The Fiery Era: Becoming an Industrial Giant

Chapter 242 Giving Back to the Factory Workers
"Secretary Li, are you busy?"

Seeing Zhou Zhiqiang push the door open and enter, Secretary Li felt helpless. Now that Zhou Zhiqiang was inside, he couldn't very well say that he was busy and then kick the factory director out.

So Secretary Li got up to get the kettle and said to Zhou Zhiqiang, "Director Zhou, is there something you need? Is it about the factory's production targets? Has the department leadership come up with a plan?"

However, regarding production matters, I unconditionally trust you, Factory Director Zhou. You can make the decisions yourself, and I'll sign off on them afterwards.

He also served as the Party Secretary for a period of time, but he followed the production management experience left by Zhou Zhiqiang. He himself was not very good at dealing with changes that occurred in production.

So just delegate the power directly. If it weren't for the previous comments that Zhou Zhiqiang was trying to seize power, he wouldn't even need to bother him. Thinking of this, Li Younian also felt that those people were being a bit nosy.

Even the party secretary involved didn't say anything, so why are other people rushing to get involved?

He liked to delegate authority to Zhou Zhiqiang. Li Younian was overjoyed to have such a capable factory director who made him feel completely at ease, especially since the Second Machine Tool Factory had made continuous contributions in recent years.

As the Party Secretary, sitting in his office, his personnel file would continuously accumulate achievements.
"In a certain month of a certain year, during Comrade Li Younian's tenure as the Party Secretary of the Second Machine Tool Plant, the plant secured tens of millions of US dollars in foreign trade orders."

"In a certain month of a certain year, during Comrade Li Younian's tenure as the Party Secretary of the Second Machine Tool Plant, the plant secured foreign trade orders totaling one hundred million US dollars."

The person who brought this up is really malicious.

"There's good news and something I need to discuss with you. It all happened so suddenly, so let's just say it together."

After a pause, Zhou Zhiqiang continued to say to Secretary Li, "Let's talk about what we need to discuss first. This is something I thought of when I was talking to the leaders."

Secretary Li, how long have you been saying our factory's overtime hours have been going on? I mean, overtime beyond the normal working hours. Workers in other factories leave at 6 PM, but our factory's workers usually leave at 10 or 11 PM, and sometimes even as late as midnight.”

"That must have been at least several years, three years? No, four years."

After thinking for a moment, Secretary Li said, "It's been almost four years. It seems like you started working overtime to produce machine tools less than six months after you came to our factory."

If this year ends, the factory workers will have been working overtime for three and a half years, and judging by the current situation, three and a half years is not the end.

Next year's planned production targets may require working overtime for the entire year.

Zhou Zhiqiang said, "Yes, it's been several years. Although we can rest one day a week, we've been able to work overtime every day until now. Our factory workers are really hardworking."

This is true.

After hearing this, Secretary Li nodded in agreement, and then asked, "Director Zhou, is what you're talking about related to overtime production?"

"No, I just think our factory workers are very hardworking, and our factory should give them some hope."

Zhou Zhiqiang continued, "The factory should have a lot of disposable funds this year, maybe even more than last year, around two or three million."

Secretary Li, how about we continue building for the workers?

"Is this a building, or is it for staff dormitories? If we add more beds to the existing staff dormitories, it would be more than enough to meet the accommodation needs."

After thinking for a moment, Secretary Li said to Zhou Zhiqiang.

In fact, if Zhou Zhiqiang hadn't repeatedly emphasized that the workers' dormitories should be six-person or eight-person rooms, so that more workers could rest in the dormitories.

Currently, most rooms are double or four-person rooms, with very few six-person rooms.

Zhou Zhiqiang initially thought that the money given to the workers might last for several years, until they got married and moved out, so he wanted to make sure they had a better place to live.

Moreover, the factory had conducted a survey at the time and found that most of the workers were married, and less than half of the workers actually needed accommodation.

If there are too many beds in the dormitory, then eventually there will be empty rooms.

"It's not a staff dormitory. After it's built, the houses will be allocated directly to them. Whoever gets the house will have it permanently."

