2013年1月25日 星期五

中國大學生難向藍領工作「低頭」Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks to Factory Jobs

Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks to Factory Jobs

GUANGZHOU — Millions of Chinese graduate from college every year, but they struggle to find jobs in an economy that is still dominated by blue-collar industries.

中國大學生難向藍領工作「低頭」


中國廣州——這座人口1500萬的珠江河畔城市是一個製造業腹地的中心,從T恤衫、鞋類,到汽車零部件、平板電腦和太陽能電池板,這裡的工廠生產各類產品。許多工廠正陷入用工荒,儘管它們提供兩位數的年度加薪和更好的福利。
王增松(音譯)迫切地想找到一份穩定的工作。他在一個稻田農場上長大,三年前從一個社區學院畢業後,多數時間處於失業狀態。25歲的王增松只做過幾個月的低薪工作,他當過購物廣場的保安,也做過餐館服務員,最近的一份工作是辦公樓里的保安。
但是他不會考慮申請工廠的全職工作,因為身為大學生的王增松認為,那樣的工作對他來說太低級。相反,他每天都在尋找一份辦公室的工作,即便這樣的工作起薪只有工廠工作的三分之一。
“我從沒有考慮過,也永遠不會考慮到工廠工作。一個又一個小時坐在那裡做着重複的工作,有什麼意思?”王增松問道。
在中國,數百萬名像王增松這樣近年從高校畢業的人都有同樣的想法。結果是一種異常現象:工廠工作無人問津,而許多受過教育的年輕人處於失業或半失業狀態。一項對城鎮居民開展的調查顯示,在20出頭的人中,那些有高等教育文憑的人失業的可能性,是小學教育水平人群的四倍。
中國官員敏銳地意識到這個問題。
“這是一種結構性失調。一方面,工廠招不到技術工人,另一方面,大學培養出來的學生又不想要這些現有的工作,”中國高等教育學會副秘書長葉之紅說。
過去十年里,中國的教育飛速擴張,每年從高校畢業的學生人數增長四倍,培養出數百萬名工程師和科學家。最優秀的人才能夠在想要進一步提高全球競爭力的中國企業找到理想職位。
但是,中國培養的高校畢業生中,每年也有數百萬人一方面幾乎拿不出任何謀生技能,另一方面堅信自己理應得到報酬不錯的辦公室工作。
問題在一定程度上似乎是就業面較窄的專業大量出現。經過三年的學習,王增松拿到“辦公室和展位設計”專業的大專文憑。同時,商業和經濟專業在中國大學裡越來越熱門,而工程等專業受到冷落,這加劇了無意在工廠第一線工作的大學畢業生“人滿為患”的狀況。
葉之紅表示,“這和銀行業也有關係——銀行提供高薪工作,因此家長們都想讓自己的孩子進銀行。”
教育程度較高、但沒有穩定工作的中國年輕人,對社會穩定構成潛在的長期威脅。他們把大量時間花在上網、和朋友聚會,以及抱怨辦公室工作的短缺上,他們相信辦公室工作才是與自己的專業對口的。
中國現在的大學生人數是1989年春天天安門事件發生時的11倍,而中國經濟在創造白領就業崗位方面一直十分緩慢。年輕一代對政治活動的興趣降低,儘管如果越來越多的畢業生找不到滿意的工作,這一局面可能改變。
中國總理溫家寶去年3月表示,前一年的大學畢業生中,只有78%的人找到了工作。但是,即使這個數據也可能高估了受過教育的年輕人的就業率。
政府的數據不僅包括那些得到長期職位的人,還包括自由職業者、臨時工、研究生、已經簽訂了勞動合同但還沒有開始工作的人,以及全國各地國有控股公司受命為應屆畢業生創造的大量“無事忙”職位。
去年春天,中國人力資源和社會保障部部長尹蔚民在一次講話中表示,“把解決高校畢業生的就業問題作為工作重點。”
挑剔的大學畢業生 
王增松是家裡四個孩子中最小的一個。他出生於1987年末,當時“獨生子女政策”還沒有開始在農村地區執行。他的兄弟姐妹教育程度較低,他們也不願 接受高薪的工廠工作。王增松的哥哥在高中畢業後用一年時間拿到了一個移動手機設備專業的文憑,他開了一家行李箱包店。王增松的兩個姐姐都沒有上高中。現在 一個在一家服裝店當售貨員,另一個嫁給一個工廠工人,成了家庭主婦和全職母親。
密歇根大學中國研究中心(Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan)主任、中國勞工問題專家瑪麗·E·加拉格爾(Mary E. Gallagher)表示,對工廠工作的厭惡在今天的中國十分常見。
“學生們還沒有適應大眾教育這個概念,當他們進入大學時,他們習慣將自己看成精英群體的一部分,”加拉格爾表示。
中國有着數千年的儒家傳統,按照這種傳統,受過教育的人不應當干體力活。但是中國經濟仍主要創造藍領就業崗位。中國47%的經濟產出來自於製造業、採礦業以及建築業(達到這些行業在美國所佔比重的兩倍),而服務業相對不發達。
大學畢業生供過於求,也在壓低計算機科學等熱門專業畢業生所能得到的薪水。一名高管稱,在2000年的深圳,計算機科學專業的應屆畢業生在頂級公司 普遍能拿到725美元(約合4500元人民幣)的月薪,這差不多是當時一個沒有高中學歷的藍領工人的10倍。由於中國存在關於薪水的爭議,該高管要求匿 名。
