From labeling to tearing labels, those college students who work in factories
Original title: An important social practice class for rural youth before they leave campus.
Those college students who work in factories
This summer vacation, 19-year-old college student Li Wen spent it in the quality inspection workshop of an electronics factory in Dongguan, Guangdong. About 10 years ago, every year, students from Shanpa Village, Binyang County, Nanning City, where Li Wen lived, used the summer vacation to go to Guangdong to find short-term jobs. More than half of the college students in the village have worked in factories, which has formed a tradition in the local area.
In the factory streets and talent markets of Shenzhen, Dongguan and other cities, information about recruiting student workers and college students looking for jobs can be seen everywhere. Most of these college students who come to work in factories come from counties and towns in the western region. Restricted by family economic conditions, or in order to spend a long holiday, they come to strange coastal developed cities to experience fresh working life and feel the sense of accomplishment of making money independently. This has become an important social practice lesson for local rural youth before they leave campus.
Working in a factory is actually a helpless choice.
For many students born in rural areas in the western region, life is incomplete without going to the factory.
Every Spring Festival, young people who come back from Shenzhen and Dongguan to work always talk to their peers or younger brothers and sisters about the life of working in other places and tell some interesting things, although sometimes they will complain about the boredom and fatigue of factory work.
Li Wen, who lives in the rural area of northern Guangxi, is a freshman in guangxi technological college of machinery and electricity. In his view, these young people’s complaints and complaints are more like a show of independence and freedom, showing the difference between their working places-those developed coastal areas and their hometown.
Before the summer vacation this year, Li Wen was opposed when he mentioned to his parents the idea of working in a factory. Because summer is the busiest time for rice harvesting and sowing, more than 20 acres of rice fields at home are in need of manpower. Although his parents tried to keep him at home to help, Li Wen felt that he was more willing to work in a factory than basking in the sun and laborious farm work. Under the introduction of his cousin, he found a job in an electronics factory in Dalingshan Town, Dongguan.
For more college students in rural areas, working in factories is actually a helpless choice.
Jiang Yun’s family lives in the countryside of Yangshuo County, Guilin City. Her parents left home many years ago to work in Shunde, Guangdong Province. She can only visit her parents during the summer vacation. Since the second day of junior high school, her mother has asked her to use her holiday to help in the factory and earn some pocket money.
"I don’t think the economic conditions at home are very good. If I go to play on holiday, I will feel uneasy." Jiang Yun also tried to find a job in Yangshuo’s hometown, but she found it hard to find a summer job.
As a student in Guangxi University, she had a late holiday and basically couldn’t find a good job when she returned to the county seat. She used to apply for a job along a storefront in the street, and also tried to find job information through job-seeking apps such as BOSS direct employment and Zhaopin recruitment. Generally speaking, the job of a waitress requires at least two months. She only wants to work as a summer job for one month, so she can only contact the factory in Guangdong through her parents’ help.
"For college students from our rural areas, short-term workers in the city are hard to find, and the cost of living is also high." Huang Yan, a senior student in Guangxi Normal University for Nationalities, just admitted to graduate school this year. She originally wanted to find a summer job in nearby Nanning, but after asking around, she found that most jobs were paid around 2,000 yuan a month, not including food and shelter. According to the consumption level of Nanning, no matter how to save food expenses in a month, it will cost 800 yuan, plus rent and utilities, which will cost nearly 1,000 yuan a month. Moreover, many landlords also require that the rent be paid one time and three times. If they stay for less than three months, the landlord will deduct half of the money.
"In this way, it is basically in vain to work for one month." Huang Yan said that in the end, she and her classmates came to Shenzhen to go to relatives. Under the arrangement of the intermediary company, they entered the factory and became a "justified" summer vacation worker through interviews and training.
It’s not easy to earn money for summer jobs in factories.
Because they are short-term summer jobs, many college students are the weak side when facing factories or intermediary companies. They often face many uncertainties in terms of salary and labor security, and even fall into various pits.
On July 28th, I heard my fellow villagers talk about factory recruitment. Qin Juan, a sophomore who lives in Xilin County, Baise City, applied for a job in an electronics factory in Shenzhen. The interviewer saw that she was a student and refused directly. In desperation, she can only turn to the intermediary company for help.
"Before signing the contract, the intermediary company told us that the hourly wage was 18 yuan and we worked 10 hours a day." Qin Juan said that after she signed the contract, the intermediary company told her that the specific working hours were based on working hours. Resign before August 20, and the hourly wage is 11 yuan; Resign after September 5, and the hourly wage is 16 yuan; Resign at the end of September to get 18 yuan’s salary per hour.
School started in early September, and most of the summer vacation workers resigned in August. According to the contract, Qin Juan can only get 11 yuan’s labor remuneration per hour, and the factory does not include food. The food expenses for one day should be at least 20 yuan, the water and electricity expenses should be shared equally, and the air conditioning expenses should be 4 yuan a day. In addition, 30 yuan management fees and 50 yuan insurance fees should be paid when entering the factory. Finally, there is not much money left.