Zhou Zhiqiang shook his head and said, "The workers have worked so hard for so long, and with this spirit of hard work for more than three years, they have completely come to regard the factory as their own home."

"Then we, as the parents, can't let the workers down; the factory will allocate half of its disposable funds at the end of the year to build apartments for the workers, based on the needs of a family of three."

Based on the needs of a family of three, the factory's available funds this year can probably create three to four hundred housing units, which can accommodate up to four hundred people.

This is only the first year. Right now, all the money the factory earns has to be handed over to the government, and not much is left in the factory itself.

Otherwise, given the Second Machine Tool Plant's terrifying ability to earn foreign exchange, Zhou Zhiqiang dared to say that within five years, he would provide every worker in the entire plant with an apartment.

But now we can only take it slowly, unless the China Ocean University Research Institute returns financial power to the factories and enterprises.

"Although there isn't any suitable place to build employee dormitories near the Second Machine Tool Factory, there are quite a few places a bit further away. We can talk to the bus company about it, or our factory can run two shuttle bus routes ourselves."

Although building and allocating apartments would be troublesome, the Second Machine Tool Factory had more solutions.

Buy a few buses and then operate a few dedicated bus routes from the factory to the employee housing buildings; that would solve most of the problems.

Water and electricity are easy to solve; just talk to the local government, and they generally won't make things difficult for you.

The most troublesome thing was persuading the factory's Party Committee, which meant that both he, the factory director, and Li Younian, the Party Secretary, had to agree.

Zhou Zhiqiang asked, "Secretary, how is it?"

"Well, Comrade Zhiqiang, you've thought of everything, so I have nothing more to say."

After thinking for a while, Secretary Li said, "I agree with this, but it still needs to be approved at the factory's Party Committee meeting."

“Then you, Secretary, should take the lead in addressing this matter.”

“Hey, Comrade Zhiqiang.” Secretary Li immediately understood what Zhou Zhiqiang meant. He made the suggestion, and Zhou Zhiqiang immediately agreed. Since the other members of the Party Committee saw that the two top representatives had agreed, they could only agree as well.

If it were according to the previous Party Committee vote, then it should have been Zhou Zhiqiang, the factory director, who proposed it, and Li Younian would then see how many people agreed before expressing his opinion.

Zhou Zhiqiang's actions disrupted his thinking, forcing him to agree to the matter from the outset.

"There's more good news coming up, Secretary Li. I guarantee that after you hear this, building houses for the workers will be secondary."

Secretary Li asked curiously, "What news?"

"The ministry plans to upgrade our factory's administrative status and has already reported this to the China Ocean Academy."

Zhou Zhiqiang said, "And the chances are very high. Our factory achieved such good results at the Canton Fair this year, and with the Ministry's strong support, we should receive news by the end of the year."

"Administrative upgrade."

Upon hearing this, Secretary Li immediately stood up from his chair, his face filled with excitement as he repeatedly asked, "Director Zhou, is it true?"

"Would I joke about something like this with you, Secretary Li? Director Ren told me, but he only told me to tell you, and not to spread it to the outside world before things are finalized."

Zhou Zhiqiang cautioned, "Although our factory has a great chance, the final outcome depends on the decision of the leaders of China Ocean University."

After all, the domestic economy has only just recovered, and the supply of goods has only fully recovered to the level before 1959 this year.

A large, centrally-administered factory at the ministerial level requires a significant investment of resources.

Director Ren was thinking that the Ministry of Machine Building would be involved in too many major projects next year, and many of these projects would require the Ministry to control a large amount of machinery and equipment from the major factories under the ministry.

With so much investment, it's unlikely that next year's fiscal budget will allow much more for the Second Machine Tool Plant.

If the central government provides funding, the Second Machine Tool Plant can continue to invest and expand next year. If the central government cannot provide funding, the First Ministry of Machine Building will have to wait until the year after next to increase its investment in the Second Machine Tool Plant.

"This is really good news! It shows the leadership's recognition of our factory."

