Kangle Village and Lujiang Village, where the nationally renowned Zhongda Textile Business District is located, are famous garment-making villages in Haizhu District, Guangzhou. Lujiang West Street, which connects Lujiang Village and Kangle Village, is always crowded with people.
Starting from January this year, the renovation of Kangle Village and Lujiang Village, where the main body of the Zhongda Textile Business District is located, has officially entered the implementation stage. With the implementation of the urban village renovation project, the textile industry It is becoming increasingly difficult for the factory to recruit workers because a large number of Guangzhou Sanhe masters have appeared here. Some people say that the temporary workers in Kangyue Village and Lujiang Village in Guangzhou are upgraded versions of Sanhe Master in Shenzhen.
The main road of Lujiang West Street is lined with more than 1,000 meters of “recruitment corridors”. Weary-looking factory owners sit on their own small benches, holding up cardboard , a recruitment sign made of A4 paper, eagerly waiting for the workers to stop and come to ask. Even though the difficulty of recruiting workers has become a consensus among textile factories everywhere, no one knows when the bosses of textile and garment factories here will start setting up stalls on the streets to recruit workers.
Factory bosses complained that the workers were too lazy, spoiled, and irresponsible, but the workers in Kangle Village and Lujiang Village were already tired of working on the assembly line day after day. Was it influenced by the deeds of Shenzhen Sanhe Master and turned to a temporary job with two days off and five days off?
In order to find experienced and skilled workers, the factory owner did not hesitate to offer “a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan and a daily salary of 700 yuan”. Even so, it was still difficult to recruit workers. The workers adhere to the principle of “don’t do anything cheap, don’t do complicated things, and don’t do anything long-term.”
Salary is settled daily, two days off and five days off, and the assembly line is rejected , Happy Worker
Get off at Lujiang Metro Station on the south bank of the Pearl River, go west along Xingang West Road, and walk 15 minutes to Kangle Village and Lujiang Village. Like most urban villages, it has a cramped space, narrow aisles, air mixed with various smells, and an uncomfortably hygienic environment. There is only a gap between the buildings, and intricate wires hang overhead.
Working day and night when busy, and not getting paid when idle is an inevitable situation in many small and medium-sized textile factories. This also makes many workers do not plan to work on a regular basis. one of the reasons. Temporary workers gather together on the street to chat, “do your own work and help factories that can’t finish orders”, “wages are paid daily, and you can rest after finishing an order. You have free time and don’t have to waste time in the factory. You earn a lot of money.” Not much less than regular workers.”
A workshop of more than 100 square meters can accommodate up to 20 people working at the same time. There are such small and medium-sized factories everywhere in Kangle Village and Lujiang Village. It is no longer possible for the owner of the garment factory to hire a dedicated person to recruit workers. In order to rush the work, he needs to recruit a large number of temporary workers. Temporary workers always have a clear idea in mind. When they go to the streets to find work and when they stay at home, they will never relax their asking price.
No one is wrong and no one is the winner
From 2010 to 2021, bosses of garment factories and textile factories have found that recruiting workers has become increasingly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. In the past 10 years, manufacturing industries in the Pearl River Delta and even coastal areas have always been involved in competition for workers due to “labor shortages.” In 2020, due to the epidemic, the “labor shortage” in the manufacturing industry reached its peak.
So, does a garment factory really have a monthly salary of 10,000 to 20,000? Most of the temporary workers laughed and said, “The so-called high salary means working hard. You work from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., and you have to work at least 15 hours a day to get a salary of more than 10,000 yuan. You can’t handle it after you are thirty years old. Live.”
Some garment factory owners attribute all the reasons to the laziness of the workers. They think that no one can make a simple piece of clothing for 8 yuan. Now Temporary workers are difficult to recruit, and permanent workers are even more difficult to recruit. Another part of the bosses said that being a boss here is not much happier than being a part-time worker. It is common to work overtime with the workers all night long. After working as a garment worker at the bottom and becoming the boss of a small workshop, they found that they are more anxious than when they were working part-time.
