Visit to TCL Strike Factory｜Labor Bulletin #53 News Magazine

01 Highlights of the current period
Factories under Industrial Turbulence – A Visit to TCL’s Striking Factory

Since October 16, TCL Central workers in Tianjin and Yixing, Jiangsu Province, have erupted into a mass strike to protest against disguised layoffs at the factory and demand N+1 compensation from the company. Therereport (news)The immediate cause of the workers’ strike was analyzed – the factory had taken scheduling breaks to reduce working hours and deducted fines indiscriminately to force the employees to leave, and some workers had only $8 left in their hands after being deducted from various fees and fines.

The strike ended with a rumor that the factory had given N+1 compensation to the laid-off workers, and that was the end of the attention from the outside world. However, why was the TCL factory on strike, and how does TCL’s day-to-day management function? What is the attitude of those who are still working in the factory towards the strike? The tabloid visited the TCL factory to present the current situation of the factory after the strike.

A janitor depicted in detail the stabilization of the strike site.

The defense of rights lasted for a week, and a large number of police officers came to the beginning of the defense, and the entire police force of the city was mobilized. The entire street from the west gate was filled with buses carrying police officers, paralyzing traffic in the neighborhood and making it impossible for factory workers and cars to pass. The workers protested peacefully, demanding work or compensation.

It was also informed that the online rumor of N+1 compensation was not actually what the workers expected.

In the end, compensation was given, but it did not meet the expectations of the workers, and n+1 compensation was given on a pro rata basis, with “new” workers with less than five years of service not receiving n+1, and “old” workers with more than five years of service receiving n+1, with compensation not exceeding 50,000 dollars at the top of the scale.

In 2024, TCL Central is losing ground, and its third quarter report shows that TCL Central’s third-quarter operating income of 6.369 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 53.70%, and the net loss expanded to 2.998 billion yuan. This and the previous in the case of overcapacity has been, still through government support and continued expansion can not be attributed. This is the entire photovoltaic industry generally facing the problem, but also one of the deep-seated reasons for the TCL strike.

Central predecessor is China Guodian, China photovoltaic, park outside strong, poor efficiency, the government has been giving subsidies, and then was acquired by tcl, a change of soup but not a change of medicine. PV serious overcapacity. Photovoltaic, new energy is a scam, serious overcapacity, are the government to give subsidies to the countryside, free installation, forced to install the roof.

Strikes are often a last resort for workers, and unreasonable and harsh discipline, differential treatment and even humiliation of workers are all reasons for the buildup of workers’ anger. An old local farmer who used to work as a landscaper in TCL’s Central District denounced the factory’s management as “inhumane”.

The factory all kinds of inhuman overbearing provisions, such as walking can not walk on the white line, you must walk on the right, there is no sidewalk where you can not turn. The lawn in front of the office building with a lawn mower, the leadership asked to keep the year-round evergreen, at any time you can not see yellow. There is a shaded area in front of the office building, and workers are not allowed to rest in the shade if they want to.

The fines in the factory were very heavy, either no fines or no less than five hundred each time. There was a female worker from the same neighborhood who had worked in Central for three months and was fined two thousand. An old man from the countryside who had a sudden urge to urinate while hitting the hay and had to relieve himself by the fence was also fined 2,000 dollars.

The current TCL strike lasted only a week, and the laid-off workers may have received some compensation, but they also lost the jobs on which they depended for their livelihood. Against the backdrop of the industry’s turmoil, how can workers’ livelihoods be secured? And how can workers in the industry cope with the layers of exploitation by employers in the downward spiral of profits?

02
Worker Dynamics

— factory sites —

Shaanxi Hansteel defaults on wages and social security, workers defend their rights for nearly a month

On November 4, workers of the Hanzhong Iron and Steel Group in Shaanxi Province once again gathered in front of the Mianxian County Government to recover money owed to them. It is reported that Hanzhong Iron and Steel Group owes thousands of workers nearly 600 million yuan, including wages, medical insurance and social security. Many workers have not been paid for months or even more than a year, and their lives have been plunged into difficulties. Since the launch of the rights defense action in the middle of last month, the workers have gone to the county government several times, but the problem has never been solved.Read the original article

More than 100 workers in Taiyuan strike to resist Foxconn relocation without compensation

On November 4, hundreds of workers at Foxconn’s North China Mold and Fixture Processing Plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, went on a collective strike to protest the company’s failure to provide reasonable compensation during the relocation of the plant. Workers said that Foxconn relocated its factory as a whole to Jincheng, but did not provide compensation for the relocation and made job adjustments to employees without consultation. The workers expressed strong dissatisfaction with this behavior, believing that they had worked for the company for many years but had not received the treatment they deserved. The workers demanded that Foxconn respect the rights and interests of its employees and provide reasonable compensation and job placement.Read the original article

— Services –

Thousands of cab drivers in Nanchong go on strike to demand a reduction in “share fees”.

