Chapter 135: Brother Zhu: I Can Do It! (Begging for Monthly Tickets)

"A six-hour workday, and overtime pay in full—Brother Hua, this…"

Zuo Hongyu set down his phone, still looking utterly incredulous, and turned to Cao Dahua.

He felt that Chen Yansen's wages were too high, greatly inflating labor costs.

"His Fox Tao has run on a six-hour workday since it was founded. I assumed it was because the members were all college students, but now I see—he'd planned this long ago."

Cao Dahua sat in his chair and said evenly.

He'd started businesses, run a factory, received a decent education—and yet he had never once thought to change the working hours or wage system of ordinary workers.

Whatever the Shencheng market rate was, that was exactly what he'd paid his workers back in the day.

The countless fingers crushed off on the assembly lines had never moved him much either.

At that moment, Cao Dahua was suddenly overcome with guilt—having lived several decades, he was not even the equal of a nineteen-year-old boy.

Zhou Jinling, in the corner, also saw his face change abruptly.

Back when he'd been the boss, he'd only ever thought about paying the lowest wages to squeeze out higher output.

When a worker lost a finger or an arm to a machine through careless operation, he'd curse and shell out a few tens of thousands in compensation, then have the labor agency send the man packing.

Now that he himself had become a frontline worker, he finally realized just how rotten the base pay and overtime rules he'd set for the Ouhan phone factory had been.

He didn't quite understand Chen Yansen's approach, even thought the man was a bit foolish, yet his heart felt warm.

Perhaps the reason he had nothing today was simply that he'd committed too many sins.

In Zhou Jinling's mind, the image of that boy—less than eighteen years old, two of whose fingers had been crushed off—suddenly surfaced.

Back then, when he'd come to Shencheng to make his way, he'd been about the same age. He remembered tossing the boy thirty thousand yuan and driving him out of the factory that very night.

"He's the boss, so naturally we follow his lead." Zhang Jing, Ouhan's former HR manager, shrugged, looking utterly indifferent.

As she spoke, she also glanced at Zhou Jinling.

She couldn't help sighing—life really was full of ups and downs. Half a year ago, Zhou Jinling had been a boss worth hundreds of millions; now he could only screw screws at Sister Chengzi Tech.

Once the four of them reached agreement, they set about recruiting.

As HR manager, Zhang Jing had on hand not only the agencies but also the contact details of plenty of workers.

She had just contacted a few people when the news that Sister Chengzi Tech was hiring in Gangcheng had already spread through Huaqiangbei and the entire Zhongsha Village Tech Park.

Base pay 1,980 yuan, six-hour workday, two days off per week. Overtime beyond six hours: 22.5 yuan per hour on weekdays, 30 yuan per hour on weekends, 45 yuan per hour on holidays.

Housing provided, plus a 300-yuan monthly meal subsidy, with full social insurance and housing fund contributions.

The moment the news broke, over ninety percent of assembly-line workers thought it was a scam.

They'd worked in Shencheng for years and had never seen hiring terms like these.

These days, plenty of factories wouldn't even cover the basic three insurances and housing fund for workers, let alone the full five insurances and housing fund.

"Manager Zhang, I heard you went to some new company that pays overtime according to the Labor Law—true or not?"

Former Ouhan colleagues kept calling Zhang Jing one after another to find out whether the news was real.

Zhang Jing answered each one with an affirmative. She had expected direct hiring to be a hassle, but in the end she hadn't even had to visit a single labor market before receiving over 300 phone calls.

Most of these workers had families in tow—husbands and wives, brothers and sisters—all seasoned Huaqiangbei hands, well practiced at screwing screws.

Assembly, testing, packaging, quality inspection, and management staff were all covered.

The next day, a long queue formed outside the gate of Zhongsha Tech Park.

A dark, dense crowd of two or three hundred people, pushing suitcases, clutching bedding, with buckets holding toiletries and summer sleeping mats.

Zhang Jing sat at the entrance of Area A3, with an HR specialist beside her helping register information. Among the queue were also a few people maintaining order—all former Ouhan production managers and workshop supervisors.

"Manager Zhang, will this overtime pay really be paid out as promised?"

A worker in the middle of registering his ID information asked, face full of doubt, pressing the question again and again.

"The boss of Sister Chengzi Tech is the founder of Fox Tao, worth over ten billion yuan—do you think he'd shortchange you on a bit of overtime pay?"

Zhang Jing curled her lip and shot back, annoyed.

She'd been around Huaqiangbei for seven or eight years and knew the temperament of these assembly-line workers all too well.

