Red Star Shines on China Wuqi Township workers child care

The institutional level is this: factory workers are paid ten to fifteen dollars a month, and board and lodging are provided by the state. Workers receive free medical care and compensation for work-related injuries. Female workers are given four months' leave during pregnancy and childbirth without loss of pay, and there is a modest nursery for workers' children, but most of them become feral children as soon as they learn to walk. Mothers receive a portion of their "social security", a fund made up of a 10 percent deduction from their wages and an equal government subsidy. The Government also contributes the equivalent of two per cent of the gross wage to the workers' recreational expenses, and these funds are managed by the trade unions and factory committees organized by the workers***. The work week is six days, eight hours a day. At the time of my visit the factories were working twenty-four hours a day in three shifts-perhaps the busiest factories in China! The material conditions were of this kind: they had clubs, schools, spacious dormitories - all of this to be sure - but it was all in kilns, with land underneath, no showers, no movie theaters, no electric lights. They were supplied with meals, but they ate millet, vegetables, occasional mutton, nothing tasty. They received wages and social security payments in Soviet currency, which was no problem at all, but what they could buy was strictly limited to necessities - and there wasn't much of that!