On November 7, thousands of cab drivers in Nanchong, Sichuan Province, went on strike again, demanding that the company reduce its “share fee”. The drivers had previously gone on strike for four days between the 2nd and 5th of this month, protesting against the daily “share fee” of up to RMB 200. On the 5th, the company promised to reduce the fee, and the drivers resumed their operations, and on the 7th, when they learned that the fee would only be reduced by RMB 30, the drivers gathered again and demanded a clear answer. A number of drivers said that Nanchong, as a third- or fourth-tier city, has to pay higher fees than Chengdu and Shanghai, making it difficult to make a living.Read the original article

Qingdao Outdoor Labor Station Becomes “Displayed” and Draws Controversy

On November 13, an “outdoor workers’ station” in Qingdao was questioned. According to the logo on the station, the facility mainly serves sanitation workers, delivery workers, police and other outdoor workers, making it convenient for outdoor workers to rest, eat and charge. However, the station refrigerator, microwave ovens are not connected to the electricity, water fountains without water, the door is locked, suspected of “face-saving project”. In this regard, the builder, Qingdao Gaoxinchengwei Industry Co., Ltd. explained that the station is still under construction. The phenomenon of “built but not used” is not an isolated case, and there have been media reports that the station is locked or open but empty, and laborers can only lie down to rest.Read the original article

Suning stores forced employees store managers to brush during the event, the amount of money or tens of thousands of dollars

On November 12, the former Suning store manager broke the news that Suning stores are forced to require employees to brush orders to reach sales targets during sales activities. It is reported that the store employees need to first advance money to complete the sales gap and make up for it at a later stage, and employees who have not completed the task can not leave work, and may even face dismissal. Store managers also need to undertake the task of brushing, sometimes amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. In this regard, Suning said it would verify the situation and deal with it. This situation is highly consistent with the content of the “Suning store manager’s letter of request for help” published by a previous Internet blogger, which aroused widespread concern.Read the original article

— white collar —

Bank employees in many places were illegally terminated labor contracts, some employees want to commit suicide after “being separated from their jobs”.

November 6, Chongqing Bank of Communications credit card center, a more than seven years in the service of the employee in the “was left” after trying to hang himself on the workstation. It is reported that since the beginning of 2023, the Bank of Communications began to successively reduce the salary to force employees to give up their service in the credit card center, and signed an outsourcing contract, salary reduced to 3,000 yuan. In addition, it is also required to set the position to set the salary, and only sign for two years at a time. Bank employees were forced to pay cuts or illegal termination of the contract is not an individual case, Wuxi, Hangzhou and other places have also suffered from employees without reason to reduce the salary, and even suffered from the temptation to sign to leave. The relevant arbitration documents have also been “shelved”.Read the original article

Many places to clarify “menstrual cramps leave”, the rights and interests of the implementation of the difficulties are still many

Since November 11, the Special Provisions on Labor Protection for Female Workers and Employees in Yunnan Province have been formally implemented, making it clear that workers suffering from severe menstrual cramps can take a 1-2 day leave of absence after being certified by a medical institution. Currently, nearly 20 provinces in the country have explicitly provided for “menstrual pain leave”. Despite differences in implementation details, most provinces provide for more than one day’s rest. However, the implementation of menstrual cramps leave still faces difficulties. Firstly, severe dysmenorrhea is difficult to determine clinically; secondly, cumbersome steps to request leave and discrimination in the workplace can actually add to the burden of employees.Read the original article

— young students –

A student in Wuxi is suspected of indiscriminate knife wounds due to school and factory oppression

On November 16, an indiscriminate knife attack occurred inside the Wuxi Institute of Technology in Jiangsu Province, killing eight people and injuring 17 others. The suspect, Xu Mou, is a 21-year-old graduate of the school’s 2024 class. In his suicide note circulated on the Internet, Xu complained that he had worked up to 16 hours a day but was owed wages by the factory and the school refused to issue a diploma, saying, “I hope that my death will promote the progress of the labor law”. The official notification to “failed the examination did not get a diploma” “on the internship wage dissatisfaction” and other reasons to avoid the light, but it is also difficult to cover up the vocational schools and factories conspired to violate the rights and interests of students.Read the original article

03
In Depth & Commentary

I.Labor Trends｜”The Second Generation of Landlords”: Villager Landlords and Capital Accumulation in Guangzhou’s Urban Villages

In the early days of the market economy, tens of thousands of workers left their hometowns to live and work in Guangzhou. These workers lived in cheap, cramped urban villages, which also gave local villagers, the “Second Generation of Landlords”, rich rents and room for extortion. The article summarizes the historical changes in Guangzhou’s urban villages, where the “second generation of landlords” sold land use rights and collected rents from factories and workers by restoring the clan system and setting up companies; the villagers also hired law enforcement officers to manage and extort the workers. Over decades of reforms, the second generation of landowners has come to occupy a controlling and predatory position in capitalist production.Read the original article