但現在,計算機科學專業的應屆畢業生人數如此充足,以至於在深圳他們的月薪降到了550美元,不到一個藍領工人的兩倍。而且這還沒有考慮過去10年的通脹。根據官方數據,深圳的消費價格上漲了29%,而許多經濟學家表示,這低估了消費價格的實際漲幅。
如果王增松願意去工廠工作,考慮到他對室內設計的興趣,他可能會去宏遠傢具公司工作,該家庭桑拿浴房製造商位於廣州的另一邊,離王增松的住處有45分鐘車程。
現在這家工廠給新入職的員工提供每月2500元人民幣的底薪,加班有額外的薪酬。之前六人合住的寢室已被兩人公寓取代。工人們不再需要把部分薪水交給工頭。相反,對於每一個留職的藍領工人,廠方現在每月給工頭8美元到16美元的獎金。然而,該廠還是很難招到工人。
該公司的單位勞動力成本——工資加上福利待遇——年度升幅達到30%或以上,高於全國範圍21%的農民工工資漲幅,儘管近期有跡象表明,隨着中國經 濟整體減速,工資增速最近可能有所放緩。而且它還遠高於政府的要求,即在2015年之前每年將最低工資上調13%,大致相當於通脹的三倍。
由於宏遠傢具公司位於廣州發展較慢的一個地區,其薪資水平的增長尤為迅速。在五年前工資水平開始飆升之前,該公司為沒有工作經驗的新員工提供90美 元至120美元的月薪。宏遠的副總經理倪冰冰說,當時,工人們在最初六個月每月要從薪水中拿出13美元到40美元交給工頭,作為一種非正式學徒關係的一部 分。
倪冰冰介紹說,很多大學畢業生申請到該公司工作,但是他們還沒有迫切到會接受藍領工作。和中國許多工廠相比,這家桑拿浴房生產廠通風較好,但沒有空 調。大量電動工具工作時產生的鋸屑形成薄霧,覆蓋在所有表面上——這不是大學畢業生能穿着正式襯衫去工作,然後晚上直接去一家飯店或夜店的地方。
靠父母補貼
獨生子女政策帶來一種不尋常的社會現象,許多大學畢業生是其父母和祖父母唯一的孩子,長輩們在孩子長大成人後繼續照顧他們。
“父母和祖父母會給他們錢,有六個人供養他們,”倪冰冰說。“他們說,我為什麼要工作?我待在家裡每月都能拿到2000元,我為什麼要每天擠公交 車,去掙每月2500元的工資?”在過去三年的大部分時間裡,沒有工作的王增松就是這樣過來的。儘管父母有一些怨言,但他們還是會給他匯款,幫助他維持基 本的生活。
他租了一個面積不大但卻整潔的一居室,包括一間大約10英尺(約合3米)長的卧室,地面鋪着粉色的瓷磚,有一張矮床和一個床頭櫃,柜上擺放着筆記本 電腦。牆壁上已經被堵上的洞說明,以前的房客曾經安裝空調應對廣州的炎熱氣候,但王增松只用風扇應付。邊上的小房間有10英尺(約合3米)長,3英尺(約 合0.9米)寬,有一個小廚房、淋浴裝置和馬桶。
這所房子的租金為每個月64美元。每月吃飯、網吧上網及偶爾的約會要花費80美元,固定線路互聯網服務每月需要8美元,每月的水電費為8美元,一個月的所有花費為160美元。
除了負擔這些開支,王增松的父母還償還了他在三年大專期間欠朋友的錢,當時每年的學費為1270美元,外加320美元的生活費。
他的母親從沒上過學,而他的父親上了幾年小學後就輟學了,直到不久以前,這種情況在中國農村地區很普遍。現在,他的父母已經60多歲了,他們在拿到一些補償後不得不交出稻田,因為當地政府要在他們居住的土地上重新開發。他父親在建築工地上干一些零活,掙錢供養兒子。
並不讓人意外的是,父母力勸王增松接受一份工廠工作。“干這種工作每個月可以掙4000元,但我不會去。”王增松說。“干這種工作,手是髒的,全身上下都髒兮兮的。不適合我。”
他曾短暫工作過。在失業將近一年後,他在幾個月前找到一份寫字樓保安的工作。每個月的工資只有320美元,但他已經考慮在下個月春節過後辭職,再次 專心尋找專業對口的辦公室工作。在他的專業領域,初級職位每月只有240美元的工資,但工作乾淨、安全,還有晉陞希望。他說,如果有市政單位願意聘用他, 那就更好了。
王增松說,“最好能去政府工作;這樣你會有就業保障,還有退休金。”
王增松認為自己有女朋友非常幸運。她設法向朋友推銷安利(Amway)化妝品,但賣的最好的一個月才賺了160美元,而且經常一個月什麼都賺不到。她每月花1200元人民幣(合190美元)租房子,也要靠父母補貼,她父親銷售建築材料,母親是一個保姆。
“我女朋友說,‘你現在掙的錢肯定不足以成家,要結婚的話,你每月至少要掙1萬元,2.6萬元更好,’所以我現在壓力非常大,”王增松說,“現在女人都這樣,她們要車,要房,還要各種家用電器,當然,我答應女朋友的所有要求。”
雖然企業日趨為藍領工人提供很多白領直到最近都不敢想的福利待遇,但是像王增松這樣的年輕大學畢業生不願去工廠工作。
總部位於香港的聯業制衣有限公司(TAL Group)是一家生產高檔襯衫的大型製造商。該公司不僅在其位於中國東南部的龐大襯衫廠車間裝上空調(這是很多美國公司尚未做到的事情),還開設一間圖書館,配置50台可以上網的台式電腦,供員工們下班後使用。
獨生子女政策和大學擴招政策相結合,才剛剛開始影響中國的核心工廠勞動力人群:18至21歲不上大學的年輕人。即使高校入學人數保持不變,從2010年至2020年,這個人群的數量也會驟降29%。
