China Blue Case Study

China Blue Case Study

The China Blue documentary takes us on a tour of typical clothing factory in China and shows us the dynamics between the employees and owners. The factory portrayed in the movie manufactures jeans that are later sold at Walmart and features the owner, Mr. Lam, and a young teenage girl, Jasmine, who traveled from her rural home to get a job in the factory in order to help her family financially. Jasmine finds a job in the denim factory and lives with a dozen other girls in a small crowded space nearby. She works 18 hours per day, seven days per week, with no overtime pay and very meager daily meals that are taken out of her paycheck. The laborers suffer very harsh penalties for small offenses such as leaving the factory without permission or sleeping during work hours. Very often they have to work without pay or get paid with significant delay because of the owner’s attempts to further cut cost. The working and living conditions of the laborers are sharply contrasted by the portrayal of the owner of the factory. Mr. Lam is rather proud of his business as it’s believed to be one of the best-rated companies by inspectors. However, his attitude towards his laborers is very harsh and condescending. He thinks of them as low-class, unskilled labor that are lazy, unmotivated and lack work ethics and he drives them harder and harder to meet his tight deadlines.

There are numerous Operations Management issues presented in the movie. First, the management of human resource aspect is very unsustainable. Due to very long work day and excessive overtime, employees are overworked and unfocused. Moreover, employees can’t properly rest and de-compress after draining work day because they are crowded in small rooms for the few hours they have left for sleep. This causes the overall efficiency of the labor force to diminish considerably. Additionally, the motivation of the employee suffers greatly due to payment delays, a lot of pressure to complete more work with the same amount of pay and overall attitude of their managers. This results in extremely high turnover rate. Lastly, there are a lot of insufficiencies resulting from the way the laborers are treated. The movie shows employees going on a strike because they are being pushed too hard and do not get compensated properly. Such brief strike can do a lot of damage to any company by interrupting normal operations and causing delays and missing deadlines with customers. This could easily be avoided by paying laborers a regular living wage, so they do not have to resort to more drastic measures such as a strike.  

There is a lot that needs to be done to improve the very harsh labor conditions in China. The factories should be made more accountable and make sure they treat their employees right and pay them higher wages that allow them to live a decent life and offer overtime pay to compensate those who chose to work more than required. Additionally, there should be more regulations that prevent factories from overworking people. There should also be stricter laws preventing child labor. One way to ensure that all of this is enforced is to put more pressure on U.S. companies that utilize Chinese factories. We all know that labor conditions in China are below any acceptable standards but U.S. companies that hire them to manufacture cheap clothing tend to turn a blind eye to the issue because it’s better for their bottom line.  Finally, we should push for more government involvement and enforcement to make sure that the laws they are passing are followed by employers.