II. Women’s Studies Series｜”Middle-aged Factory Mothers”: Motherhood Practices of Rural Women Workers under the Development of County Industries: A Field Study Based on the Industrial Park in G County, Central Jiangxi Province

Many articles have described the many problems facing county workers’ families in the new era, but have not discussed the women in them in depth. This article focuses on the changing responsibilities of middle-aged female workers in the family under the county industry. Factory work crowded out women workers’ time, so they developed flexible educational styles for their children and marginalized household chores; the factory’s order-based production system met women workers’ pressing economic needs, but it also limited their free time and intensified the pressure they felt between economic support and family care. Their duties changed according to production, consumption, education, and household chores, “but their lifelong efforts and sacrifices were made so that the patrilineal family could achieve continuity and development under the conditions of the new urban-rural structure.”Read the original article

III. Triad Life Weekly｜Young people who don’t want to work in factories: Life is stuck on “delivery”

A Bei, a former coal miner, quit his job to start his own business because he was tired of his boring job, and ended up in debt; Cai Jintao, who escaped from the complicated relationship and heavy workload of the assembly line, sped on the seemingly free takeaway road in pursuit of the beauty that belongs to himself; Liu Cheng, who couldn’t stand the harsh environment of the fireplace and the cold storage room, and was determined to start his own business with his friends, but he was bankrupted because of the epidemic, and the delivery of takeaways became a Delivery becomes a lifesaver. These three young riders entered the odd-job market out of dissatisfaction with traditional factory environments and career prospects, and a strong need for freedom. Yet with labor safety and future security becoming more and more elusive, the youths’ problems don’t improve at a gallop, and they’re always on the road and never free.Read the original article

IV. The Wave Club Hatsune Mikado｜Young people at the 20,000th store of Rexroth

The low threshold, low salary and high intensity of the restaurant industry are often viewed as transitional jobs by young workers. So how does Rexall recruit and maintain rapid expansion in the face of high mobility and low capacity? After careful investigation and in-depth interviews, the author found that the key to supporting the expansion lies in the grassroots management organization consisting of a large number of external store managers and internally promoted employees. In the recruitment stage, Ruixing attracts a large number of applicants with high salaries without responsibility; after joining the company, the fast and competitive promotion and transfer system guides employees to devote a large amount of free time to heavy, low-quality learning and training tasks. This maximizes the value of part-time employees and makes regular employees uncompetitive in the labor market.Read the original article

V. Fir RECORD｜Downward spiral: When unemployed young people are accused of “cheating on insurance”

With the wave of unemployment, many people have started to share money-saving tips, labor arbitration processes, and ways to collect unemployment insurance on social media platforms. But how far can these methods improve the lives of the unemployed? Zhang Zhan’s teaching institution closed down, was owed more than 40,000 yuan in wages, despite the labor arbitration won but could not get the money; after losing his job, Zhang Zhan gave up all unnecessary consumption, he put his hopes on the monthly 2,000 yuan of unemployment insurance, but the application failed twice; no choice but to pay for an intermediary to do it on behalf of the Zhang Zhan, which also made him involved in a major case of fraudulent insurance.Read the original article

VI. Economic Observer｜Majuqiao Odd Jobs “Double Eleven” No Price Increase

Beijiao workers circulating in the world “must break into Majuqiao” words, enough to prove the attractiveness of the Majuqiao odd-job market, especially in the “Double 11”, the Spring Festival period, the logistics of the day-end wage of up to 300 yuan. But this year, “double eleven”, because of the shrinking demand in the labor market, the extensive input of robots, the highest daily wage of 180 yuan. Iteration of technology and lower wages do not mean that the intensity of labor is reduced, and workers still have to endure twelve hours of high-pressure work every day. Young people fleeing the dying manufacturing industry, “stuck” in odd-job markets and restaurants like Majuqiao, and struggling and sinking under unemployment, all seem to be looking for an answer to the question: how can laborers strive for a more stable and just future in an era of rapid change?Read the original article

04
Investigations and reports

Current tabloid cycle (2024/11/05 – 2024/11/18)

Written by Super 64, Chicken Leg Burger, Xay

Editor: Cement

Proofreader: Cement

at the end

以上是第53期工劳小报新闻刊的内容。我们正在探索将日常的工人资讯定期整理为 Newsletter，希望你可以来信（[email protected]）提出建议或Join as a volunteer, and also please share more with your friends within the walls. Click the button below to subscribe and read back issues.

Back Issues | Subscribe

01 Highlights of the current periodFactories under Industrial Turbulence – A Visit to TCL’s Striking Factory

02Worker Dynamics