Chapter 1759 Some people are happy and others are sad
In the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping, several major events occurred in succession for the Tang Empire. The first was the explosion of the oil industry, and the petroleum product kerosene began to generally enter the families of the people of the empire.
Due to the substantial surge in oil production and the empire's suppression of the oil industry, through splitting up oil companies, expanding oil industry licenses, and direct administrative intervention, the price of kerosene began to drop significantly.
In the thirty-fourth year of Xuanping's reign, the price of kerosene was still as high as four cents, but in the thirty-fifth year of Xuanting's reign, it dropped to about two cents.
However, by the second half of the 36th year of Xuanping, the price of kerosene had generally dropped to less than 10 cents per liter. In some areas close to oil production areas, the price would be even lower after eliminating expensive freight costs, such as the northwest region.
For example, in the eastern coastal areas, the price of kerosene has generally fallen by seven to eight cents.
The low price allowed kerosene to enter thousands of households, lighting up the night sky of the empire!
However, because the market has become larger and total production has increased sharply, although the profit margins of major oil companies have dropped significantly, the total profits have remained at a relatively high level.
The changes in the oil industry were just a small change in the many reforms of the empire in the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping.
The real big changes are the agricultural tax reform and the establishment of working hours and minimum wage levels.
In October, the Tang Dynasty Newspaper officially announced that starting from January 1 next year, minimum working wages and limits on working hours will be officially implemented nationwide.
At the same time, a pilot project was launched in Chengtianfu, a place at the foot of the emperor. It will be implemented from October. Two months will be used as a basis to learn from experience and then promote it nationwide.
We chose to implement it in Chengtian Mansion not only because Chengtian Mansion is at the foot of the emperor, but more importantly because there are basically no factories in this place. The number of factories is still relatively small, making it easier to control the implementation.
After all, it was just a pilot project, and the scale was too large at the beginning, so it would be difficult to save it if something went wrong.
If the scale is small, even if something goes wrong, it can be easily changed without causing too much turmoil.
These policies are closely related to ordinary people. Since the news was announced in the Tang Dynasty newspaper, it can be said that it has attracted nationwide attention.
Even Zuo Chengsheng, who is working on a new refinery in Ningbo, is also very concerned about this matter.
To this end, a company management meeting was held specifically to discuss the impact of this matter on their newly established refinery, which had not even recruited all the workers and was still under construction.
After detailed calculations, a group of management, especially the human resources department, felt that these two major policies had little impact on their refinery, or even had no impact at all.
Because their refinery is a high-tech factory after all. Regardless of the management and technical backbones, even ordinary employees are skilled employees. At least when they recruit employees, they have to at least graduate from elementary school.
And because of the nature of the refinery, it is impossible for them to recruit any female or child workers.
In the entire factory, there are basically no female employees except for a few aunts who cook, sweep floors and work in logistics.
The salary of employees in their factory is also far beyond the established minimum salary standard. The salary of their ordinary employees can reach more than five or six yuan, and the salary of slightly more skilled employees is ten yuan and up.
There is no way around it. Oil refining talents are scarce these days and everyone is competing for them, so the salaries offered are relatively high.
This is also the one-sidedness of the current two major welfare policies, that is, they have basically no impact on companies that do not use child labor or female workers on a large scale.
As for the working hours, fourteen hours is about the same as never mentioned. Unless it is a shady boss, in fact no one will let employees work such long hours nowadays.
The greatest impact is still on light labor-intensive industries that use a large number of female workers and child labor, especially the textile industry.
Many textile industries currently use female and child labor, and this major policy is bound to have a great impact on them.
For a time, on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the stocks of textile-related companies plummeted.
However, the market reacted strongly. Many textile factory owners said that they could no longer survive and would go bankrupt, but they still failed to make the government give up their determination to implement this policy.
Are you kidding? This is a policy that was finally determined after discussion at the imperial study room meeting, and it was a policy approved by the Emperor himself.
How could it change so easily!
The two major welfare policies are about to be implemented, and major companies, especially textile companies, are beginning to look for various ways to survive.
At first, some people shouted that since working hours and minimum wages were limited, their textile companies would fire all female and child workers and replace them with male workers.
At that time, they will have to see how the government will deal with the countless unemployed female workers and child workers who have appeared out of thin air.
However, when their accountants and the management of the human resources department made careful calculations, they found that if all male workers were replaced, the cost would rise significantly. It would still be dozens more than female workers and child workers with minimum wages and longest markets.
What percentage point...
Therefore, dismissal of female workers and child workers is a joke.
But it’s not enough to just increase labor costs.
So what to do next?
What else can be done? If factory owners still want to maintain high profits, they can only increase prices!
As a result, the prices of textile products such as cotton yarn and cotton cloth began to increase.
This is already within the expectations of the empire's top management. If the price goes up, the price will go up!
The empire's textile industry was very large. Although the consumer market was large, there were also many textile companies, which also meant great competition.
If you raise your prices, if others don't raise their prices, they can take away all your market in an instant!
Under this wave, textile companies controlled by private capital were naturally the loudest in resisting. They were the ones clamoring to fire female workers and raise prices.
However, in the textile industry, there are still a large number of enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and the Royal Assets Division, especially the various textile enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, which are very large in number.
There are companies wholly owned by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, companies controlled by local government finance, and companies managed by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises. These are all companies under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, and the scale of this group of companies is very large.
In these companies under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, although it is important for the management to make money, it is more important to cooperate with the government in implementing various measures.
Therefore, during this turmoil, the management of all textile enterprises under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises has received direct orders from the officials and must cooperate with the yamen to promote the smooth implementation of the two major welfare policies.