Recruitment

Types of ZSR

How ZSR can be implemented:

Recruitment methods and requirements for factory work should be transparent and information on these should be provided publicly.
Differentiated hiring practices, such as preferential employment of migrants over locals or of migrants from a specific group, should be avoided in SEZs and their factories.
Workers should have written contracts in line with labour regulations.
Where labour recruitment agents are used, steps should be taken to ensure that these operate fairly and transparently, and that workers are not hired on less preferential terms than those hired directly by firms.
Affordable training programmes should be offered locally in specialisms that increase employment prospects in SEZs, including industrial and service-sector work as well as entrepreneurship, particularly for local residents. Dedicated pathways to industrial employment, for example apprenticeship placements, should be provided.

Overview of the problem:

Recruitment methods of factories within SEZs differ from country to country, from zone to zone, and even from firm to firm. Some zones use labour contractors to bring migrant workers from remote regions; others rely on spontaneous labour migration but engage labour agencies to vet applicants at the zone; while others again use only direct recruitment by individual firms. Recruitment methods also vary according to the skill level of the work: for lower-skilled roles, relying on spontaneous migration and informal labour contractors is more common than for higher-skilled, white-collar jobs, which are more typically advertised online and via social media. In some cases, vocational training programmes may be set up for students, with a view to recruiting them after graduation, or broader training schemes are offered to provide enhanced skills development. However, these schemes are not always affordable to those who are willing to engage in factory labour, and they may not provide reliable pathways into SEZ-based employment, potentially leading to resentment among those who have been trained.

Recruitment methods and skills (and other) requirements for SEZ employment are often not transparent, with would-be workers queuing outside factory or zone gates to find work, but sometimes repeatedly rejected. In some zones, coordination between firms means that a worker who has been blacklisted by one factory is unlikely to be recruited by another . Locals are typically not preferred for factory labour, but, where employed in SEZs, tend to be concentrated in menial jobs such as gardening, cleaning and security. Some zones also operate other discriminatory hiring practices, including recruiting members of only one sex or ethnic group, or only from one region.

Labour contracts are not usually provided for workers, enabling firms to fire them at will, sometimes repeatedly rehiring them after a short period of unemployment, thus allowing employers to evade responsibilities to provide social security or other benefits that accrue to those who have been employed for more than a minimum period. This is particularly common where workers are hired only indirectly through labour agencies or brokers. Those recruited in this way are often on less favourable terms than those hired directly by the firm, causing resentment between workers.

Examples:

Lekki Free Zone, Nigeria:

Recruitment of the workforce in the China-associated Lekki Free Zone in Nigeria is done primarily through Lagos-based recruitment companies, with workers coming from across Nigeria as well as from within Lagos State. Many arrive spontaneously at the gates of the zone seeking work and are subjected to an initial screening by recruitment agents as well as additional layers of vetting by the zone management committee and SEZ police station. In many firms, workers are then engaged through contractors on a casual basis, without written contracts and with a high degree of precarity, essentially being asked to wait at the factory gates each morning, to see which workers will be needed that day. In other firms, typically those with more complex assembly lines for which more training is provided, more secure employment is offered directly with the firm (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Only a minority of workers are locals from the Lekki-Ibeju area. Despite the promise of jobs for displaced indigenous people, they are not preferred for recruitment: explanations from managers include ‘they are unqualified’, ‘they are too lazy to work hard’, ‘they will cause trouble in the factories’ and ‘they won’t take paid jobs on their own former land’. Though many migrants move spontaneously to Lekki in search of jobs, tribal and ethnic ties may also play a role in recruitment strategies of firms in Nigeria, especially those with specific local linkages or who hire through local recruitment agents. For example, the Dangote oil refinery, in a non-Chinese part of Lekki Free Zone, is reputed to hire primarily from Hausa communities in the owner’s place of origin (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Liaoshen Industrial Park, Uganda:

