The overall textile market this year is relatively weak, and the attention of all textile people is basically focused on the changes between the off-season and peak seasons of textiles. What fabrics are hot-selling, what finishing techniques are popular in the market, which dyeing factories have more work, and how the market will develop next year… constitute the topic of this year’s textile people after dinner.
Of course, we still don’t know whether the textile off-season will end next year and whether the peak season will arrive in a down-to-earth manner, but the problems that some textile workers will face have already appeared before our eyes.
Environmental protection, the “painful” memories of textile people are indispensable
Environmental protection is a commonplace issue. However, before 2017, most of us textile people did not pay much attention to environmental protection issues. Even if there were environmental protection requirements for textile-related industries to suspend production or reduce production, many companies would comply with the requirements. It is very common to produce behind closed doors, or stop production during the day and start work at night. However, in 2017, what is known as the most severe “environmental protection storm” in history swept across Wujiang. The total number of water-jet looms decreased by 30% in three years, and a hard target of 100% reclaimed water utilization was introduced. All links in our textile industry chain were immediately affected. challenges. Environmental protection policies have begun to be viewed correctly, and requirements for production suspension and production reduction can also be actively implemented. But the transformation is painful. The reduction and restriction of production capacity make the textile industry production like thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge. At that time, gray fabric factories were reluctant to receive orders, and customers queued up to wait for goods with money. Printing and dyeing companies were even overwhelmed by all kinds of gray fabrics, and the factory aisles were filled with fabrics waiting to be dyed. However, due to the sluggish textile market this year, most of the market’s attention is focused on market-related aspects, and environmental protection has been almost ignored by us. The reason for this situation is that first of all, due to reduced orders, many factories have excess production capacity, and power consumption and emissions in all aspects are lower than in previous years. On the other hand, after years of hard work, most factories have built complete environmental protection equipment.
But recently, Jiangsu has established a “Provincial Environmental Protection Group”, and news has begun to spread that Jiangsu will become the most stringent environmental protection province in the country. For textile people, it is impossible for environmental protection next year to have as low a presence as it did in 2019.
This impact not only puts forward higher requirements for weaving, printing and dyeing, and finishing in traditional textile clusters, but more importantly, it affects dyes and auxiliaries on the periphery.
The person in charge of a coating factory in Wujiang area told us that due to their special production process, they are among the most polluting in the textile industry chain. In the process of environmental protection in recent years, they have been reluctant to accept some relatively large orders because they are afraid that the requirements for production suspension and production restriction will come, and customer orders will not be completed on time. As environmental protection policies continue to tighten next year, their lives may be even more difficult. A new round of elimination is already on the way, and a new round of price increases is coming soon.
The market is weak, exacerbating the difficulty in recruiting workers
The poor textile market not only affects the income of various textile bosses, but also Ordinary employees and workers will be implicated. Under normal circumstances, the wages of workers in the textile industry chain are mostly linked to working hours or based on output. The lack of orders this year and unsaturated factory capacity means reduced working hours for workers and reduced output. According to a worker in a dyeing factory, they normally work two shifts, working 12 hours a day, and earn more than 5,000 yuan a month. But now there is less work and some machines are not running, so people can only concentrate on the work. of several machines. The working hours have become three shifts, with 12 hours of work and 24 hours of rest. The working hours per month have been reduced, and the income has also dropped to more than 3,000 yuan per month. Although they have more rest time, they come out to make money. If they can’t make money, it will be useless no matter how much rest they have and there will be little point in coming out.
The first problem faced by textile factories of all sizes at the beginning of every year is recruitment. I am afraid that this problem will become more serious at the beginning of next year. Because some workers have experienced a significant drop in income in 2019, which is not much different from their jobs in their hometowns, they choose to work elsewhere, or simply stay in their hometowns and no longer work outside their hometowns.
Factories that are aware of this problem have already taken action and moved their normal post-year recruitment to the year before. It avoids being in close contact with other factories under the severe recruitment situation. It recruits workers in advance during the recruitment period before the year, so that production can be arranged leisurely early next year. The textile market after the new year is not yet clear, but the problems and challenges that textile people will encounter next year have already emerged one after another. During this period of time before the end of the year, textile companies not only have to rush to ship goods before the end of the year, but also make some preparations for next year. <br
