Wu Taomei is a girl from a remote town in northern Guangdong. Her parents gave birth to four children. She is the eldest daughter in the family. Unlike many rural families with serious patriarchal attitudes, although his parents prefer their sons, they are not harsh on their daughters and do their best to raise them into adulthood.

Wu Taomei was very smart since childhood and had good grades in school, so his parents kept gritting their teeth and providing him with it until he graduated from high school. The tuition fees in the early 1970s and 1980s were not expensive, just like primary school only charged three or four yuan per semester.

However, Chinese people in this era are generally not rich, especially for rural families, who may not be able to see much cash throughout the year. Many families are so poor that they need money, they temporarily take a few eggs laid by the hens to the food station to exchange for one or two cents of cash.

If you graduate from junior high school at the age of fourteen or fifteen, if you don’t study and work at home, you can already use it as half a strong laborer.

But if Wu Taomei went to school, her family would only have an extra mouth for eating. Although the school's tuition was cheap, the annual food, accommodation, and miscellaneous expenses such as paper, pen, books, and study materials were also a considerable burden for rural families.

Therefore, even if her daughter is good at studying, she will let her drop out of school early. Wu Taomei is still relatively lucky. Her parents would rather endure more than let her drop out of school halfway.

However, fate seems to be a bit confusing. Wu Taomei, who usually has excellent grades, has poor luck in the exam. She happened to have heatstroke on the day of the college entrance examination, so she was so drowsy that she did not perform at all at her normal level.

The college entrance examination in the early 1980s was truly a one-plank bridge that thousands of troops crossed the single-plank bridge.

Taking 1981 as an example, the number of candidates taking the college entrance examination nationwide was 2.6 million, while the actual number of admitted students was only 280,000, and the average admission rate was only 11%.

Even this admission rate is actually quite high, because in order to control the number of candidates, most areas will hold a pre-examination before the college entrance examination. In many places, more than half of the applicants will be directly eliminated by passing the pre-examination, and these people do not even have the qualification to register for the college entrance examination.

Therefore, the college entrance examination in the early 1980s was really difficult, and if the same Rural students could get into college, whether they were key universities, ordinary universities, or junior colleges, they would have accomplished the feat of a carp jumping over the dragon gate.

Because in this era, there was a huge gap between cities and rural areas. Taking the relationship between grain as an example, urban residents can go to grain stations to purchase low-priced rations every month.

But all the food for rural people needs to be grown from the fields themselves. The food grown is only after completing the national unified purchase and collection task, and the remaining part is their own.

There was a term called "industrial and agricultural scissors gap" in later generations. The vast majority of Chinese farmers actually sacrificed a lot of their own interests to help the country complete the original industrialization accumulation.

For farmers in this era, being able to enter the city to earn the country's iron rice bowl is something they are extremely yearning for. Under the strict household registration system, there are not many ways for farmers to enter the city. The two most common ways to take the exam and recruit workers are.

However, it is not easy for the children of the Rural Group to cultivate a college student, because the gap between urban and rural education in this era is also very huge. For example, the township middle schools where Wu Taomei studied are far from comparable to those in the city, in terms of teaching level and education quality.

Wu Taomei may be a top student in her school, but it is actually nothing in the province. If she works hard to achieve her level, she may still realize her dream of realizing her college dream.

But she performed abnormally due to heatstroke, so she naturally missed the opportunity to change her life through the college entrance examination.

Her class teacher advised her to repeat the school for another year, but Wu Taomei knew about her family's situation. Her second sister and third brother, who were a few years younger than her, were also in school, and her parents were under great pressure.

Fortunately, high school students were also considered intellectuals in the 1980s. With the help of a relative, Wu Taomei joined the township government and worked as a temporary worker.

If nothing unexpected happens, she will soon date a man, marry, and have children under the arrangement of her family, and will be confined to a remote town for the rest of her life.

But Wu Taomei is still unwilling to accept this kind of life that can be seen to the end at a glance.

So when she heard that the county transferred a recruitment document, the Deep Sea Special Zone was preparing to recruit 5,000 high school graduates to work in the eastern Guangdong province, and immediately signed up without telling her parents.

