Country Driving [162]
A group of young Guizhou people had just been rejected, and now they stood in the street, discussing where to go next. I asked one of them what Jinchao Synthetic Leather had against his home province. “They didn’t give a reason,” he said. “But lots of workers from Guizhou come to Lishui, so sometimes the factories won’t accept us.”
It’s illegal for a Chinese company to discriminate on the basis of home province, although in practice this happens all the time. I was curious to hear Jinchao’s reasons, so I followed a line of applicants inside. They made their way to the second floor, where the deputy manager conducted interviews in his office. He didn’t hesitate when I asked about the restriction. “People from Guizhou like to fight,” he said. “They’re too much trouble in the factory. Around here a lot of the petty criminals come from Guizhou, too. So I don’t want them working in the factory.”
I had expected him to finesse the point, or maybe refuse to answer. But he couldn’t have been more direct: he refused to hire people from Guizhou because he didn’t like them. Who needs a better reason than that? He was just as straightforward with the potential workers who crowded around his desk. When one man tried to negotiate for a higher salary by complaining about the chemicals on the pleather assembly line, the manager shot back, “If you don’t want to work with toxic fumes, maybe you should become a teacher.” Another applicant complained that the starting wages for an unskilled worker—3.8 yuan per hour, or 47 cents—were too low. The manager said, “If you were a woman, you’d make even less. Women make only 3.4. So you should be happy with 3.8.” I asked why women were paid less for the same job, which was another dumb question. “Because women aren’t as strong,” the manager said matter-of-factly. “There are some things that a man can do better, so we have to pay them more.”
But I noticed that workers responded to this man, despite the fact that almost everything out of his mouth seemed offensive. He had an easy rapport with the returning employees, who stopped by the desk to register for the coming work year. And bolder applicants tended to be rewarded. One man wouldn’t agree to the starting wage; he had already worked a similar job at another factory, and he believed that his experience was worth a higher salary. The manager flatly refused (“Go back to your old job”), but the worker wouldn’t leave. He stood by the desk, making his case while the manager dealt with other applicants. Periodically they exchanged barbs (“I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known you weren’t fair” “Why would I care if you came here or not?”), but neither one ever showed any anger. After a full hour, the manager finally signed him up at the higher wage. That’s what it took to win his respect—patience and determination and a certain bullheadedness.
Nobody had been doing this for long. Ten years ago, most Chinese employment was government-assigned, and in those days it was rare for a Chinese person to embark on an independent job search. Since then, people have learned quickly, but the routine is still new—the blind recruit the blind. And they have no time for the polish of the American human resources department. There are no euphemisms, no indirections; nobody talks about “becoming part of the team” or “opportunities for growth” or a desire for “highly motivated, creative individuals.” People say exactly what they think, and they make brutally sharp evaluations; they feel free to act on any whim or prejudice. Here in China, “human resources” has a more literal meaning: millions of people need to find work, and countless factories need them to work hard, and no subtleties of language can soften the hard calculus of supply and demand.
In Lishui,