraded from the hard constraints of the production site to the basis of complaints after conflict.

This is also a core contradiction of labor governance in Xi Jinping's era.The Chinese Communist Party continues to emphasize manufacturing competitiveness, industrial upgrading, export resilience and "making power", but the workers who determine these indicators do not have the political space to negotiate the pace of production with companies and local governments on an equal footing.

The state can demand that enterprises grow steadily, secure orders, rob the market, but does not establish an independent balancing force controlled by the workers themselves.In the end, macro-competitive pressure will pass down the industrial chain, falling to the ranks and bodies of specific workers.

The time book of "Making Power", finally written on the body of the worker.

Manufacturing enterprises such as centralized manufacturing are in the global logistics and export industry chain. Order fluctuations, delivery cycles, cost control and international competition are all in the production plan. But there are many ways for enterprises to improve efficiency: automation, technology investment, management optimization, increased unit wage, can also complete tasks with longer working hours.

When overtime exists for a long time, the latter is often the cheapest option, because workers’ health losses, family time, and long-term physical costs are not fully accounted for in the corporate financial statements.

The late-night video is therefore more intuitive than any business slogan. After a long time of work, a person does not even have the strength to go back to bed, directly lying on the floor and resting. It does not necessarily prove some illegal behavior alone, but accurately shows who's body is ultimately affected by too long working hours.

What the Chinese manufacturing industry really needs to answer is not “Can a worker make $10,000 a month?” but why it takes 352 hours to make that money.

If the income must be based on 30 days of work and close to 12 hours of average daily working hours, then the “high income” is simply hiding the cost of time in the total wage. For a worker who cannot organize freely and cannot pass on independent trade unions, this stability is more like a conditional exchange: income can be increased but life itself must be handed over to the production line.

When 352 hours appear at the same time as 11,364 yuan, it is enough to describe the other side of China’s manufacturing industry – the state statistics are about production value, exports, and industrial upgrades, and the workers pay for the time they can’t recover day after day.