Recruiting workers is the main way for rural people of this era to enter the city. However, this time recruitment in the Deep Sea Special Zone is not the same, and the people recruited will not change their household registration relationship.

At most, these people are just temporary workers who go to the city to seek employment, and they will be driven back to the countryside at any time, which naturally greatly reduces the attraction.

However, people like Wu Taomei who have been to county towns more than once and understand the gap between cities and rural areas are still eager for recruitment opportunities from the Deep Sea Special Zone.

So 5,000 workers were quickly found and were sent to Nantou Export Industrial Park for induction training in early December.

Wu Taomei was taken from the county directly to the Deep Sea Special Zone with nearly 100 other young people by two buses. When she first arrived here, Wu Taomei was actually quite disappointed.

Because in addition to a small building in the factory and living area, there are no more busy construction sites or wastelands covered with weeds, and they are not as rich as her hometown, and they are not as big cities as she imagined.

However, Wu Taomei had no time to lose, and was soon filled with a brand new way of life and work. She joined a Hong Kong company called Kaida Toy Factory. The factory recruited 2,000 workers in one go, and is said to be the largest company in the industrial park.

They rented five factories in the park as production areas and warehouses, and used a wall to isolate all their factories separately.

Wu Taomei's first job after joining Kaida Toy Factory was to glue wigs of different colors to various dolls, including black, brown and golden.

This task is actually very simple. Wu Taomei only learned for an hour and glued hair to the doll and successfully passed the acceptance of the quality inspector.

However, the factory still gave them new workers a three-day on-the-job training, mainly introducing the factory's rules and regulations, as well as reward and punishment measures.

According to the requirements of Kaida Factory, Wu Taomei and others checked in to work on time at 8 o'clock every morning and worked until 12:30 for lunch. After lunch, the workers went to work at 1:30 for the afternoon and then worked until they got off work at 6 o'clock.

Everyone works 6 days a week and rests for 1 day. If the factory orders are busy, each worker must arrange at least 3 nights per week for overtime work, and the overtime night shift hours are from 7 to 10 pm.

Wu Taomei, who used to doing farm work at home in the past, can fully bear the intensity of her current work. After all, sticking a wig is not a big deal, but it is just a boring thing to repeat an action constantly.

What she felt most uncomfortable with at first was actually the strict management system in Kaida Factory. For example, everyone is not allowed to whisper when working, and they have to report to the team leader before going to the toilet. These systems are even stricter than when she was studying in school before.

Fortunately, the salary offered by Kaida Toy Factory is very high. Without overtime, the monthly guaranteed salary is RMB 70 per month, and there is also a 10-yuan meal ticket subsidy.

If you work overtime on weekends or at night, overtime pay will be considered. In addition, employees with the best performing performance will also receive a bonus every month, ranging from 10 yuan to 100 yuan.

In addition to working, what makes Wu Taomei feel most novel is her life after get off work. There are 4 large TVs on each floor of the canteen in the dormitory area. From the canteen opening at 6 am to the close at 10 pm, TV programs will be played all the time.

Many workers had never seen a TV before coming to Shenhai City. So from morning to night, as long as everyone didn't go to work, a group of people gathered in front of each TV to watch TV programs.

In addition to watching TV, there are also cement table tennis tables, badminton nets and basketball stands in the dormitory area, where everyone can play table tennis, ball balls and basketball. However, these places are often surrounded by people. Without a certain degree of confidence, most people dare not take the stage to make a fool of themselves in front of the audience.

In addition, there is a library and study room in the dormitory area. It is said that night schools will be opened in the future to provide you with more opportunities for self-learning and improvement.

There are not many books in the library at present, only about a few hundred volumes in total. But this one is Wu Taomei's favorite. She doesn't work overtime every night and will come to the library to read books.

Although she couldn't quite understand many books on the bookshelf, such as professional or even foreign books such as "Business Management", "Marketing", and "Business English", she had no chance to contact them before.

But there are also some that Wu Taomei can understand, such as "Clothing Cutting Collection", "Sewing Basics", "Clothing Color Matching Skills", etc.

