Rebirth of the Industrial Tycoon

Sitting in the car, Kong Zhenlong kept thinking about Li Wei's concept of "teaching people to fish", and then he showed an expression that he was hesitant to speak.

"Reporter Kong, do you have any questions? Just ask!" Li Weidong said proactively.

"Chairman Li, I very much agree with what you said about teaching a man to fish, but if you think about it carefully, this is not a simple matter. At least it costs a lot of money, right?"

Kong Zhenlong paused for a moment and then continued, "It's like driving an excavator. You will earn a lot after completing the course, and the tuition must also be high, right? I think it is more expensive than learning to drive a car.

There are also majors such as car repair, cooking and pastry, and beauty and hairdressing, which all require a certain amount of money to learn. In other words, what you call "teaching people how to fish" is not free. "

"Of course." Li Weidong nodded: "I am a businessman, and the purpose of opening a technical school is to make a profit. We are not a compulsory education institution, so we naturally have to charge tuition fees, and the tuition fees are indeed not cheap."

"But for many rural families who are not very wealthy, they can't afford the high tuition fees, right? In other words, it is very difficult for them to come to a technical school to learn skills. Even if they want to Learning technology also costs so much tuition.”

Kong Zhenlong paused before continuing, "When I went to interview cotton pickers before, I met a child who had just turned sixteen. His family was not wealthy. He went to the northwest to pick cotton just to be able to Save up enough money as a bride price and marry the girl you like next door.

But on the train back, the money he earned through hard work picking cotton was almost stolen by a pickpocket. Fortunately, the police comrades showed up with skills and caught the pickpocket, and he was able to keep his hard-earned money.

This child is lucky. Although he doesn't know any skills, he can make money and marry a wife with his own strength. I imagine that most of the hundreds of thousands of cotton pickers are in his situation. They have no skills and can only make money by relying on their strength.

Chairman Li, you have said before that there are hundreds of millions of farmers in China who lack livelihood skills. With such a large population, how can we have so many resources to provide them with vocational and technical training? "

"This is a good question. With the current situation and population size of our country, it is completely impossible to popularize vocational and technical education." Li Weidong nodded and continued;

“Our country is not yet rich. It would be great if we could popularize nine-year compulsory education. We simply don’t have that much money and resources to provide vocational education to hundreds of millions of people.

Therefore, for a long time in the future, vocational education can only exist as a supplementary form. It can help some people find jobs and even become rich, but it cannot solve the problems of most people.

That's why I'm going to take you to the next place. When you get there, you may get a more complete answer. "

"Chairman Li, you haven't told me where we are going!" Kong Zhenlong asked curiously.

"The place we are going to is the Puppy Electric Factory. For now, this should be regarded as the largest foundry in East China. In the future, it will become the largest foundry in Asia and even the world!" Li Weidong said with a smile. .

After expansion in recent years, the scale of the Puppy Electric Factory has become very large. Basically, the entire land in Xiangyang Town has been planned for the use of the Puppy Electric Factory.

Currently, the number of workers in the entire factory has reached an astonishing 120,000. Although this is not comparable to the Foxconn factories of later generations, which often had 200,000 to 300,000 people, around 2000, it was already one of the top ten major factories in the country.

In fact, the entire Xiangyang Town originally had a population of more than 50,000. Nowadays, the more than 50,000 people in the town have basically stopped farming. They either go to work at the Puppy Electric Factory or are engaged in the logistics support of the Puppy Electric Factory. Work.

Feeding, drinking, and eating for 120,000 people consumes a lot of supplies every day. These have become the source of income for the residents of Xiangyang Town. Those who have the ability can go to the factory to contract a canteen or a small shop. Those who do not have the ability can do it. Setting up a small door outside the factory, opening a food stall, or a game arcade, billiards hall, barber shop, etc., even selling pancakes, fruit and meat buns, can still make a living, at least more than farming.

Morning markets or night markets have spontaneously formed on several roads next to the electrical appliance factory, selling snacks, various daily necessities, and all kinds of pirated books and tapes.

Workers who got off the night shift went to the morning market, and workers who got off the day shift went to the night market. The scale of 120,000 workers was enough to easily support thousands of vendors.

Kong Zhenlong traveled all day long and visited many large companies. He was well-informed, but he was still surprised when he saw the scale of the Puppy Electric Factory.

"Are these all dormitories? With so many buildings, how many people can live there!" Kong Zhenlong looked at the rows of four-story dormitories and said with a surprised look on his face:

"Chairman Li, the scale of your electrical appliance factory is really large. I have interviewed many large state-owned enterprises, and such large-scale enterprises are not common."

