The dormitory labour regime in China as a site for control and resistance1

1 Funding for the fieldwork reported in this paper is provided by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council support ‘Living with Global Capitalism: Labour Control and Resistance through the Dormitory Labour System in China’ (research period, 2003 to 2005).

Abstract

The paper uses research into industrial dormitories in Southern China to examine the role performed by employer-controlled accommodation in the management of human resources. The current rapid industrialization in China has been fuelled by the over 100 million internal migrants who move around the country on an annual basis and are housed in industrial dormitories within or close to production facilities. The paper argues that having labour supply ‘on tap’ facilitates management extending the working day, responding rapidly to fluctuations in product demand and functions as a form of coercive control, whereby employers have power not only over employment but also the housing needs of employees. The paper examines the history and contemporary use of employer-controlled accommodation, and argues that in both scale and systematic application, the current Chinese case is unique in the history of human resource management. Drawing on a case study of a large factory and dormitory, ‘China Wonder Electronics’ based in the Southern city of Shenzhen, the paper outlines the ways in which by working and living together, workers are able to develop collective resources that can be mobilized against managerial prerogatives, and challenge what is structurally a weak employment relationship for labour faced with the combined forces of big business and the state. The paper concludes by discussing the strengths and limitations for workers in what we are calling a dormitory labour regime.

Keywords:

• Dormitories
• labour process
• China
• labour regime

Notes

1 Funding for the fieldwork reported in this paper is provided by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council support ‘Living with Global Capitalism: Labour Control and Resistance through the Dormitory Labour System in China’ (research period, 2003 to 2005).

2 The State also ensures that independent trade unions are outlawed. This does not stop unions forming, but the high circulation of labour created by the structure of the dormitory labour regime also inhibits activity.

3 In colonial India, according to Sen (1999: 131–2), lodging for workers in the jute mills was frequently provided by the factory owners. However ‘workers did not like to live in accommodation provided by the employer because it implied inspections, loss of liberty and vulnerability to managerial vengeance.’ In the silk and cotton industries of early industrialization in Japan: ‘Dormitories kept women from going elsewhere to work or running home, but they also enabled managers to extract longer hours from workers who no longer had to be allotted time to commute home and prepare meals there. Under strict discipline dormitory inmates could be controlled so thoroughly that nearly all the energies were spent on thread production’ (Tsurumi, 1990: 67).

4 Working hours are ‘extensive’, that is long. But the pace of work, through the application of modern technology and management production practices, is ‘intensive’, that is each minute is productive, and labour effort is maximized during the working day. Hence, we have a low wage, long hours and work-intensive production regime.

5 In the Japanese historical situation, as in the current Chinese context, despite the hardships of long hours, and confinement or entrapment in the Japanese case, women ‘operatives obtained some independence, enjoyed the amenities of the cities, and often found the food better’ compared with ‘the pain and drudgery of farm life’ (Garon, 1987: 15). Lou et al. (2004: 225) describing the migration experiences of young women from four counties in Sichuan and Anhui, note that ‘most of the returnees did not comment on the living conditions they encountered in the factory dormitories' except when they were too far away from the factory and necessitated too long a journey after work. This highly pragmatic approach reinforces the fact that dormitory accommodation can only ever be seen as temporary, and necessary for facilitating working and maximizing wages.