Upon hearing the news, Secretary Li was genuinely excited and repeated those two sentences.

Most importantly, his rank was also promoted, and he became a true senior cadre.

There's a saying at the time: you can tell if someone is a high-ranking official by the people around them. If they don't even have an assistant or a driver, then they're not a high-ranking official.

After all, the China Ocean Institute has regulations that only cadres at a certain level can be assigned full-time assistants and drivers. Previously, Secretary Li did not have one and could only use the factory's clerks and drivers.

After a while, Secretary Li suppressed his excitement and said, "Oh, it would be great if we could be upgraded smoothly. I think it would be good for the factory's development in every way."

Zhou Zhiqiang didn't expose Secretary Li. There was nothing wrong with pursuing administrative rank; as long as he could get things done, that was enough. Although Secretary Li was sometimes a bit of a novice, he was generally competent.

“Yes, once our factory is upgraded to a provincial-level factory, many things will be easier to handle. Secretary Li, what do you think about our factory setting up its own school? How about setting up a vocational college to train semiconductor and mechanical professionals?”

"Hey, Director Zhou, aren't you overreaching?"

After listening, Secretary Li quickly shook his head: "I'm not deliberately opposing you, but education above secondary school level must be run by the Education Bureau or the Ministry of Education. Our factory can only run a primary school for employees' families and technical training classes at most."
I'd give you a hundred percent support if you ran a technical training class, but if you want to go from a 'class' to a vocational school, forget it."

He felt he needed to put the brakes on Zhou Zhiqiang. In such a short time, he had gone from providing housing for workers to sending him to a vocational school. He was afraid that Zhou Zhiqiang would start building a port soon.

Although the government encourages factories to run schools to solve the education problem of workers' children, they usually only run primary or junior high schools; anything beyond that is beyond the reach of factories.

The factory lacks access to qualified teachers and various policies, and it's very troublesome to implement. If it were to implement such an initiative, it would inevitably consume most of the factory's energy, thus hindering the factory's development.

Secretary Li hadn't forgotten that their factory had many production tasks next year, and building employee housing would take up a lot of their energy, so they really didn't have time to run a school.

Taking such exaggerated strides could really tear your pants.

After thinking for a moment, Zhou Zhiqiang nodded and said, "Okay, I was just saying. But we can set up a factory-run primary school next year or the year after."

This will reassure the workers, and besides, our factory does have a large workforce.

Upon hearing this, Secretary Li immediately replied, "Primary school is no problem; our factory can handle that."

I'll first discuss this with the union members, then gather opinions from the factory workers, try to complete the procedures as quickly as possible, and then immediately begin construction on the primary school.

He was reminded of Zhou Zhiqiang's words and thought of the factory workers, some of whom had been working overtime for almost four years.

If they don't take good care of the workers and treat them like family, then this matter will be exposed by thousands of people, and their factory will really have a hard time explaining itself.

Zhou Zhiqiang, the factory director, had every reason to expand his business. As the factory director, he was focused on production and technology and had no time to manage other matters. However, Li Younian felt that he, as the party secretary, could not be excused, otherwise he would be derelict in his duty.

Afterwards, Zhou Zhiqiang talked to Secretary Li about some other things, and Secretary Li also told Zhou Zhiqiang.

The Fourth Ministry of Machinery Industry called to say that they had dealt with the technician and Engineer Li at the CNC branch construction site.

Upon hearing this, Zhou Zhiqiang felt that Tian Wenguo was efficient. After he entrusted Tian Wenguo with the task, he immediately took care of it.

Upon hearing that the person had been punished, albeit with a major demerit, Zhou Zhiqiang did not pursue the matter further; continuing to call for violence would have made him an enemy of the Fourth Ministry of Machine Building.

It's not like their factory will stop dealing with the Fourth Ministry of Machine Building from now on.

After returning to his office, Zhou Zhiqiang began to busy himself with his own affairs.

In addition to busy production next year, they will continue technological research and development. Their factory will manufacture more CNC machine tools that can be used in various fields, and they will even develop semi-automatic production lines.

(End of this chapter)