Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
I visited one factory, where the workers were paid about 40,000 RMB / year, had to work 6 days a week, 8 hours a day and pretty much just build whatever the factory owner told them to
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That's actually not bad. Assuming that they get 0 vacation days and work 52 weeks at 6 days 8 hr per, they're earing 16 RMB/hr, which is more than some other professions.
Comparatively, a waitress I was chatting with in Tianjin last week (I've since moved on to Beijing) earned 12 RMB/hr (and they aren't allowed to accept tips) and was only given 30 hours a week in shifts. Though I have hope that her wage will only go up as Tianjin has the fastest growing economy in China (possibly Asia) at the moment.
If you look at how cheap food (and oh god, it's cheap), housing (gov't subsidized) and general goods prices are here (hell, even cars have dropped more than 300% in price in the last 10 years in China), especially in areas that house factories, 40k isn't a terrible wage. Sure, Western clothing and Starbucks and whatnot are still exorbitantly priced (20 RMB for a drip brew coffee? Get ####ed Starbucks), but your typical Chinese isn't buying that crap. It's for stupid tourists like me to blow $3.30 CDN on a Grande drip.
Sorry for the derail, but I've met a lot of people here that would love to earn 40k RMB a year. As someone said earlier in the thread, what matters is buying power, not wage.
The working conditions however, are a whole other kettle of fish. Though, the AQI in Tianjin hit 427 last Thursday, so I'd assume they're already used to inhaling copious amounts of crap.