Reading media reports in contrast will make the problem more obvious. The Guangzhou Daily reported that Foshan Ideal Sanitary Ware on the tenth day of the first lunar month put up a prominent slogan at the recruitment booth: "If you want to buy a house in Foshan, please come over". Recruitment personnel introduced on the spot that according to company regulations: employees who have worked for four years can apply for an interest-free loan of 120,000 to 150,000 yuan from the company. If they work for 15 years, they do not have to repay the loan. As for the base salary, most companies offer more than 2500 yuan. According to the report by China Building Materials Network, the 2012 Spring Festival job fair held in the Zhengda Ceramics factory area in Pingxiang, Jiangxi was bustling with nearly 500 people coming for job applications. Zhengda Ceramics is invested by the boss of Zhengda Glaze, an upstream ceramics enterprise located in Foshan. Most of its technical, marketing, and management personnel come from Foshan, and its corporate philosophy is basically consistent with Foshan. Employees' working and living environment is good. Three new apartment-style dormitory buildings have been built, equipped with air conditioners, water heaters, closed-circuit TVs, networks, libraries, billiard rooms, etc. These kinds of enterprises can be said to be strong competitors in human resources for local ceramic enterprises in Foshan.
It should be noted that with the decline of the European ceramics industry, leading enterprises in the industry can quickly try to recruit talents from countries such as Italy and Spain. For example, after the inkjet product market opened, China first needs a large number of high-end design talents, and these talents are best introduced from Europe, or can also indirectly use local talents by establishing joint ventures with enterprises in countries such as Italy and Spain.
Indeed, for ceramic sanitary ware enterprises in 2012, not only is the market a huge test, but they also face greater challenges in labor employment. The labor shortage in the ceramics industry mainly comes from two aspects: one is that in traditional production areas such as Foshan, human resources are gradually concentrating on advantageous enterprises and large enterprises, while small and micro-enterprises face relatively more difficulties in employing people; the second is that after several years of development of inland emerging ceramics production areas, they gradually begin to compete for talents with traditional production areas. Talents in traditional production areas, including skilled workers, are flowing in large numbers to inland emerging production areas. And the shortage of general workers remains a long-standing problem. Not only in the ceramics industry, but also in other industries in the eastern developed regions. Think about ten years ago, even five or six years ago, how magnificent the tide of people from Jiangxi, Hunan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guizhou and other places heading south to find jobs after the Spring Festival was. But now, most of the job seekers after the holiday are from within the province. Those traveling long distances to a certain location in the Pearl River Delta are mostly people from the east and west wings and the northern mountainous areas of Guangdong.
Two highlights of the industry observation during the New Year of the Dragon: one is to look at the start of work, and the other is to look at recruitment. Only a small part of the ceramic sanitary ware enterprises in Foshan, such as Jiajun, Jinhuangqiu, Xinmeizhu, Xinzhiyuan, Jin Siyuema, ICC, Weiyi, etc., rushed to start work in these few days from the eighth to the tenth day of the first lunar month, which could be considered as firing the "first shot". On February 1st (the tenth day), both the Foshan Zhongtong Talent Market and the Nanhai Leading Talent Market held the first on-site job fair after the Spring Festival, with dozens of ceramic enterprises participating. Judging from the situation of the job fair, the problem of recruitment difficulties in the ceramic industry still remains serious.
In recent years, ceramic enterprises in Fujian's Jinjiang and Minqing, Sichuan's Jiajiang, and Jiangxi's Pan Ga'an region have accelerated their upgrading steps, following closely behind the ceramic manufacturing center of Foshan. They have successively launched antique tile production lines, launched full polished glaze, inkjet products, and even microcrystalline products, resulting in a talent structure similar to the Foshan region. In the future, this will inevitably trigger a new round of competition for mid-to-high-end talents in the industry. Therefore, for the Foshan region, the survival environment for enterprises with mid-to-low-end positioning will become increasingly harsh, whether it is market conditions, policy conditions, or talent conditions. Only larger-scale enterprises with higher positioning or personalized survival enterprises will have a way out.
The ceramics industry is a "technology-oriented + experience-oriented" industry, placing great emphasis on the experience of its practitioners. Therefore, the resumes of industry practitioners are more valuable compared to other industries. So, despite the current market bottleneck faced by the ceramics and sanitary ware industry, within the industry, experienced practitioners will remain "highly sought after" for quite some time in the future, and their salaries and benefits will also be higher than those in other general industries, according to the Jiangsu Talent Recruitment Network. Although there has been some progress in the automation of equipment in the ceramics and sanitary ware industry in recent years, the overall level is still relatively backward, which undoubtedly exacerbates the inherent contradictions in the industry's development, making it necessary for the entire industry to rely more on brand shaping in the future to resolve the pressure of rising costs.