The Chinese have long been encouraged to be hardworking by their political leaders. They are proud to be able to “chi ku” (eat something bitter) for a long time. It is the sign that an individual will certainly succeed.

It is also one of the reasons why China products are so inexpensive. Factory workers are famous for being very hardworking. They often keep pushing themselves 12 hours a day, 29 days a week, to produce as many pieces as possible.

However, this is changing fast, most notably for two reasons:

• Better alternatives: skilled employees can quit a factory and find another job (potentially higher paid) in a few days. Managers are afraid of losing good operators.
• Less urgent need for money: the families, back in the countryside, are living much more comfortably than 15 years ago.

I came upon a post entitled GM X on the This is China Blog. An American factory manager explains that “there is a general lack of willingness that [he had] not previously experienced”:

In the past, when needed, factories would be willing to come to the rescue with compressed timelines and by adding labor to ensure that deadlines were met. These days the answers are strikingly different.

This “lack of willingness” takes several forms:

• They refuse to work overtime because of the heat, even though it is the peak producing season (of Christmas orders);
• They ask for air conditioning in their dormitories, even though many homeowners don’t have A/C;
• They refuse to make complex products. Actually, factories often refuse to make complex products (or they accept orders and subcontract production in other workshops) because they really can’t do them reliably. What is new is that now the manager is afraid of upsetting his workers.

This is not necessarily a bad trend. Manufacturers can take this opportunity to provide training and better conditions to a stable workforce. They can also redesign their production flows, by capitalizing on the workers’ new qualifications and (hopefully) open mind.

My conclusion is that factory owners are getting what they deserve. Now they are the ones who should change their attitude.