Stories about working conditions, labor relations, and worker suicides in China have been appearing in almost all HR and news sources recently. As mentioned in an earlier post, this issue bears watching simply because of its complexitiy, its direct relationship to so many U.S. businesses, and the broad similarities to worker-labor union struggles of our own many decades ago.
It's a very complex case. Now there are a couple of added elements that make watching this continually important for HR professionals. First of all, the major issue. A number of Chinese companies -- urged in part by unions and the Chinese government have implemented wage increases up to 30%. Deja vu? I'm not conceptually opposed to the wage increases but I don't know of any evidence that this will have a long term impact on work satisfaction. It's my understanding that the working conditions in most of these Chinese factories are pretty good, from an environmental and safety standpoint. The articles often point to lack of opportunity for advancement and repetitive work as the fundamental issues -- particularly behind some of the suicides.
The latest stories, including an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, raise another fascinating element -- that the movement toward higher wages is a Chinese government push to raise the manufacturing costs for U.S. companies.
Comment: Lots of reasons to continue monitoring this story.
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