Recruitment of the workforce in Uganda’s Liaoshen Industrial Park is done directly by the factories, with workers coming from across the country to find work by waiting at the factory gates (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024). Despite this direct employment, written contracts are not provided. Most workers are from northern Uganda, with others arriving from surrounding countries including Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was reported that the zone’s landowner has moved many labourers in from the Acholi, Karimojong and Lugbara tribes of Northern Uganda, causing some tensions with the local Baganda tribe (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Locals from the Kapeeka area, where the park is situated, do not tend to work in the zone (Wyrod, 2019). While most locals can earn more from farming and leasing rooms to migrant workers, a few had made multiple attempts at finding factory work, and despite having the required level of qualification, were not selected for a post. Other workers reported having to pay bribes of around 10,000 shillings (USD 2.62), more than a day’s wages, at a factory’s gates to be chosen for work in the zone (Goodburn, Knoerich, Mishra & Calabrese, 2024).

Polepally SEZ, India:

In Andhra Pradesh’s Polepally SEZ, recruitment into secondary employment such as maintenance, gardening or cleaning takes place through informal contracts with local labour agencies (Srinivasulu, 2014). Higher castes typically end up in brokerage roles while more marginalised communities are relegated to exploitative menial jobs in the SEZ, such as cleaning and gardening. Even though nearly half of the local residents found work in the SEZ, they were not given permanent factory jobs as promised during negotiations for land sale (Agarwal, 2018).

Sri City, India:

Factory jobs promised to locals in Andhra Pradesh’s Sri City during land acquisition mostly did not materialise, since most villagers were considered insufficiently educated for assembly line work (Kumar, 2018). Some young women, educated to at least age 16, were employed, typically through labour agencies based in a nearby town, but most local men were unable to gain the desired factory jobs, instead becoming security guards or finding work outside the zone. Many locals remained unemployed and dependent on the income of another family member (Aggarwal & Garg, 2024).

The case of China:

In China’s SEZs, labour was initially reallocated from former collective production brigades, first from the areas surrounding the zones and then from other provinces (Andors, 1988). These methods of labour recruitment gradually gave way to more market-based mechanisms.

During the 1980s, officials from Shenzhen SEZ would bring letters of introduction, job descriptions and employment contracts on recruitment tours to China’s interior (Chen, 2019). Labour contracts were finalised in the places of recruitment, and labourers were then moved to the zones. Shenzhen was China’s first zone to introduce contractual employment rather than the older Communist system of labour allocation to work units, and since it also offered higher salaries and benefits than most other employment opportunities, the zone attracted huge numbers of in-migrants. Young women dagongmei (“working little sisters”) were preferred for most roles, because they were seen as more docile than men and unlikely to reject low wages (Pun, 2005).

With China’s new Labour Contract Law of 2007, a new legal category of “dispatch work” was introduced (Huang, 2017). This meant that, for the first time in China, labourers could legally be contracted through intermediary organisations such as labour agencies, rather than directly by factories, allowing firms to avoid providing key labour benefits including social welfare contributions. Dispatched workers, in China’s SEZs and elsewhere in the country, have been shown to be subject to inadequate labour protection, unfairly low wages, absent social security and welfare benefits, and lax occupational health and safety, meaning that they are highly vulnerable to occupational hazards (So, 2014). Despite several state attempts to regulate labour agencies, a 2019 study found that dispatched workers were still massively employed in rank-and-file positions in enterprises of all types, and that the labour dispatch market was still crowded with unscrupulous agencies (Feng, 2019).

Locals were mostly not recruited to factory jobs in China’s SEZs. Little industrial training was provided for them, making it difficult for former farmers with only a primary or middle school education to find factory roles (Jin, 2010). In any case, as many locals quickly made large profits from letting rooms to incoming migrant workers, assembly line jobs with strict hours and conditions were unappealing to most.

China-associated zones overseas

In countries hosting China-associated SEZs overseas, broader training schemes such as the Luban workshops have provided enhanced skills development, including in Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, and Djibouti (Helsinki Times, 2022) . These Luban workshops include vocational education and training networks established by China together with many countries in Africa and Asia, with the aim of benefit host country populations and strengthen China’s influence (Wang & Manyukwe, 2024; African Times, 2023). It is unclear to what extent they contribute to recruitment of the labour force in SEZs.