CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility

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  • Pierig Vezin
    Pierig Vezin
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Chinese New Year celebration and
    Dear All,


    Please find below a newsletter I have sent last week. your comments are welcome.

    Regards

    Pierig
    pierig.vezin@wethica.com

    On February 7th, the year of the rat has started as per Chinese lunar calendar.

    This is essential for all Chinese people and also for Chinese factories. The worldwide most important migration of population starts each year few days before the Chinese New Year. More than 200 million workers leave their factories to go back to their hometown. In some factories 95% of workers are migrant workers (Workers from another province). That means 95% of workers will leave the factory for a journey of few days to their hometown, their village. Obviously, the factory will have to close. Because of the huge number of people, the trains, buses … are fully booked several days prior to the New Year Day. So the factories have to close several days before. Anyway, as most of workers have a yearly working contract, it finishes at Chinese New Year, and they leave the factory as soon as they’ve been paid.
    To perfectly understand what this period is, you have to remind that in most of factories the only genuine holidays are during this festival. That means the workers are moving from their dormitories to go to see their family only once a year during this period. The whole country stops.

    Factories will start again in the coming days. The opening will be gradual as workers will come back gradually too. As previously said, most of working contract are yearly contract. So every thing has to be start again almost from scratch. Workers have no specific reason to come back in the same factory if they weren’t pleased of the previous year. So, they try, they change and it has consequences up to the organization of the country. Since few years lots of factories open in northern part of China instead of mainly southern part. These new attractive provinces are often closer to the home province of workers so it’s easier for them to go there. For Guangdong it gets harder to hire workers.

    Last year, the coming back in Guangdong has been especially difficult and many factories have spent several weeks to be able to found enough workers. It has leaded some of them to be regardless on the age of workers. And the problem of child labor, which has almost disappeared in factories in the past years, has become a problem again.

    It’s hard to say what will happen in the coming weeks. However, you can’t imagine so important change in factories, so high turn over without any consequences.
    We will follow that and keep you posted.


    You can subscribe to this news letter by sending an email to newsletter@wethica.com
    • 22 Feb 2008, 04:08 am