Through the introduction of parents, Jiang Yun went to work in a small parts processing factory in Shunde, Foshan. The work intensity was not great, and every day he painted the parts on the assembly line. Because it was introduced by an acquaintance, she didn’t know how much the salary was at first. The workers said that the salary of a regular worker was sixty or seventy yuan a day. After almost a month’s work, Jiang Yuncai knew that the factory paid summer workers only one day in 55 yuan. "It was actually very sad when I got my salary. I felt that I wasted a lot of time, didn’t earn any money, and didn’t learn anything." Jiang Yun said.
"When college students go to the factory for summer jobs, they are often’ dumb to eat coptis, and they can’t say anything’." Qin Juan said that because many factory managers think that students have short working hours, it is hard to teach them how to operate, and they have to go back to school when school starts, and they have to find someone to take their place, which not only affects the output of the whole production line but also brings trouble to enterprise management, so they are reluctant to recruit them. Faced with such a situation, college students have to compromise, knowing that they have been cheated, and they can only swallow it.
Before entering the factory, the intermediary company told Qin Juan that every workshop in the factory has air conditioning, which is very comfortable and has good protection measures. You should wear dust-free clothes and gloves when going to work, so you don’t have to worry about any personal safety issues. However, after entering the factory, she found that the workshop environment is very different from that introduced by the intermediary company. There are only two air conditioners in the workshop with a floor of thousands of square meters. Under the high temperature in Shenzhen in summer, working in it is like steaming. Moreover, the factory has not issued dust-free clothes and safety gloves. Sometimes, when electronic products are pressed, glass fragments as big as needles will splash out and stick in your hands or fall into your eyes, which is particularly painful.
Qin Juan reflected this problem to the supervisor, who said casually, "Buy your own band-aid after work". After about half a month, customers came to the workshop to inspect the products. In order to ensure the quality of products, meet the needs of customers and improve the safety of products, the company issued them clean clothes.
Under normal circumstances, the factory goes to work at 8 o’clock in the morning and leaves work at 8 o’clock in the evening. If there is a rush of orders, it has to continue to work until 11 o’clock in the evening.
"During that time, we basically went to work as robots and became vegetative after work." Qin Juan said that the three-point and one-line life in the factory is completely different from that in the school. If you are late for class at school, you will be criticized by the class teacher. The factory has a very strong concept of time, and every minute is linked to money. If you are late, you will be deducted from your salary. There is basically no vacation for one month, so rest has become a luxury. Juan Juan feels that this short month has taught her an important lesson in life.
From labeling to tearing labels.
Tian Shuai is a freshman in Guilin University of Electronic Technology. He comes from a single-parent family. In order to reduce his mother’s financial burden, he joined an electronics factory in Shenzhen as a summer job under the recommendation of his relatives.
Working with most workers who didn’t graduate from junior high school in the factory, the status of a college student didn’t bring any advantages or convenience to Tian Shuai, but made him feel uncomfortable. In terms of working ability, his mastery of assembly line work is completely inferior to that of skilled workers; On the way of the world, as a newcomer, he can’t integrate into the circle of acquaintances in the factory at all, and he often feels the alienation of his workers.
"When college students are in the factory, others will think that you are very different and will label you. After a long time, you will also wonder if you are really bad." Tian Shuai said.
Once when he was working, the monitor of the workshop suddenly ran over in a hurry. At first, Tian Shuai thought it was something wrong with his work. When he followed the monitor nervously to the front of the computer, he realized that the monitor accidentally hid the contents of the form by clicking the wrong mouse, thinking that all the data in the form had been deleted, and he hurried to Tian Shuai, a college student, for emergency treatment.
Excel software is often used in schools, and Tian Shuai helped the monitor solve the problem in a few times. Although the monitor can make simple tables and remember simple and repeated operation steps, he knows almost nothing about principles and knowledge. Later, the monitor asked how to adjust the row height, column width and table style. Tian Shuai gave a detailed answer and recommended him a free online tutorial.
After helping the monitor several times, Tian Shuai felt that his workmates began to accept him slowly. Every day when the monitor checks and passes his station, he will ask him if there is anything he doesn’t understand. When you meet a worker you know on the road, everyone will take the initiative to say hello to him.
Yuqiao works as a workshop monitor in a machinery configuration factory in Dongguan. In the summer of 2017, the team he managed was divided into six college students, which was his first contact with student workers. At first, he learned that he wanted to recruit students to work hours. In fact, he was very reluctant. "What can a bunch of children who don’t know anything do, they always feel that they are here to make trouble."
