Chapter 687: Labor Panic

  Chapter 672 – Labor Panic

The prosperity of the market has likewise led to the prosperity of the stock market, and in front of a piece of favorable news, everyone’s confidence has reached its peak.

Compared to the physical industry dumping, the retreat on the stock market is more easy. Originally, there were selling and buying in the market every day, increasing by a few percentage points, that is also the normal fluctuation of the market.

It is not a period of economic crisis, this little fluctuation is completely in the market tolerance range, the most typical is the stock price in the continuous rise.

Frankly speaking, speculation in the stock market is far more profitable than manufacturing. However, there are advantages and disadvantages, and high returns are accompanied by high risks.

Do not play leverage can not earn much money, play with leverage and very high risk, many times the market a chance fluctuations, took away a large wave of speculators.

In contrast, the real industry is still much more robust, at least in the 19th century.

No matter how the market changes, as long as the business itself did not have problems, the loss is within control. Bad market, big deal, cut capacity.

“Bankruptcy” is usually the result of problems in the enterprise itself, such as: excessive debt, requiring a large amount of profit to repay the loan; or management problems, not timely replacement of equipment, the loss of competitiveness of the product market; or excessive inventory, taking up a lot of money… …

Being squeezed into bankruptcy when there is no problem in the business itself is still a rare occurrence. To put it bluntly, everyone is in business to make money.

Capitalists aren’t that stupid when they blindly drive down prices and lose money. Except for those who want to monopolize the market. In order to monopolize the market to lose money, that can only be counted as a pre-investment.

For most industries, there are no monopoly conditions. The threshold of entry is too low, to suppress a wave of competitors, there will be new rivals, can not do monopoly.

Business is not a battle of wills, kill a thousand enemies to lose eight hundred things, capitalists usually will not do.

Competition in the market is brutal, but the only thing is that the profits have become thinner. If the whole industry is in a money-losing situation, it means the industry is going to be eliminated.

Under normal circumstances, even if the economic crisis broke out in the era of the Great Depression, the loss is only a part of the enterprise, the majority of enterprises is the performance decline, profit reduction.

If the operation is normal, there is no large amount of debt, market competitiveness of the enterprise, or can survive.

After all, now is only the late 19th century, the world completed industrialization of less than 10 countries, the real industrial powerhouse only two and a half, the market is still in the state of barbaric growth, competition is far less intense than in later years.

Under the law of the jungle, the market will return to normal after some of the weak are eliminated. A new round of war will not break out until the victors have digested the spoils of war.

It could be said that this was the golden age of capitalist economy, and as long as one grasped the opportunity, there were too many chances to get rich.

……

The market is booming, a factory has risen, advertisements for laborers are posted all over the streets, but there are very few applicants.

As the largest city on the Austro-French border, Milan was also the first choice for Italian laborers entering Austria. The proximity to home and the high wages attracted a large number of Italians every year.

In the case of the British textile industry is dominant, Milan textile center can buck the trend and become one of the world’s three major textile centers, the cheap labor in the Italian region is also to blame.

Although Austria has restrictions on foreign labor, it is not a total ban. If you pass a language test and are accepted by a company, you can enter the country.

This is very inconvenient, and it is very troublesome for companies to recruit people across the border, not to mention the time it takes to teach them to speak German.

“There is a policy at the top, but there is a policy at the bottom.” Many migrant workers, who are brought here by friends and family, are looking for work after entering Austria.

Compared to other parts of Austria, Lombardy is less strict on migrant workers due to its own special characteristics.

Many of them are employed first and then learn the language. Anyway, the factories are also semi-closed, so as long as they don’t go out and get caught by the police, no one will investigate deeply.

Against this background, the underground job market was born. Newfoundland Street, outside Milan, is one of the locations where factories recruit cheap labor.

At this time in normal times, Newfoundland Street was already bustling with a large number of people in need of work lining up in long lines, looking for a chance to work.

I don’t know when it started, but all of a sudden it got cold. Not only Newfoundland Street, but also many labor recruitment markets in Austria, have gone cold, and in some areas there were even more recruiters than applicants at one time.

Mirko was one of the recruiters, working for the Daniell Group machine shop. Usually he is not Newfoundland Street, this is the city of Milan, the lowest end of the talent recruitment market, the applicants are mostly foreign laborers.

Not only is the cultural level insufficient, but also need to spend a lot of time, skills training. After wasting a lot of energy, what is trained is only basic industrial workers.

In contrast, Mirko preferred to go out to the recruitment center in the city. Even though the salary was higher, the quality of the applicants was also higher, and after a few years of training in the factory, the outstanding ones could be used as junior skilled workers.

For the machine factory, this kind of workers with certain skills were far more valuable than pure laborers.

Only industries with a high demand for labor, repetitive work, and no need for skills will recruit a large number of such laborers.

Despicable as it is, many enterprises have been expanding their production capacity recently, and there is a huge labor shortage and a great rush for people.

Participated in several job fairs in the city, were not able to complete the recruitment task. The equipment has been debugged, waiting for workers to start, Mirko had to lower the recruitment standards.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Mirko can’t believe his eyes, this is still the hottest job market in Milan, how can I not see a few people ah?

Long engaged in recruitment work, Mirko’s circle of contacts is still very wide, and soon encountered peer acquaintances.

“Ferran, what’s going on, have you snatched all the people?”

The middle-aged man rolled his eyes and asked rhetorically, “Do I look like I’m getting something?”

Mirko nodded, “Indeed, with the way you are treated in the textile factory, it is indeed a bit difficult to snatch people. However, you can fool foreign fools.”

Fereng frowned and said in dissatisfaction, “Mirko enough, we are all peers, saving costs for the boss is our essential job.