技術培訓走下坡路 
過去10年間,中國各地開設了數十萬家工廠,它們竭力尋找能夠操作複雜設備的工人,更不用說能夠修理設備的高手了。然而接受職業教育的學生人數陷入停滯,如今只相當於攻讀高等學位的學生人數的大約一半。
中國教育部副部長魯昕在去年6月的一次會議上表示,一方面,有些工作和職位招不到技術工人,另一方面,一些人才找不到工作;答案在於技術、職業教育和培訓。
中國的中等職業學校和培訓項目都是冷門,因為人們認為接受這種教育沒有前途,幾乎沒有機會升入四年制本科大學。此類學校還受到歧視:人們認為有農村背景的學生才會到此類學校讀書,較為富裕、教育程度較高的城鎮學生很少選擇此類學校。
許多像王增松這樣的年輕人,出身農村的大學畢業生考慮接受工廠工作是很難的。他正在琢磨別的謀生方法,但學習職業技能不在其內。其中一個設想是,從農村的批發商那裡購買兔子,然後在廣州的大街上擺攤,將這些動物當作寵物或者食品出售。
在被告知,這可能意味着他要與年齡較大、沒有文化、願意為了一點小錢而擺攤的農村進城人員競爭時,他聳了聳肩,再次表示自己討厭去工廠工作。
“我不是怕工作艱苦,而是因為這種工作沒有地位,”他說。“人受的教育越多,就越不願意去工廠工作。”
翻譯:任芯序、谷菁璐



Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks to Factory Jobs


GUANGZHOU, China — This city of 15 million on the Pearl River is the hub of a manufacturing region where factories make everything from T-shirts and shoes to auto parts, tablet computers and solar panels. Many factories are desperate for workers, despite offering double-digit annual pay increases and improved benefits.
But he will not consider applying for a full-time factory job because Mr. Wang, as a college graduate, thinks that is beneath him. Instead, he searches every day for an office job, which would initially pay as little as a third of factory wages.
“I have never and will never consider a factory job — what’s the point of sitting there hour after hour, doing repetitive work?” he asked.
Millions of recent college graduates in China like Mr. Wang are asking the same question. A result is an anomaly: Jobs go begging in factories while many educated young workers are unemployed or underemployed. A national survey of urban residents, released this winter by a Chinese university, showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education.
It is a problem that Chinese officials are acutely aware of.
“There is a structural mismatch — on the one hand, the factories cannot find skilled labor, and, on the other hand, the universities produce students who do not want the jobs available,” said Ye Zhihong, a deputy secretary general of China’s Education Ministry.
China’s swift expansion in education over the last decade, including a quadrupling of the number of college graduates each year, has created millions of engineers and scientists. The best can have their pick of jobs at Chinese companies that are aiming to become even more competitive globally.