Part-time students are mainly responsible for grinding mechanical parts, putting the parts on the machine to a specified size, measuring whether the size of the ground parts is qualified with a separating ruler every once in a while, properly adjusting the grinding parameters of the machine, and finally soaking the ground parts in oil to prevent rust.
In the process of dealing with student workers, Yuqiao found that some of them took time off because of work fatigue, some were allergic to antirust oil, some were slow to meet the production requirements, and some were severely criticized. "Fortunately, they are used to being honest at school, otherwise it is really not pleasing at all."
What really changed Yuqiao’s work for students was that when she was on the night shift, a female college student suddenly came crying and told him that there were problems with a batch of parts during grinding. Yuqiao didn’t care at that time, just asked her to look for a technician and sent her away. It was not until the technician came to tell him that there was something really wrong with those parts that he felt that his previous views on student workers were full of prejudice. Yuqiao learned afterwards that the college student was crying because she told the old staff several times that there was something wrong with the parts. Instead of getting help, she was scolded for meddling.
From the beginning, the student workers couldn’t measure with a separation ruler, to panic when the grinding machine broke down, and then to skillfully control two grinding machines at the same time. Yu Qiao saw them and gradually recognized them in his heart.
Factories will multiply people’s inertia several times.
For these college students, working in a factory is only a short episode in their lives, but the insights and thoughts brought by this experience to their growth are more valuable wealth.
Jiang Yun’s parents went out to work when she was young. When she was a child, she often quarreled with her parents because of little living expenses, partiality to her younger brother, and not going home to visit her grandparents on holidays. However, after working in a factory in Guangdong, she saw her parents’ working environment and saw her father working two jobs at the same time in order to earn more money. She gradually understood her parents. "They are really under great economic pressure, and it is a last resort to leave me to work at home."
In the factory, Jiang Yun learned that her mother had worked in the position of stove processing for many years, and she was not promoted, but her salary increased a little. Her sister-in-law has worked in another factory for 10 years, but she has not been a supervisor, and she is still working hard on the assembly line. "They don’t have any culture, except that they feel tired and are quite satisfied with their salary." This made Jiang Yun realize that for most people, the room for upward development in factory work is actually quite small.
Three years ago, Jiang Yun was admitted to Guangxi University from a small village in her hometown. Although others admired her status as a college student, she often felt uneasy. During the summer vacation of junior year, Jiang Yun went to the radio station for an internship. My mother heard that she had no salary for her internship and said on the phone that she might as well work in the factory. In the concept of villagers, it is useless to go to a university without being admitted to a civil servant or obtaining a teacher qualification certificate. It is better to work in the factory early to make money, but Jiang Yun has been fighting this concept with her own efforts. She studies hard and just doesn’t want to repeat her parents’ fate.
But after really getting in touch with the society, Jiang Yun found that a college graduate can get a salary of three or four thousand yuan when he just comes out to work; And entering a better factory, the monthly income can reach five or six thousand yuan. Reality sometimes makes her feel insecure, which makes her feel a little confused about her original insistence.
When Wei Liying worked on the assembly line, many workers of the same age often envied her being able to study at school. At first, Wei Liying always took it for granted that as long as you work hard, you can also use your rest time to learn and improve yourself.
But after working in the factory for a period of time, Wei Liying felt strongly that the factory would magnify people’s inertia several times. After a long period of mechanized work every day, she just wants to lie in bed and play with her mobile phone and sleep, unlike when she was at school, she would consider learning new skills in her spare time to enrich herself. Other people around are brushing Tik Tok, watching dramas and falling in love. In such an atmosphere, people are easily assimilated. "Maintaining life has exhausted all their strength, and it is difficult for a person to break the status quo." She said.
When Huang Yan was working in a factory in Shenzhen, she met a strange middle-aged worker. The worker seemed to be 40 or 50 years old. Every time she came to work, Huang Yan would take the initiative to say hello and say "Auntie", but the other party never paid attention to it, and even did not respond when she heard it. Huang Yan felt hurt in her self-esteem. When she talked about this with other workers, the workers told her: "You are too simple. Even the 60-year-old aunt has to call them little sisters, because no one wants to know that she is getting old."
Sure enough, when we met again, Huang Yan changed her name to "Little Sister", but I didn’t expect the other party to reply happily. At first, Huang Yan didn’t understand this phenomenon and thought it was self-deception. Later, she gradually learned to respect and gradually integrated into their life circle with the survival rules of the workers.
"I found that they are kind in nature, perhaps out of society, experienced various vicissitudes, and their faces are full of traces of years, but they don’t want to surrender to life, so they use the name’ Miss Sister’ to express their nostalgia for youth." Huang Yan said that this experience of working in a factory suddenly made her feel that studying is the easiest and happiest thing in the world, and it also made her more determined and clear about her future choices, because she knew what kind of life she wanted to live. (At the request of the respondents, all the college students in the text are pseudonyms) (Reporter Xie Yang Intern Wu Qi)