Be gentle with them and they'd push their luck; be tough and they wouldn't dare cause trouble.

Sure enough, hearing Zhang Jing's dismissive tone, the workers didn't get angry—instead they grinned and kept saying they'd found a dream factory.

As for what Fox Tao actually was didn't matter; they'd only caught the key phrase—the boss was worth billions, no shortage of money.

"Then can I work sixteen hours of overtime in a day?"

In the crowd, a half-grown boy asked. He looked under eighteen, yet had already worked in Huaqiangbei's phone factories for over three years, drifting from one factory to another. He was sharp-witted and bold, and his coworkers all called him "Brother Zhu."

"If you want to die, go do it somewhere else! Sister Chengzi Tech has strict rules on overtime hours—four hours max on weekdays, eight hours max on weekends and holidays."

Zhang Jing frowned, snorted coldly, and cursed at "Brother Zhu."

Sixteen hours of overtime a day, plus the original eight hours—whoever heard of coming to work like that? It was clearly coming to die.

"Hahaha…"

The crowd burst into laughter. Everyone wanted to earn money, but no one really wanted to work sixteen hours of overtime in a day.

Brother Zhu wasn't stupid; he just didn't like studying and dropped out of school early. He did a rough calculation—at least five to six thousand yuan a month, while at other factories you'd work yourself to death for barely over four thousand.

"I can do it!"

Brother Zhu, fresh from being scolded, grinned a foolish grin, his heart at ease, and gripped his bucket tighter.

After finishing her scolding, Zhang Jing went on to explain to these people the importance of the five insurances and housing fund.

Hearing that over 300 yuan would be deducted each month, the workers lining up to enter the factory immediately became unhappy, clamoring to ask whether they could opt out.

It wasn't that they lacked foresight—rather, in the environment of 2011, many people couldn't even manage the present, let alone think about things decades away.

"If you don't want to pay, then leave. That's Sister Chengzi Tech's rule."

Zhang Jing said, her face stern.

Seeing that negotiation was getting nowhere, the few troublemakers in the crowd also fell silent and obediently joined the queue.

As for leaving?

They weren't stupid—working casually at Sister Chengzi Tech, they could take home four or five thousand a month.

Only a fool would leave!

Sister Chengzi Tech's hiring terms, passed along by word of mouth, quickly became well-known throughout the Futian District.

Many bosses, upon hearing it, dismissively cursed: "Crazy!"

In their view, proactively raising workers' wages—what was that if not stupidity?

Still, it was said Sister Chengzi was only hiring a few hundred people, so the impact on them wasn't large, and no one came to make trouble.

One week later.

Chen Yansen received a report call from Cao Dahua, saying the first batch of over 600 employees had been fully recruited.

Cao Dahua asked whether to take on some OEM orders, and to run equipment debugging on the side—after all, so many people were waiting to start work.

"Sure, but only take orders with a delivery window of two months or less."

Chen Yansen specifically instructed.

"Don't worry, I can handle it." Cao Dahua seemed to have rediscovered the entrepreneurial passion of a few years prior, and promised with a smile.

Chen Yansen acknowledged it with a sound, and didn't ask Cao Dahua when he'd be back—anyway, Tang Qingshan had sent a new startup-park instructor.

The two finished talking and hung up.

The Shencheng phone factory could be considered initially set up, but the factory's financial accounting and capital management needed to be brought into the unified management system of Senlian Capital, to prevent capital misuse and financial risk.

Cao Dahua and Zuo Hongyu might be trustworthy, but human hearts are fickle—no one could guarantee they'd never change.

What grounds did Chen Yansen have to trust them unconditionally?

Starting from the management mechanism to eliminate potential risks was the correct approach.

Chen Yansen walked out of the office building; his car was parked on the first floor. After getting in, he drove toward the Courtyard.

Over this half month, he had actually regained a bit of the feeling of clocking in at a job—occasionally dropping by the startup park to hold morning meetings with a few team leaders, but spending most of his time at Zhuxianzhuang Tech Park.

Pushing forward the industrial and hardware design work for the Sister Chengzi phone.

So far only the phone's dimensions, exterior shape, and other such information had been confirmed, in order to make it easier for Zuo Hongyu to approach suppliers and screen suitable phone screens, batteries, and the like.

Fifteen minutes later.

Chen Yansen returned to the startup park. Just as he parked the car, he saw a familiar figure standing on the first floor, talking with Song Yuncheng.

"Why is he here?"

Chen Yansen wondered.

(End of chapter)