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Q: Is hiring North Korean workers the solution to chinese labor shortage ?
China is quietly inviting tens of thousands of North Korean guest workers into the country in a deal that will provide a cash infusion to help prop up a teetering regime with little more to export than the drudgery of a desperately poor population.
So the north eastern provinces are not seeing an acute labor shortage due to the influx of north korean workers, and it is expected many thousands more are to come to China, this is an exciting solution to the chronic labor shortage China is facing, and the North Korean government is earning hard cash from the remittances, a win-win solution ?
11 years 20 weeks ago in Business & Jobs - China
This is actually a pertinent thread for ambi to ressurect.
I had a beer and chat with a mate today who runs a factory here. We have discussed at length in the recent past about how to retain operators. We touched on the subject today as we discussed the plans to develop the local area.
Basically, there is no shortage of workers. The housing is just too expensive.
Developers are knocking down the slums to build high cost apartments, and the 200 rmb a month shared rooms are just not there.
If 3 or 4 operators get together they can afford an to rent these new apartments, but the percentage of their wage used is just too high and it negates the benefit of getting a higher wage in the coastal cities compared to their inland hometown.
This is driven by high paid managers trying to keep labour costs down, while investing their own high wages in building apartment blocks.
Pure capitalism. Its a problem that needs a socialist solution.
ambivalentmace:
Rent controls brings down the quality of housing and speculation forces the poor and middle class out to the suburbs. Builders don't make a good profit on low income housing bidding for low cost with government control, so the building is low quality and nobody wants to build it anyway. I have not found any country that gets this right.
I read an article 6 months ago that Miami was putting housing on new school construction for teachers because most teacher salaries can't afford the rent in the area of the schools.
ScotsAlan:
Yeah Ambi. Teachers and health workers in London get a London weighting in London added to pay, cos the low paid cant afford to live in the same place as the rich live. Its a world wide issue.
ambivalentmace:
Somebody that is not left or right, that can think outside the box needs to come up with a solution they think will work and try it on one city and measure the results. The rich city of San Francisco full of high tech capitalists running up prices while trying to proudly say they are progressives did not work, Los Angeles with Hispanic building inspectors looking the other way while hispanic families live in car garages in the back of a house with no plumbing did not work. Portland and the whole state of Oregon that manages control and zoning of every piece of land doesn't work, never forget seeing a barn on a farm in Oregon and inside was a grand 3 bedroom house because you could not put a house on a farm in certain counties, not sure where they expected the farmer to urinate and defacate.
The best outside the box thinking I have found is mixed housing, give the rich big units on the upper floors to subsidize standard size units below them so the snobs breathe the better air at the top I suppose. Not sure that will work either.
ScotsAlan:
Pretty sure Singapore has the housing model where it is all state owned and rented out. That would be a solution. Money spent on home improvements could be deducted from the rent. People could find other things to invest their money in rather than property. Yup. I would go with that. All property state owned. All rent proceeds back into the system, with maybe a chunk going towards universal health care.
The "workers" they are inviting from North Korea are mostly single young women, and mostly working in the hospitality industry, particularly as entertainers. It seems to be as much about balancing the gender inequality as anything else.
China tried a similar thing a few years ago, bringing women from Myanmar as wives for the surplus of single Chinese men. However, most opted to return to a single life in Myanmar rather than married life in China.
Traveler:
Scandanavian: A colleague in HK has written several stories about this on our blog site, months ago. The stories are based on reports from Hong Kong's Singtao Daily:
chinadailymail.com/2012/08/02/120000-north-koreans-to-work-in-china
chinadailymail.com/2012/05/28/first-batch-of-20000-north-korean-workers-in-china
What labor shortage? The Chinese economy has cooled considerably in the last 10 months or so and you write of labor shortages here in the North East. I can honestly tell you that it is just the opposite : many of the local governments are embarking or have embarked upon rather considerable public work projects to prop up the local economies.
