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| 1 |
ID:
096365
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The codes of conduct of Western brand-name corporations normally require supplier factories in the Global South to comply with the local country's minimum legal wage; the codes also often stipulate a maximum sixty-hour work week. But the problems of illegally low wages and overtime violations in supplier factories remain unresolved. This article uses survey data collected in a city in South China on workers' wages and work hours to show how legal minimum wage rates, which normally are expressed in developing countries as a monthly wage, obfuscate the level of wages paid to workers. This will be demonstrated by comparing two different payment systems: time rates (which predominate in the toy industry) and piece rates (which predominate in garment manufacturing). The differences in the compensation rates and work hours resulting from the two systems lead the authors to contend that countries in the Global South and the implementers of corporate codes should calculate minimum wages in terms of hourly earnings in order to make wage payments more transparent and help reduce exploitative practices.
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| 2 |
ID:
139847
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| Summary/Abstract |
How have Chinese migrant workers’ patterns of everyday life changed over the past two decades, and what has not changed? Have their personal and career aspirations shifted over time? What changes have occurred in how they maintain social relationships within and across factories? What are the implications for migrant workers, local governance and factory managements? Based on workers’ letters and ethnographic research in Shenzhen, this article argues that migrant workers encounter very different circumstances today in their housing, food, time scheduling, aspirations and ways of maintaining social relationships. yet young migrant workers still invoke social relationships steeped in links to family and village to cope with daily difficulties. I examine the workers’ greater control over their time, local governments’ growing need to accommodate migrant workers’ requirements in order to maintain social stability, and the increasing pressure on factory managements to consider workers’ work/leisure arrangements, especially during peak industrial seasons.
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| 3 |
ID:
146638
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the spring of 2010, the strike of the Honda workers in Nanhai instigated an on-going discourse on the “rights awakening” of the “new generation of migrant workers.” Since then, much has been written about these young workers, generally described as more pro-active and ready to stand up against their employers than the older and more subservient generation. Drawing from statistical findings from two factory-gate surveys in the metal mechanics and garment sectors in Shenzhen, this paper tests two hypotheses: (a) that workers of the younger generation are more cognizant of their legal rights than older workers; (b) that the younger generation wants to work fewer hours and to enjoy life more. We argue that this popular image of the younger generation of migrant workers is one-dimensional and reductive, as it focuses only on generational differences as an explanatory factor for worker activism, while ignoring other issues such as types of industries and payment systems. In this paper, we purport that these elements play important roles in shaping the attitude of this younger generation toward their work and rights.
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