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Is the Luxury Industry Facing an Impending Labour Crisis in China?

by

Lucy Archibald

|

This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

Earlier this week, the global media turned its attention to the manufacturing situation in China as Taiwanese high tech firm Foxconn, which counts Apple among its clients, raised wages a staggering 67%. The dramatic pay-rise followed 11 suicides among its approximately 400, 000 employees, and a shocking expose from Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly which revealed the brutal treatment of employees. In what seemed like closely linked industrial action, about 2,000 workers at the KOK Machinery factory in Kunshan outside Shanghai also went on strike, demanding better pay and improved working conditions.

Luxury Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido Co. believes that rising labour costs are now inevitable.

Masaru Miyagawa, chief officer of the company’s China division, stressed that the changing demographic structure in China would undoubtedly impact on his organisation: “We have to consider the upward pressure on the labour costs in China.”

Shiseido has plants in Beijing and Shanghai, and regularly faces potential industrial action: “We have labour disputes once or twice a year in China. But these disputes are mainly caused by wage differences between regular workers and part-time workers,” Miyagawa said. “Because we addressed the complaints quickly, they didn’t become a serious problem.” In other words, Shiseido’s management view is that crisis can be averted through co-operation.

While demands for higher wages put an unwelcome strain on companies, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions argues that the action is not unjustified on the basis that nearly a quarter of Chinese employees have not had a raise in five years.

It is also worth noting that the economic surge and consequential demographic shift which is driving these demands, is also benefiting luxury companies who are finding themselves with a growing, aspirational demand for high-end goods and services. Shiseido themselves saw overseas sales account for 36.9% of their total sales, driven largely by growth in China.

Sources
Daily Tech
Google News

Lucy Archibald
Lucy Archibald

Associate Editor

RETAIL

Is the Luxury Industry Facing an Impending Labour Crisis in China?

by

Lucy Archibald

|

This is the featured image caption
Credit : This is the featured image credit

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

A number of international companies including Shiseido Co. are encountering labour disputes in China as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

Earlier this week, the global media turned its attention to the manufacturing situation in China as Taiwanese high tech firm Foxconn, which counts Apple among its clients, raised wages a staggering 67%. The dramatic pay-rise followed 11 suicides among its approximately 400, 000 employees, and a shocking expose from Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly which revealed the brutal treatment of employees. In what seemed like closely linked industrial action, about 2,000 workers at the KOK Machinery factory in Kunshan outside Shanghai also went on strike, demanding better pay and improved working conditions.

Luxury Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido Co. believes that rising labour costs are now inevitable.

Masaru Miyagawa, chief officer of the company’s China division, stressed that the changing demographic structure in China would undoubtedly impact on his organisation: “We have to consider the upward pressure on the labour costs in China.”

Shiseido has plants in Beijing and Shanghai, and regularly faces potential industrial action: “We have labour disputes once or twice a year in China. But these disputes are mainly caused by wage differences between regular workers and part-time workers,” Miyagawa said. “Because we addressed the complaints quickly, they didn’t become a serious problem.” In other words, Shiseido’s management view is that crisis can be averted through co-operation.

While demands for higher wages put an unwelcome strain on companies, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions argues that the action is not unjustified on the basis that nearly a quarter of Chinese employees have not had a raise in five years.

It is also worth noting that the economic surge and consequential demographic shift which is driving these demands, is also benefiting luxury companies who are finding themselves with a growing, aspirational demand for high-end goods and services. Shiseido themselves saw overseas sales account for 36.9% of their total sales, driven largely by growth in China.

Sources
Daily Tech
Google News

Lucy Archibald
Lucy Archibald

Associate Editor

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