But China is also churning out millions of graduates with few marketable skills, coupled with a conviction that they are entitled to office jobs with respectable salaries.
Part of the problem seems to be a proliferation of fairly narrow majors — Mr. Wang has a three-year associate degree in the design of offices and trade show booths. At the same time, business and economics majors are rapidly gaining favor on Chinese campuses at the expense of majors like engineering, contributing to the glut of graduates with little interest in soiling their hands on factory floors.
“This also has to do with the banking sector — they offer high-paying jobs, so their parents want their children to go in this direction,” Ms. Ye said.
Mr. Wang and other young, educated Chinese without steady jobs pose a potential long-term challenge to social stability. They spend long hours surfing the Internet, getting together with friends and complaining about the shortage of office jobs for which they believe they were trained.
China now has 11 times as many college students as it did at the time of the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, and an economy that has been very slow to produce white-collar jobs. The younger generation has shown less interest in political activism, although that could change if the growing numbers of graduates cannot find satisfying work.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao acknowledged last March that only 78 percent of the previous year’s college graduates had found jobs. But even that figure may overstate employment for the young and educated.
The government includes not just people in long-term jobs but also freelancers, temporary workers, graduate students and people who have signed job contracts but not started work yet, as well as many people in make-work jobs that state-controlled companies across China have been ordered to create for new graduates.
Yin Weimin, the minister of human resources and social security, said in a speech last spring that “the major emphasis will be on solving the employment problem among college graduates.”