Li Weidong said: "Currently, there are 120,000 employees in our factory, and there are almost 20,000 people who provide living and logistical support for these employees!

The dormitories in front of you all have eight people per room. The conditions are neither good nor bad. They are basically similar to dormitories in ordinary universities. "

"This factory of yours reminds me of those big mines and oil fields back then, where towns could be built with just one company," Kong Zhenlong said.

The most resource-based cities or towns in China are built on the back of a large mine or a large oil field.

For example, DQ City was originally just a town, surrounded by pastures. Since the discovery of the oil field, it has slowly developed into a city.

At this moment, a group of young people appeared in the field of vision. They were lining up to walk towards one of the dormitories, holding the clothes and shoes they had just received, as well as washbasins, towels and other daily necessities.

"This is our newly recruited employee. Each of our employees must pass an examination and physical examination before they can enter the factory. They must also undergo training after entering the factory. Only after passing the training can they be employed. Reporter Kong, are you interested in joining us? "Let's take a look at the training department?" Li Weidong asked.

"Dare you disobey me!" Kong Zhenlong nodded.

Everyone came to the training department, which was also a large workshop, but there was no assembly line. Workers were practicing some basic operations of assembling home appliances here.

Those being trained are basically young people, they all look about twenty years old, there are also some with slightly immature faces, they must still be minors, and there are only a few older ones.

"Chairman Li, the workers here are generally relatively young." Kong Zhenlong said subconsciously.

"Young people have stronger learning abilities and are easier to pass training." Li Weidong then asked: "There should be many elderly cotton pickers, right?"

Kong Zhenlong nodded: "The age of the cotton pickers is relatively average. There are some young and some older, but most of them are young adults, those in their thirties and forties. There are also many over fifty, in their teens. Not many years old.”

"When a teenage child travels far away from home, and it is in the vast and sparsely populated Northwest, my family is still worried. But it is the same when coming to the factory. There is a fixed place of work, food and accommodation are guaranteed, and the child is sent here. Parents are also relieved.”

Li Weidong went on to say, "To be honest, a few years ago, we had a lot of child labor here. Children aged thirteen or fourteen were all sent here by their families because they were interested in us taking care of food, housing, and living here." There is a salary.

We said we don’t want child labor, but they begged us to take them in, and even many village cadres helped to put in good words and insisted on sending them over. After all, in that era, in the eyes of farmers, being a worker was a very honorable thing.

In recent years, we have also strengthened the management of labor recruitment. We strictly prohibit the recruitment of child labor under the age of 16. Those who do not have an ID card and cannot prove their age must either bring their household registration book or a certificate from the village.

However, there are still many people who take advantage of the loopholes and ask the village to prove it despite being under sixteen years old. In this rural area, age is based on actual age. A certificate of sixteen years old can be issued at the age of fifteen.

And according to the tradition of our country, regardless of the date of birth, after the lunar year, you will be one year older. Some children born at the end of the year are obviously fourteen years old, but they are two years older. They come to them with a certificate of sixteen years old. At work, we are quite helpless. "

"This situation occurs all over the country. Even in rural areas in economically developed areas, they are inevitably bound by the township contract for homestays." Kong Zhenlong nodded.

National laws do not allow the recruitment of child labor under the age of 16, but in terms of implementation, more flexible choices are made based on actual conditions.

In the era of state-owned enterprises, if children could take over their parents' positions and join the workforce, it was inevitable that they would start working before they were sixteen.

For example, Li Weidong took his father's place and joined the workforce at the age of sixteen. Fortunately, Li Weidong's birthday is at the beginning of the year. If his birth date were later, Li Weidong would also have become a child laborer.

Many resumes of those born in the 1950s, 1960s, and even the early 1970s will show that they started working at the age of thirteen or fourteen. Don’t be surprised after reading this. This was the national situation at that time.

Fourteen is two years younger, so he is sixteen, so there is nothing wrong with working.

Later, the private economy gradually developed and expanded, and the number of jobs gradually increased. However, compared with state-owned enterprises, the employment of private enterprises is far less standardized than that of state-owned enterprises, and there are more cases of using workers under the age of sixteen.

There are also more and more people who are working to earn money under the age of 16. These people have basically never even graduated from junior high school.

Some of them come from poor families and are unable to complete their studies, so they have no choice but to work.

In fact, there are not many such people. Chinese people have always valued education. Even the poor know the importance of education. Therefore, many poor families, as long as their children can pass the exam, will provide for their children even if they sell iron. go to school.

There are several self-made successful people in later generations. They used the efforts of the whole village to send them to college and then became successful.

Therefore, most of those who drop out of school and go to work are really not good at studying. Since they are not suitable for school, it is better not to go to school at all, and go out to work early to earn money, support themselves and supplement the family income.