When Wu Taomei's aunt married his uncle two years ago, there was a sewing machine in her dowry. After her cousin was born, she would step on the sewing machine and make clothes for her cousin who had not yet learned to leave. Every time at this time, Wu Taomei would watch from the side.

In fact, when she first came to the industrial park, Wu Taomei heard that she was assigned to work in a toy factory, and most of the girls who came out with her in the town were assigned to clothing factories to make clothes. She was quite envious of others at the time.

However, Wu Taomei, who was unfamiliar with the place, did not dare to ask the people assigned to work on the spot if she could also step on the sewing machine to make clothes.

So now when encountering books on making clothing, Wu Taomei immediately began to learn eagerly.

She plans to save more money to buy some more fabrics before going home for the New Year next year, and then go to her aunt to borrow her sewing machine to make a new set of clothes for her parents, younger brothers and sisters.

Just as Wu Taomei and other workers gradually adapted to the pace of work in the export industrial park and began to look forward to the future, Zhou Yang also saw the vitality of Nantou Export Industrial Park for the first time.

"According to the previous instructions of Director Jay Chou, all workers are employment agreements signed with our logistics company. We then signed labor dispatch agreements with various Hong Kong bosses to adjust the number of dispatched workers according to their actual needs.

The monthly salary we pay to workers is basically between 60 and 80 yuan, and each person has a monthly meal supplement fee of 10 yuan. In the dispatch agreement we signed with the bosses of Hong Kong, the salary agreement is basically between 85 and 105 yuan.

The 25 yuan difference in the middle is, in addition to the meal allowances paid to employees for 10 yuan, 10 yuan is the rent in the dormitory, and the last 5 yuan is the management fee charged by our logistics company.

As for employees’ extra income such as overtime, rewards, etc., we will not take any commissions and transfer them to the employees in full."

The general manager of the newly established Nantou Industrial Park logistics management company of Qionglou Real Estate is named Guo Hongye. He used to be the deputy manager of a small property company in Hong Kong. He is currently in his small office and is seriously reporting to Zhou Yang, the director of Qionglou Real Estate.

The 5,000 people Zhou Yang recruited through the Deep Sea Municipal Government are basically young people who have never seen the world. If they are asked to sign a contract with a Hong Kong factory directly, they will easily be bullied in labor-management games in the future.

If the workers first sign a contract with the logistics management company, then the one responsible for dealing with the Hong Kong boss is Qionglou Real Estate. Although Zhou Yang would not take advantage of the situation to suppress others, he would not allow Hong Kong bosses to over-exploit and make trouble.

"Have you bought the workers' medical insurance and personal accident insurance?" Zhou Yang thought for a while and asked suddenly.

"There is no suitable personal insurance product in mainland China for the time being, and Hong Kong insurance companies lack data understanding of all aspects of the mainland and are unwilling to accept our insurance." Guo Hongye shook his head and said.

Insurance is an important tool for enterprises to avoid many unnecessary risks. The Hong Kong companies currently introduced by Nantou Export Industrial Park mainly focus on light industries such as clothing, toys, electronics, etc., and generally there will be no major safety accidents.

But Zhou Yang also dared not take it lightly. After all, even drinking water is in trouble. A worker may accidentally step on the air when he goes down the stairs, breaking himself into a concussion by hitting the back of his head. All this is indefinite.

The current common practice in China is that workers' medical expenses are basically reimbursed by the unit where they are located. However, many units have poor performance and may not even be able to pay their wages, let alone fully reimburse their medical expenses.

Qionglou Real Estate is a Sino-foreign joint venture registered in Hong Kong. It is definitely impossible to apply some domestic practices. However, its main business is in China, and many times the practices in Hong Kong may not work.

For example, the logistics management company is not planning to buy the newly recruited 5,000 workers, but has not found an insurance company willing to take on the business for a while.

"You will arrange someone to talk to Hong Kong Qichang Insurance tomorrow to see if you can handle the special matters and discuss a feasible insurance plan.

Since domestic insurance companies do not have relevant products, we will develop new insurance products in Hong Kong that can be purchased in Hong Kong but can only be claimed in the mainland." Zhou Yang ordered.
Chapter completed!