I dont know why there is a shortage of Labourer in China..as i have seen and know that more than 50,000 chiense workers are working in Africa in various countries ..especially Ethiopia and Kenya..why they are working outside if their requirement is itself in their own country..I think first China have to recall their own worker to handle the problem of worker if it really exist...
There is no labour shortage in China. It's all about the poontang
The labor shortage is mostly concentrated in the manufacturing sector with almost all factories having unfilled vacancies,.We have over six million university graduates landing on the job market every year, most of them as well as a big percentage of fresh job seekers do not want to join this sector, it is quite understandable since it is poorly paid and with long working hours.
I would guess that a lot of manpower could be freed up by modernizing. e.g. use computer systems where applicable. in a lot of cases when you need to be in contact with public offices you need to run around to many different places, just to get a stamp, if this was digital it could be faster meaning less need for people to process and the general public would have more productive hours
There has been a number of factory closures and delocalisations directly related to this labor shortage issue amongst other things, the labor intensive industries like apparel manufacturing, shoe making, toy assembly and the likes have all suffered .... and no, robot assembly plants or computerized assisted machines are only part of the solution due to their extremely high investment costs and unflexibility.
I am unemployed and willing to do anything for a wage that will support me ......... please call if you know of a prospective employer. worldwide!!!!
labor and government working together, what could go wrong.
ambivalentmace:
What happens when your wages can't compete and you start squeezing workers, history repeating inself, at least this time I get a front row seat.
ScotsAlan:
Whoever wrote that article about unions in China has never worked in manufacturing here, nor even read one of the many books about it. Unions in China are not unions in the western sense.
Never mind treatment, can you just pay for my funeral please?
This is actually a pertinent thread for ambi to ressurect.
I had a beer and chat with a mate today who runs a factory here. We have discussed at length in the recent past about how to retain operators. We touched on the subject today as we discussed the plans to develop the local area.
Basically, there is no shortage of workers. The housing is just too expensive.
Developers are knocking down the slums to build high cost apartments, and the 200 rmb a month shared rooms are just not there.
If 3 or 4 operators get together they can afford an to rent these new apartments, but the percentage of their wage used is just too high and it negates the benefit of getting a higher wage in the coastal cities compared to their inland hometown.
This is driven by high paid managers trying to keep labour costs down, while investing their own high wages in building apartment blocks.
Pure capitalism. Its a problem that needs a socialist solution.
ambivalentmace:
Rent controls brings down the quality of housing and speculation forces the poor and middle class out to the suburbs. Builders don't make a good profit on low income housing bidding for low cost with government control, so the building is low quality and nobody wants to build it anyway. I have not found any country that gets this right.
I read an article 6 months ago that Miami was putting housing on new school construction for teachers because most teacher salaries can't afford the rent in the area of the schools.
ScotsAlan:
Yeah Ambi. Teachers and health workers in London get a London weighting in London added to pay, cos the low paid cant afford to live in the same place as the rich live. Its a world wide issue.
ambivalentmace:
Somebody that is not left or right, that can think outside the box needs to come up with a solution they think will work and try it on one city and measure the results. The rich city of San Francisco full of high tech capitalists running up prices while trying to proudly say they are progressives did not work, Los Angeles with Hispanic building inspectors looking the other way while hispanic families live in car garages in the back of a house with no plumbing did not work. Portland and the whole state of Oregon that manages control and zoning of every piece of land doesn't work, never forget seeing a barn on a farm in Oregon and inside was a grand 3 bedroom house because you could not put a house on a farm in certain counties, not sure where they expected the farmer to urinate and defacate.
The best outside the box thinking I have found is mixed housing, give the rich big units on the upper floors to subsidize standard size units below them so the snobs breathe the better air at the top I suppose. Not sure that will work either.
ScotsAlan:
Pretty sure Singapore has the housing model where it is all state owned and rented out. That would be a solution. Money spent on home improvements could be deducted from the rent. People could find other things to invest their money in rather than property. Yup. I would go with that. All property state owned. All rent proceeds back into the system, with maybe a chunk going towards universal health care.