Picky College Graduates
Mr. Wang is the youngest of four children. He was born in late 1987, as the “one child policy” was barely beginning to be enforced in rural areas. His less-educated siblings have also been leery of taking well-paid factory jobs. A brother, who got a one-year degree in mobile phone equipment after high school, opened a luggage shop. Neither of his sisters attended high school. One is a saleswoman in a clothing store, and the other is a homemaker and mother who married a factory worker.
An aversion to factory labor is common in China today, said Mary E. Gallagher, the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and a specialist in Chinese labor issues.
“Students themselves have not adjusted to the concept of mass education, so students are accustomed to seeing themselves as becoming part of an elite when they enter college,” she said.
China has a millenniums-old Confucian tradition in which educated people do not engage in manual labor. But its economy still largely produces blue-collar jobs. Manufacturing, mining and construction represent 47 percent of China’s economic output, twice their share in the United States, and the service sector is far less developed.
The glut of college graduates is eroding wages even for those with more marketable majors, like computer science. In 2000, the prevailing wage at top companies for fresh graduates with computer science degrees was about $725 a month in Shenzhen, roughly 10 times the wage then of a blue-collar worker who had not finished high school, said an executive who insisted on anonymity because of controversy in China over wages.
But today, new computer science graduates are so plentiful that their pay in Shenzhen has fallen to just $550 a month, less than double the wage of a blue-collar worker. And that is without adjusting for inflation over the last decade. Consumer prices have risen 29 percent in Shenzhen, according to official data that many economists say understates the true increase in consumer prices.
If Mr. Wang were willing to take a factory job, his interest in indoor design might take him to Hongyuan Furniture, a manufacturer of home saunas a 45-minute drive south across Guangzhou from his home.
The factory now offers newcomers 2,500 renminbi a month, about $395, before overtime. Six-person dorm rooms have been replaced with two-person apartments. Workers no longer have to hand over part of their wages to the foreman. Instead, the factory now pays a bonus to foremen of $8 to $16 for each month that a new blue-collar employee stays on the job. Yet the factory still struggles to find workers.
The company’s labor costs per worker — wages plus benefits — have been rising 30 percent or more each year. That is faster than the national pace of 21 percent for migrant workers, although there have been signs that pace may have slowed recently with a broader deceleration in the Chinese economy. And it is considerably faster than the 13 percent annual increase in minimum wages — roughly three times inflation — that the government has mandated through 2015.
Wages at Hongyuan Furniture are rising particularly fast because it is in an area of Guangzhou that was slower to develop. Before wages began surging five years ago, the company paid $90 to $120 a month to new workers without experience. Workers then were also expected to pay $13 to $40 of their monthly pay for the first six months to their foreman in a sort of informal apprenticeship, said Ni Bingbing, the company’s vice general manager.
Plenty of college graduates apply for jobs at the company, but they are not desperate enough to accept blue-collar tasks, Ms. Ni said. The sauna factory has better ventilation than many Chinese factories, but it is not air-conditioned. The many power tools kick up a fine mist of sawdust that coats every surface — not the sort of place where a college graduate can go to work in a dress shirt and then head straight to a restaurant or nightclub in the evening.
Subsidized by Parents
One unusual social dynamic created by the one-child policy is that many college graduates are only children with parents and grandparents who continue to nurture them into adulthood.
“Their parents, their grandparents give them money; they have six people to support them,” Ms. Ni said. “They say, Why do I need to work? I can stay home and get 2,000 renminbi a month, why should I get on a bus every day to earn 2,500 a month?” That is how Mr. Wang has managed to get by for most of the last three years without a job. Despite some grumbling, his parents send him money to help support his modest lifestyle.
He rents a small but tidy studio apartment. It consists of a bedroom with a pink tile floor roughly 10 feet on a side, holding a low bed and a bedside table with a laptop on it. A plugged hole in the wall shows that a previous occupant had an air-conditioner to cope with Guangzhou’s heat, but Mr. Wang makes do with a fan. An adjacent room, about 10 feet long and just three feet wide, holds a tiny kitchen, shower and toilet.
