Siheyuan (courtyard house): My name is Shazhu!

The Dongda Group's latest wage increase has infuriated other workers in the port city. This time, they're really quitting; it's just too unfair.

We accept that Dongda Group can't expand its factories and hire workers. You people are too incompetent; why don't you go back to your hometown and rent hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land?

We'll work together to resolve their issues then. Do we need to keep watching them get another raise like we are now?

Renting land will lead to war? You're kidding me. What's wrong with friendly negotiations?

Their wages are already HK$100 more than ours, more than HK$1,000 a year. Their land and goods are increasing in price, but yours haven't?

The increase is higher than that of Dongda Group, but the wages are more than a quarter less. You can't accept that. We're going to hold a protest in the streets. We want a wage increase. Prices are too high!

The employees of Dongda Group are in a good mood. Our company never needs anyone or the market to remind us to raise wages; it will happen when the time is right.

You guys are having a great time, and we're here to cheer you on! Keep up the good work, everyone!

The employees of Dongda Group are gloating!

Niu Niu was initially prepared to watch the drama unfold, as the workers had private bosses who were responsible for their wages, so he was not involved.

These high-achieving individuals were only happy for a few days before their smiles faded. Their employers, especially the police, demanded a pay raise.

Their wages are indeed not high!

We need a pay raise, and a significant one at that. Dongda Group pays a large amount of taxes every year, which is enough to give us a raise.

Damn, what are you thinking? Dongda Group has 1 billion yuan in profits and taxes a year, and they're giving raises to over 20,000 of you. How much of a raise are you planning to get each month?

Three thousand Hong Kong dollars?

dream!

If we give you all a raise, what are we supposed to do? Impossible. We need to increase our investment in public welfare.

I swear to God, Dongda Group doesn't build new factories or make big investments anymore. It spends more than 2 billion yuan every year on public welfare. How much did you contribute?

Stop talking nonsense and give us a raise!

Otherwise, we might have a major strike!

In fact, at this time, the port city was developing faster and better than other cities at the same time, with more complete infrastructure and more factories and enterprises.

If it weren't for the major corporations at Dongda University suppressing prices, it would be unreasonable for workers here to earn less than HK$500 a month.

Several large corporations, including Dongda, Dongfang, and Yuandong, were building houses for their workers. The low housing prices also reduced the overall cost of living. Otherwise, the 1970s and 80s would have been the era of skyrocketing housing prices.

Dongda Group's bus, ferry and other service companies have not raised prices.

Oriental Group's department store retail business was also the last to raise prices. Their wages were only HK$30 less than those of Dongda Group, and they also provided employees with a house every ten years.

The Far East Group is the same, except that the port city now has a population of 4.1 million.

Even if those groups joined forces, they would only have 1.9 million employees and their families. After deducting the million bosses, middle-class individuals, and their families, there were still 1.2 million people who had neither money nor housing.

There are 80,000 public housing units, but that only means 500,000 people will live there. The poorer people are, the more children they have. A family of six or seven people is crammed into a house of less than 30 square meters. Don't they need a house?

Even Dongda Group is facing housing problems, which are related to the children of its employees. In fifteen years, the oldest child is over thirty years old and is also getting married and having children!

Dongda Group has no job openings, so they have to go out and look for work, which also presents them with housing problems.

Fortunately, some employees have savings, and they can take out a loan to buy a house on the outskirts of the city center, which won't be too big.

So five years later, another large-scale strike demanding higher wages occurred. It can't be entirely blamed on them, as housing prices and the cost of living here have risen too quickly.

A reporter came to interview He Yuzhu and asked whether workers should also receive a significant wage increase after prices rose.

"Wages must rise, otherwise how will workers live? We need to develop here, so price increases and wage increases are inevitable, but it's best to have a limit!"

Rapidly rising prices are not a good thing; wages must keep up, otherwise it will be impossible to live a normal life.

A sharp rise in wages reduces the competitiveness of products, leading to excessively high factory prices for industrial goods—a vicious cycle.

"Why does Sir Ho say that?"

"The example is very clear: the wages of my manufacturing workers have quadrupled from HK$120 to now, which we can afford."

Prices of manufactured goods are also rising, on average by 2.5 times, and we use the extra money to pay our workers' wages.

We can afford the current salary of HK$500 per employee, but what about HK$5,000? Or HK$50,000?

Workers in the US manufacturing industry earn between eight and ten thousand US dollars a year.

They encountered problems: excessively high labor costs, declining competitiveness in the automotive and shipbuilding industries, and the automotive industry already dominated by our company and Japan!

I can tell you with certainty that this problem will definitely occur here!

And this will happen within ten to twenty years, which is why I started paying attention to education issues in the first place!

"We understand that high income and high prices affect competitiveness, but is it directly related to education?"

"Yes, and it's a very large one. When I was building the car manufacturing plant and the parts factory, everyone should remember the worker training. The root cause was that their education level was too low; they were not qualified workers!"

The economy here cannot be sustained by finance and real estate alone. Physical industry is possible, but I believe there are three types of industry:

The first type is general manufacturing, where individuals can start working after one or two months of training, and the educational requirements are not high.

The second type of employee requires a certain level of education. In the manufacturing industry, you need to know some professional knowledge, which is what our current manufacturing plants require.

The third type is high-tech enterprises that require high-tech talent. You may not know this, but my microelectronics factory was delayed for six years before it was completed and put into production because of insufficient worker skills.

If we were to undertake a technological transformation that requires employees to be at least college graduates, at least 160,000 of our group's workers would leave, leaving only 10,000.

This is the first problem: industrial transformation requires a large number of high-tech talents, which can only be cultivated through a comprehensive education system.

Hiring people from abroad? Don't be ridiculous. Their salaries and benefits are more than five times ours. Do you think they'd come if you didn't offer ten times the salary? Can you even afford that?

Secondly, prioritizing education is about ensuring that future generations have a skill. Even if there are fewer job opportunities here, they can find work and have food to eat anywhere based on their abilities.

This is the fundamental principle of our group's educational development. A minor, incidental benefit is reducing the number of children with short stature and hunchbacks; for every child who goes to school, there's one less child who becomes short and hunchbacked.

Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap... At this moment, everyone stood up and applauded. Unexpectedly, the senior executives of Dongda Group were thinking about things from the late 1950s to the 1980s and 1990s.

In the face of intense competition, the company needs a large number of educated and knowledgeable people to transform itself. Even if there are few job opportunities here, they can still go out and try their luck!

No wonder they prioritize education, having been dedicated to education for fifteen years, with primary and secondary schools still offering free education and investing a billion yuan annually to establish over two hundred primary and secondary schools.

With 1 billion yuan every year, even if you just save it and don't care about anything else, you'll still have over 10 billion yuan over the years. That's a huge sum of money, enough to live a good life anywhere!

This is the true responsibility of a large company: not for its own company, but for the next generation and the generation after that. I'm giving you a skill for free!

May your lives be better!

It commanded the utmost respect from everyone present!

They've been doing it all along, and they won't tell us unless we ask!

Quietly contributing!