Original: guziming authorized to reprint this article to wechat official account: zhengshitang plus2019
Over the past few days, Midea fanghongbo and Gree dongmingzhu have successively started layoffs and salary cuts.
Interestingly, as a white electricity giant, Fang Hongbo believes that the industry will face great difficulties in the next three years, which is an unprecedented winter. He deeply regrets the 30% layoffs; Dongmingzhu, on the other hand, said that he would rather reduce wages than lay off workers, so that every employee can have a guarantee.
I won’t comment on the acting skills of these powerful actors.
Salary cuts and layoffs are essentially to reduce the company’s costs during the cold winter. There is no difference between good and bad, and they have nothing to do with the “moral character” of the two bosses.
Gree and Midea have chosen the path that suits their own enterprises, one to the left and the other to the right.
Under the leadership of fanghongbo, Midea is more like a Midea that “masters core technology”, developing in many new fields such as industrial automation, new energy and digital optoelectronics. Under the leadership of dongmingzhu, Gree is more like a treasure island of “super factory”, constantly focusing on deep cultivation in mature white electricity fields such as air conditioners, water heaters and refrigerators.
Therefore, for Midea, which is capital and technology intensive, talents with “high degrees of freedom” are the most valuable. Fang Hongbo is more willing to “eliminate the last” and “survive with broken arms” through layoffs, and pay high liquidated damages, but try to avoid a one size fits all pay cut to prevent the company’s top talents from leaving in frustration.
On the contrary, for the labor-intensive Gree, the talents with “high degrees of freedom” are often the toughest, while the labor with “low degrees of freedom” are the most considerate. Therefore, dongmingzhu prefers to force those employees who have too many ideas and too many things to leave by reducing their salaries, so as to leave the most honest and obedient employees to continuously optimize the company’s costs.
You can look for two examples to understand.
Capital technology intensive Internet companies would rather pay liquidated damages of n+3 and collectively abolish some minor departments, but also keep the “high degree of freedom” talents in the core profit-making departments.
In recent years, labor-intensive banks have continuously lowered their salaries to drive away the “high degree of freedom”, leaving behind those obedient and honest employees to complete assembly line work.
Generally speaking, companies dominated by mental labor prefer to abolish manual labor, while companies dominated by manual labor prefer to abolish mental labor.
Therefore, although Midea has made drastic layoffs, the reduction in salary expenditure is limited. On the contrary, the per capita salary may rise. The decrease in expenditure is mainly due to the decline in investment after the dismissal of the Department; Although Gree does not lay off employees, the number of employees who voluntarily resign after the salary cut is not large, and the decline in human costs is much more than that of Midea.
For capitalists, “downsizing” kicks out redundant employees, which is conducive to the optimization of business model and the improvement of organizational efficiency. The “salary cut” brings increased internal turnover, which is conducive to further squeezing surplus value. Whichever is beneficial, choose the one. The “proletariat” must not be too involved.
Because these layoffs and salary cuts are often aimed at buying the hearts of the people in the basic market.
Midea’s R & D team paid themselves a raise when the company was so difficult, and Gree’s assembly line workers did not cut themselves when the industry was so laid off. Both of them had deep feelings for Hong Bo and dongmingzhu.
But in fact, both Fang Hongbo’s layoffs and Dong Mingzhu’s salary cuts are selective under the bad market environment and according to the characteristics of their own company, making other people a price.
The same logic applies in many places.
In contrast to this round of epidemic, capital and technology intensive Shanghai has made every effort to protect the freedom of travel and the “white list” enterprises, but rarely considered the devastating disaster caused by spillovers; In the labor-intensive city of Changchun, faced with citizens with low degrees of freedom, they gave up their freedom and resolutely implemented the policy from city closure to disinfection and sterilization in the house.
Shanghai and Changchun, like Fang Hongbo and dongmingzhu, have their own bottoms.
On the 31st, the Ministry of industry and information technology, together with relevant departments, issued a notice to officially launch a new round of new energy vehicles to the countryside, and will also organize activities such as home appliances and green building materials to the countryside to further promote the consumption of bulk commodities.
In the face of the cheers of the new energy vehicle enterprises, I would like to reiterate the speculation made at the beginning of last year that cars going to the countryside are good for the “right-wing” traditional tram enterprises and bad for the “left-wing” dream car enterprises such as “Wei Xiaoli”.
When we look at national policies from the perspective of entrepreneurs’ operation ideas, we will find that many economic decisions are familiar.
To stimulate the new energy vehicles in first tier cities, the best solution is fanghongbo’s “layoff” mode, abolishing the number of fuel vehicle licenses, opening new energy licenses, allowing consumers to freely choose new energy brands and willingly pay a premium for cars.
In the face of the rural market where “cars go to the countryside” and the limited subsidy funds of the state, the strategy will probably follow dongmingzhu’s “salary reduction” strategy, give up the degree of freedom, and continuously reduce costs through large-scale and large-scale production, so that low-cost new energy vehicles can fully compete and quickly drive consumption.
Today’s article is inspired because a friend reminded me of a mistake I made five years ago when I wrote the series of the patriotic war. The new round of home appliances going to the countryside that sounded the clarion call will not benefit Midea and Gree, but those small and medium-sized brands with low prices.
Therefore, fanghongbo and dongmingzhu, who have long wanted to understand this truth, have cut both jobs and salaries.
Alas, in order to win the final victory, you two just bear it