Of those who can get first place in the class, how many drop out of school and work?

To put it another way, among the last in the class, how many are shamelessly determined to take the PhD exam?

In fact, this age issue has never been a problem. It is common to tamper with the files and change the age to be older so that you can join the work earlier.

The news often reports cases where the age on file does not match the age on the ID card and household register. Most of them are people who changed their age on file in order to find a job or join the army.

Those who changed their age enjoyed benefits at the time, but when they went to retire, they felt that they had suffered a loss. Then they tried to change it again. If they couldn't change it, they went to reporter Shen Yuan, saying that they had written it wrong before and couldn't change it now. It's like the relevant departments have nothing to do with their corpses.

In fact, it was all self-inflicted. When you changed your age to take advantage, why didn't you go to the reporter? When you suffered a loss, you remembered the reporter?

Li Weidong said and looked at his watch: "It's almost dinner time. Reporter Kong, let's go to the restaurant. I'll take you to see the food we have here. It's pretty good."

There is more than one restaurant in the factory. Li Weidong took Kong Zhenlong into one of the restaurants. At this time, rows of windows had hot food ready.

Kong Zhenlong looked at the card machine next to the window and said, "Do I need to swipe my card to eat?"

Li Weidong explained: "In the past, the canteen was free, so you could eat as much as you wanted. The workers recruited at that time were really hungry, and they usually didn't have enough to eat. There were many who ate seven or eight of these big white steamed buns in one meal." .

The workers recruited in recent years basically no longer have food and clothing problems, so there has been some wastage of food, so we changed to using meal cards.

Workers receive a monthly meal subsidy of 150 yuan. They can use this subsidy money to charge their meal cards, or they can go out to eat whatever they want and buy as much as they can, thus preventing food waste.

Each dining window in the canteen is also contracted by different people. There is a competition mechanism between them. The one with delicious food and cheap price will naturally attract more workers to eat.

In addition, the factory will also provide some subsidies based on the sales amount at each window. The more you sell, the more subsidies you will get. We also hope that the prices in the canteen will not be too high, so in general, it is more cost-effective to eat in the canteen."

Kong Zhenlong walked to a window and looked at the dishes. There were cold kelp, stir-fried shredded potatoes, cabbage stewed with tofu, tomato scrambled eggs, potato stew, kung pao chicken, and seaweed soup, which was a combination of meat and vegetables and rich in nutrients. .

"Reporter Kong, do you think the quality of the food here is much better than those who go to the northwest to pick cotton?" Li Weidong asked.

"It's much better. Those workers who pick cotton in the northwest are considered good if they can have fried rice or noodles to eat. In most cases, they eat dry food with boiled water." Kong Zhenlong said.

As the bell rang for get off work, workers rushed to the canteen one after another. The scene of tens of thousands of people moving around seemed quite spectacular.

The canteen was quickly filled with people, and people who had worked hard all day quickly started to feast.

"Our factory now has 120,000 workers, and it is still growing. Now it is increasing by 10,000 to 20,000 people every year. It is estimated that it can expand to 250,000 to 300,000 people in the future!"

Li Weidong pointed to the workers dining, and then asked: "Reporter Kong, why do you think so many people are willing to work here?"

"Food, housing and clothes are included, as well as salary. The food is pretty good. If I didn't know anything, I would also want to work in your factory!" Kong Zhenlong replied with a smile.

"Compared to picking cotton in the northwest, how is the environment here?" Li Weidong asked again.

"That's naturally much better. You don't need to be exposed to the wind and sun. Although the assembly line is a bit boring, it is not heavy physical labor after all. It should be much easier than picking cotton." Kong Zhenlong replied.

Li Weidong said: "My factory has provided employment for 120,000 people, and with logistical support, it has almost solved the livelihood problem of 150,000 people.

If there are four or five factories like this, it can almost solve the livelihood problem of hundreds of thousands of cotton pickers, right? So what if there are hundreds or thousands of such factories? Can it solve the livelihood problem of hundreds of millions of people? "

Kong Zhenlong was slightly stunned. There were many zeros in hundreds of millions, and his mind did not turn around for a while.

Li Weidong continued: "Teaching people to fish is part of the answer to the question you asked before, and here is another part of the answer! And the answer here can solve the problems of hundreds of millions of people! This is manufacturing!"

As Li Weidong spoke, he turned around and said solemnly: "Compared with vocational and technical training, developing manufacturing is really about teaching people how to fish. In a country as big as ours, with such a large population, we want to eat well and be clothed." Good, use good, manufacturing is our answer!” 13056/9951306

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