The apartment costs $64 a month. Food, Internet cafe visits and the occasional date cost him $80 a month; fixed-line Internet service costs $8 a month; and electricity and water bills together are another $8 a month, for a total of $160 a month.
In addition to covering these expenses, Mr. Wang’s parents also paid back the money he borrowed from friends to pay for his three-year degree, which cost $1,270 a year in tuition and another $320 a year in living costs.
As was common in rural China until very recently, his mother never went to school while his father attended elementary school for several years before dropping out. Now in their 60s, his parents had to give up their rice farm when the local government redeveloped the land it was on; Mr. Wang’s father does odd jobs as a construction worker to help support his son.
Not surprisingly, they have urged Mr. Wang to take one of the many factory jobs available. “You can get paid 4,000 renminbi [$635] a month for taking such work, but I wouldn’t do it,” Mr. Wang said. “Your hands are dirty, you’re all dirty. It’s not for me.”
He has worked brief stints. After a nearly yearlong stretch out of work, he took a job several months ago as an office building security guard. It pays just $320 a month — but he already is thinking of quitting after Chinese New Year celebrations next month, and dedicating himself full time once again to the search for an office job that would allow him to use his degree. Entry-level positions in his field pay only $240 a month, but the work is clean and safe and there is the prospect of promotion. Even better would be to find a municipal agency willing to hire him, he said.
“The best is a government job; you have job security and a retirement fund,” Mr. Wang said.
Mr. Wang counts himself fortunate to have a girlfriend. She has tried to sell Amway cosmetics to her friends, but in her best month only earned $160, and often earns nothing at all in a month. Her apartment costs 1,200 renminbi, about $190, a month, and she is also subsidized by her parents — her father is a salesman for construction materials while her mother is a nanny.
“My girlfriend says, ‘What you’re earning now is definitely not enough for marriage, you need at least 10,000 renminbi a month, 26,000 would be good,’ so I’m under extreme stress right now,” Mr. Wang said. “All the women are like that now — they want the car, they want the apartment, they want the appliances — of course, I always say yes to my girlfriend.”
Young college graduates like Mr. Wang do not want factory jobs even though companies increasingly offer blue-collar workers the kinds of benefits that many white-collar workers could not aspire to until recently.
TAL Group, a large manufacturer of high-end shirts headquartered in Hong Kong, not only air-conditions its sprawling shirt factory in southeastern China, something many American factories still do not do, but it has even opened a library with 50 Internet-connected desktop computers for employees to use after work.
The combination of the one-child policy and rising rates of college education is only starting to hit the core of China’s factory work force: 18- to 21-year-olds not in college. Their numbers are on track to plunge by 29 percent from 2010 to 2020 even if enrollments in higher education hold steady.
Decline of Technical Training
As hundreds of thousands of factories have opened across the country over the last decade, they have struggled to find workers who can operate their complicated equipment, much less fix it. Yet the number of those receiving vocational training has stagnated to the point that they are now outnumbered roughly two to one by students pursuing more academic courses of study.
“We have jobs and positions for which skilled workers cannot be found, and on the other hand, we have talented people who cannot find jobs; technical and vocational education and training is the answer,” said Lu Xin, the vice minister of education, at a conference last June.
China’s vocational secondary schools and training programs are unpopular because they are seen as dead-ends, with virtually no chance of moving on to a four-year university. They also suffer from a stigma: they are seen as schools for people from peasant backgrounds, and are seldom chosen by more affluent and better-educated students from towns and cities.
Many youths from rural areas who graduate from college, like Mr. Wang, are also hostile to factory jobs. He is toying with other ideas to earn a living, but learning vocational skills is not one of them. One idea is to buy rabbits from wholesalers in the countryside, set out a mat along a Guangzhou street and sell the animals as pets or food.
When told that this might involve competing with older, uneducated rural migrants willing to work for almost nothing as sidewalk vendors, he shrugged and reiterated his hostility to factory labor.
“I’m not afraid of hard work; it’s the lack of status,” he said. “The more educated people are, the less they want to work in a factory.”

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