DONGGUAN, China—The Chinese factory workers who make shoes for Ivanka Trump and other designers gather at 7:40 every morning to sing songs.
Sometimes, they extol worker solidarity. Usually, they trumpet ties between China and Africa, the theme of their employer’s corporate anthem.
That is no accident. With many workers here complaining about excessive hours and seeking higher pay, the factory owner wants to send their jobs to Ethiopia.
The employer, Huajian International, now faces scrutiny from labor activists for how it treats workers. Chinese authorities this week detained an activist who went undercover in the company’s factory here for a labor-rights group. Two other activists who worked at Huajian are missing; it is unclear whether they were detained.
The activists’ focus on Huajian’s factories points to changing labor conditions in China as manufacturers try to get more work out of an increasingly expensive labor pool.
Trump’s father campaigned for the US presidency on a platform of bringing back overseas manufacturing jobs. But deep economic and demographic shifts mean a lot of low-end work—like making shoes—does not offer huge profit in China. As President Donald J. Trump accuses China of stealing jobs, those jobs are now leaving for other shores.
Huajian, which makes shoes for a number of American brands, was a major beneficiary of the decadeslong shift of manufacturing jobs away from the US. Global brands flocked to China to tap into the country’s cheap and willing labor pool.
Today, Chinese workers are less cheap and less willing. More young people are going to college and want office jobs. The blue-collar work force is aging. Long workdays in a factory no longer appeal to those older workers, even with the promise of overtime pay.
In interviews last December and again on Sunday and Monday outside Huajian’s vast industrial complex in this southern Chinese factory city, numerous workers interviewed by The New York Times complained about 14-hour days.
While many liked the overtime pay, they said the days were too long, especially since they often included up to three hours of unpaid breaks for lunch and dinner. The workers insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation by management.
China Labor Watch, the advocacy group investigating the factories, said it found that employees had worked longer weeks than Chinese labor law allows, even excluding breaks. Such violations are common in Chinese factories.
A Huajian spokesman, Wei Xuegang, said the company knew nothing about the activists. Asked about the accusation from China Labor Watch, he said Huajian scheduled extra hours during busy times but paid workers according to the law.
In a December interview, Zhang Huarong, the company’s founder and chairman, said Huajian followed overtime laws.
The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment on the labor conditions or the activists. In terms of bringing jobs back to the US, the company said, it was “looking forward to being a part of the conversation”.
Such tensions are fueling the drive of Huajian’s founder, Zhang, to move work to Ethiopia. A former drill sergeant in the Chinese military who sometimes leads his workers on parade-ground drills, Zhang says work like making shoes will never return to the US and is increasingly difficult in China, as well.
“Do Americans really like to work, to do these simple and repetitive tasks?” said Zhang, in the December interview. “Young Chinese also don’t want to do this after they graduate from college.”
In many respects, China’s economy is maturing. The number of people who turn 18 each year and do not enroll in college—the group that might consider factory work—had plummeted to 10.5 million by 2015, from 18.5 million in 2000, government data shows.
Because of the effects from China’s former “one-child” policy, the figure is on track to fall below 7 million by 2020.
Costs are rising too, as the government raises minimum wages and benefits in an effort to shift China’s economy away from cheap manufacturing. Wages in Dongguan have increased ninefold since the late 1990s, Zhang said.
Workers said they resented the hours, especially the unpaid breaks. One employee’s printed schedule last December showed the factory required 60 hours and 10 minutes of paid work per week. Chinese laws require that workweeks average no more than 44 hours and limit overtime to 36 hours per month.
On Monday in the middle of China’s three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday, throngs of workers filed into the factory.
Asked whether he would be eating zongzi, the traditional rice dumpling served during the holiday, one worker replied that they do not get to celebrate. Another said Huajian gave each worker two small dumplings and an egg for the holiday.
One worker, a middle-aged woman with the surname Du, said her children had gone home to central China. Du wished for time off to celebrate, so she could make rice dumplings for them.
Zhang said his company kept working hours within legal limits, despite workers who want more overtime pay.
“We cannot let them work extra hours just because they have low pay,” Zhang said in a lengthy interview. “We have thought about it, but we want to do business well.”
China Labor Watch said on Tuesday it had lost contact with three undercover activists at Huajian factories. The wife of one in the factory in Dongguan said he had been detained by the police.
Li Qiang, who started China Labor Watch 17 years ago, said the group’s activists had never before been detained by the police.
“I’m very worried about their safety,” he said. “The longer I’ve lost contact with them, the more I worry.”
Image credits: Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times