Every time I recruit, I make the treatment clear and sign the contract according to the law, how can it be considered fooling around?”

Mirko smiled slightly and did not continue this topic. If one didn’t know this middle-aged fat man, one would really think he was a good person.

Thinking back then, Mirko was almost fooled into signing a selling contract when he first started out. It was good that he was a local and a high school graduate, considered a high intellectual, after understanding the identity, Ferran did not want to cause trouble and gave up.

Although Milan is a subordinate state, but with the advancement of the legal integration process, labor protection laws also need to comply with.

This kind of grossly unfair contract of sale, no one sued is just, once stabbed up, the enterprise still have to suffer.

In contrast, it is much safer to fool migrant workers. As long as the contract is signed in a foreign country, it is a transnational case, but also to refer to the laws of the opposite side, the Milan government is not so idle, at most, the contract will be null and void.

There is no pitfalls, and the relationship between the two is not good. Just because of the business relationship, a lot of times must deal with, slowly familiarized with, from the friend is another layer.

Mirko changed the topic and said: ”Fereng, I heard that your boss has opened two new branch factories, the labor gap is so big, what are you going to do? Is there any interest in organizing a group to go to the inland area to recruit a wave?”

Recruitment activities these days have limited funds, and in order to save costs, it’s most common for several companies to act together and share the costs.

Without even thinking about it, Fereng directly shook his head, “Mirko, you’re thinking too well. The situation right now is that the whole country is short of labor, even the whole of Europe.

You seldom come to Newfoundland Street and don’t know that in the last two months the laborers coming into Milan from the Italian region has decreased by almost seventy percent.

I’ve asked them about it, and I’m told it’s because so many new factories have opened in the Italian regions lately, and being able to find work back home, a lot of them don’t come over anymore.

If this is the case in the Italian region, what else can be said about the country? The labor panic published in the newspapers is no joke. I’ve already proposed to my boss that the new branch factory plan be postponed.

With the big migration strategy of the last few years, many of the domestic surplus laborers have gone to Africa. If you want to solve the labor gap, unless you encourage the farmers to go to the city.”

Mirko was speechless, encouraging farmers to come to the city was not as simple as it sounded. Nowadays, the farmers’ life is not bad, it is not easy for them to give up their land to work in the city.

It’s best to push at the government level to create more favorable policies to speed up the urbanization process.

Unfortunately, the government in Vienna believes that there is excess capacity in the country, and it is too late for the government to try to curb the drastic increase in capacity, so how could it introduce policies that would allow the crisis to widen?

Urbanization is a risky business, and the faster the better. If the crisis breaks out, enterprises will not be able to withstand bankruptcy, and the pressure of the onset of unemployment will be put on the shoulders of the government.

Franz preferred a slower pace of urbanization when the conditions were not ripe. The peasants were better ruled than the workers.

As long as they had land, and as long as the food they produced was enough to fill their stomachs, they would not rebel. The government could still harvest a wave of popularity by reducing some of the taxes.

Workers are different, once the unemployment wave comes, the crisis will come. If they don’t find a way to fill their stomachs, revolution will break out in minutes.

With the current productivity, it can’t support a high degree of urbanization. It will take at least another fifty years for the age of the urbanized economy to come.

Even the Brits, who have the highest urbanization, still have one-third of their population in agriculture, not to mention Austria, which is a large agricultural country.

After a moment’s pause, Mirko slowly said, “Speak, Ferran. I know you have a plan. As long as it’s feasible, there will be no shortage of favor fees for you.”

Mirko knew clearly that Feilun was the master of not seeing the rabbit, and if there were not enough benefits, he definitely would not tell him the plan.

Glancing at Mirko, Ferren shook his head, “It’s not a matter of favor fees, the key is that our two families can’t do it yet.

If you want to go to the countryside to recruit people, you’ll have to deal with the nobles less. You should be aware of the changes that have taken place in the country in these recent years, and with them interfering, it’s hard for us to get cheap labor.”

Mirko nodded, this was one of the characteristics of Austria. The nobles had given up serfdom and some of their fiefdoms, yet they still had a lot of influence at the local level.

It would be fine if it was small, but once you were looking for people on a large scale, you would have to deal with the local snakes.

Even now, there are still a lot of traditional nobles who look at the capitalists unfavorably.

These people have a reason to get involved whether it’s to take a breath of fresh air or to improve their reputation at the local level.

For example: negotiating salaries with them as representatives of the workers and harmonizing labor contracts.

They have ways to fool ordinary workers, it’s not so easy to fool these nobles.

In case something goes wrong, they will be at a disadvantage.

If they followed all the formal procedures, the labor cost would increase by at least fifteen percent. One or two people are insignificant, but once the number increases, the cost is not small.

The increased cost is only one of the problems, the new employees are treated more favorably than the old ones, which will inevitably lead to another storm.

After thinking about it, Mirko shook his head, “This matter has to be played with the nobles, it involves too much, I can’t make the decision, it needs to be reported to the company headquarters to decide, whether it can be passed or not I’m not sure.”

Mirko has self-awareness, this kind of thing is simply not something he can participate in, even if a lot of united, may not be able to achieve the purpose.

Although Austria is a capitalist country, but in politics the power of capital is still very limited, to play with the nobles to compete for the right to speak, the risk here is too great.

Sensing Mirko’s dissimilarity, Fereng hurriedly remedied, “No, Mirko. You’re thinking too much, I haven’t lived enough and am not prepared to seek death. What I mean is that we all contribute money together and find a way from abroad.”

Between the words Fereng cold sweat straight up, not just want to pretend once, actually be associated to provoke the contradiction between the capital and the nobles.

Whoever touches this thing dies, not to mention a small foot like Feilun, even if their boss is involved in it, he will be finished.

It is really too difficult.

(End of chapter)