SHILING: Squeezed by high costs and unpredictable demand, some factories in southern China’s manufacturing heartland are turning to a new strategy to survive: hiring workers by the day. It is a far cry from Beijing’s vision of a slick, hi-tech manufacturing future of computers and chip makers: on a warm morning in the southern town of Shiling, dozens of workers gather on a city street to haggle for a day of work making bags for $20 to $30. Factory owners in this leatherworking town, and in those nearby, say just-in-time labor allows them to stay competitive, even if day wages can be higher, individually, than full-time salaries. Workers, operating in a legal grey area, say they tolerate the conditions because many fear factories offering permanent jobs could fail to pay if clients dry up and the manager runs off. “We never used to hire temporary workers, because labor costs were not very high. Our workers were on staff,” said Huang Biliang, who runs a button factory in the southern city of Dongguan. “But recently we’ve started to hire more temporary labor.” In a stainless steel factory in the nearby town of Jiangmen, David Liang, manager of Chiefy, agrees: “Every additional (permanent) worker I hire is an additional risk.” The result is a section of China’s manufacturing base that has adapted to volatile conditions and higher wages – keeping the country’s hold on some labor-intensive work that it might have lost to cheaper regions elsewhere in Asia. Struggling companies do occasionally turn to temporary workers – but this is a change for China, where authorities have sought to crack down on precarious employment, introducing tougher rules in 2012 to protect so-called ‘dispatch’ workers. China wants to shift away from piece-work toward a high-tech consumer economy. Shiling’s experience suggests, however, that casual labor could help the country’s plethora of small manufacturers remain sellers of cheap shoes, toys and stainless steel pans for a few years yet. Casual work has been thriving in pockets of the industrial landscape, especially where clusters have created a base of experienced workers: in toys, garments and, Reuters found, in the bag and stainless steel industries in southern Guangdong province. “It’s an indication that China will probably succeed and maintain its manufacturing base,” said Ben Simpendorfer, managing director of consultancy Silk Road Associates. While the use of undocumented day laborers by factories is hard to capture in statistics, academics, consultants and factory managers say it has risen since the financial crisis and accelerated in the last two years. There are no official statistics on informal work, but surveys show Chinese factory workers are leaving their jobs more quickly. In surveys by Laborlink, a San Francisco-based polling group, the percentage of Chinese workers who said they had been in their jobs less than one year rose from 33 percent in 2014 to 40 percent in 2016. And, China’s labor attitudes may be changing. Though China has tightened rules, officials have also expressed concerns about them. In March, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei publicly criticized the labor contract law, which requires companies to provide employees a written contract. The same month, Guangdong province – which has raised its minimum wage at regular intervals in recent years – said it would scrap scheduled rises to the local minimum wage in 2016, and keep it at 2015 levels through 2018.