With the control of the epidemic, many factories have finally received a large number of orders, but all businesses upstream and downstream of the industrial chain are not stupid. In order to digest the epidemic The losses caused, everyone is trying their best to lower the price. Some garment factory owners said, “It’s the peak season now, and 10-12 workers work around the clock for 28 days a month. After deducting rent, water, electricity, and labor wages, the profit is about 30,000 yuan a month, but now Kangle Village and Lujiang Village, the peak season lasts less than 5 months.”
Aspire to become a craftsman people, eventually lost toGarment production line
The origin of the Zhongda Textile Business District can be traced back to the late 1980s, when small vendors selling woolen fabrics from “Henan” spontaneously moved to the Zhongshan University opposite Sun Yat-sen University. The empty space was later fixed and operated next to the No. 25 bus terminal, and expanded into a professional cloth market.
In the early 1990s, more and more merchants from all over the country came to purchase, and its reputation became more and more popular. Because it was located opposite the campus of the prestigious Sun Yat-sen University, the goods sold were mainly fabrics. Over time, it became known as the Zhongda Cloth Market. Following the early fabric sales, an industrial chain was formed.
As the scale of Zhongda Bu City continues to expand, the supply of houses in the village exceeds demand. Villagers began to build additional buildings on a large scale, from the original three and a half floors to five or six floors. The industrial chain has also spread from Kangle Lujiang to the surrounding areas. Because of the cheap rent and “nobody care” status, it attracted a large number of outsiders. In less than 10 years, Kangyue Village has developed a garment-making assembly line—cutting, sewing, ironing, and printing. There is no garment that cannot be made here.
Zhongda Cloth Market is like the “blood supply heart” of Kangle Village. After merchants select fabrics at the cloth market, they go to the factory in Kangle Village to place orders. In less than a day, the clothes are finished and shipped across the country. At its peak, it housed more than 150,000 migrant workers.
Ten years ago, Kangle Garment Village relied on its diverse supply of goods and flexible orders to form strong competitiveness. Because of this, ten years later, Kangle Garment Village’s design and Technology is still at a standstill, and factories will only process the garments based on pre-printed samples.
The entire garment making village has not yet been able to form a “neat” assembly line. This business model is doomed to the unsustainable development of the garment making village, with a large number of unstable orders and insufficient maintenance. A large number of temporary workers emerged. Encountering a batch of unfamiliar craftsmanship, workers were “forced” to re-enter the temporary labor market and find jobs they were familiar with. As there are more and more factories, rents are getting higher and profits are getting smaller and smaller, and the small workshop model is becoming less and less productive.
In the future blueprint of the exhibition hall of “Fenghe Lujiang Village Kangle Village Renovation Exhibition Center”, there are many high-rise buildings, regular roads, and full of modernity, but there is no garment village in sight. Shadow now. With the implementation of the Zhongda Textile Business District renovation project, the garment industry in Kangyue Village, which is showing signs of fatigue, does not know where it will go.
As for the upcoming renovation, the practitioners seemed calm, “We have been talking about renovation and relocation for many years, and we are used to it. I believe it is true this time, and it is all the landlord’s.” It’s over, I believe it won’t be that fast. If we have to move, there will be a place to go. I will discuss it with the fellow villagers.”
According to the bidding plan, The partner Hopson Chuangzhan will complete the review and approval of the implementation plan, complete the voting on the compensation and resettlement plan, and initiate the signing of the compensation and resettlement agreement before December 31, 2021; the construction of resettlement houses will start before the end of 2023; the construction of resettlement houses will be basically completed by the end of 2025.
In the evening, the setting sun slanted over Kangle Village and Lujiang Village. The buildings outside the villages cast long shadows in the afterglow of the setting sun. Not far away, Guangzhou CBD Zhujiang New Town Huaguang At first sight, the dazzling lights did not shine into the garment village, and the people in the garment village did not care about the scene opposite. It seems that as long as you plunge into the alley, the prosperity and trends of the outside world will seem to have nothing to do with you. </p
