Authors: Apohpis — field research; Bai Yang (白杨) — class analysis.
I. Production and Operation Status
1. Industry Position: Agricultural and sideline food processing within the manufacturing industry, with main business covering pig slaughter, processing of pig by-products, processing and sales of pork cuts, as well as production and sales of ready-to-eat products.
2. Main Products:
1. Fresh Meat Category: Pork carcasses (whole dressed pigs), pig by-products (pig heads, trotters, hearts, livers, kidneys, etc.), and pork cuts (front, middle, rear sections, etc.)
2. Ready-to-Eat Category: Sausages, chicken fillets, skewers, braised products, etc.
1. Upstream: Primarily the breeding industry; suppliers mainly include large and medium-sized pig farming enterprises, with some scattered individual farms.
2. Downstream: ① Mainly facing supermarket markets in the East China region and some food processing factories; ② Agricultural product wholesale markets in surrounding towns and cities.
II. Company Management Structure and Department Composition
1. Hierarchy Setup: Chairman — Executive Deputy General Manager (Chairman's son) — General Manager — Deputy General Manager — Department Manager (Director) — Team Leader — Team Worker
2. Department Composition: Mainly divided into two major sectors: functional departments and production departments.
(I) Functional Departments
1. General Office: Responsible for personnel recruitment, handling employee onboarding/offboarding, social security payments, signing labor contracts, hygiene management, and gatekeeping/security management; human resource functions are prominent (1 office director, 1 clerk, 1 cleaner, 3 security guards)
2. Enterprise Management Office: Responsible for personnel interviews, formulating and assessing company management systems; strong administrative function; the department head is a Vice President of the company (1 manager, 1 assistant manager)
3. Finance Department: Responsible for company financial management (1 Chief Financial Officer, 1 Finance Manager; office divided into first-floor finance and second-floor finance; first-floor finance has 6 staff on shift work, second-floor finance has 5 staff on permanent day shifts)
4. Energy and Safety Department: Responsible for energy control (water and electricity consumption), workshop safety inspections (fire safety, production safety, etc.), and warehouse management (1 department manager, 1 warehouse keeper, 4 storage keepers, 6 loaders/packers)
5. Sales Department: Centered around sales representatives, responsible for developing sales markets, handling business connections, and identifying customers (approximately 20+ people)
6. Inspection Department: Responsible for handling customer complaints and assessing corresponding responsible departments and individuals (2 people)
(II) Production Departments
1. Slaughter Workshop: Responsible for pig slaughter and processing of pig by-products; main product pork carcasses are sold externally, with some supplied to the cutting workshop for further processing.
2. Cutting Workshop: Processes pork carcasses by first roughly dividing them into front, middle, and rear sections, then performing detailed subdivision such as ribs, belly meat, shoulder cuts, fore and hind legs, etc.
3. Warehouse Department: Responsible for packing frozen goods for storage, receiving and accepting goods (verifying quantity, quality, specifications), recording entries, and shelving/storage; ensures accurate entry of materials into the warehouse system and proper management; also responsible for outbound management, inventory control, and safety hazard inspections. Frontline employees include warehouse keepers and storage staff.
4. Operations Department: Responsible for shipping operations, subdivided into cutting product shipping and carcass shipping; also manages fresh product warehouse operations; frontline employees include loaders and weighers.
5. Quality Control Department: Responsible for formulating and supervising the execution of production processes in production departments, monitoring production links and processes for abnormalities, and inspecting hygiene environments in production departments; frontline employees are quality inspectors.
III. Factory Employment Personnel Status (Taking the Slaughter Workshop as an Example)
1. Staff Scale: The slaughter workshop currently has approximately 130 employees; the male-to-female ratio is about 6:4, with age structure concentrated between 40-50 years old.
2. Geographic Distribution: Employees mainly come from nearby towns or villages, with short commuting distances, generally not exceeding 5 kilometers.
3. Education Level: Generally low; most have elementary or junior high school education, with some individuals being illiterate.
4. Employment Nature: Primarily formal employees, with a small number of temporary workers (about 10) mainly engaged in simple physical labor (such as packaging, cleaning, etc.); currently no dispatched labor employees.
5. Personnel Turnover: Overall turnover is low; employees are mostly locals with strong family ties; about 80% of employees have worked for more than 3 years, and some have been working in the workshop since the factory was established.
6. Recruitment Requirements: Age 18-48, both genders accepted, education requirement is junior high school or above.
7. Job Types: Can be divided into general workers and technical workers based on technical requirements. General workers mainly engage in work of average labor intensity (such as shelving, packaging, inbound storage, etc.); technical workers mainly engage in work with higher technical requirements and relatively high labor intensity (such as sticking and bleeding, opening cavities, splitting carcasses, removing internal organs, etc.)
8. Occupational Disease Risks: The workshop implements a half-shift night shift system, often requiring work until midnight or even later; older employees in the workshop commonly suffer from hypertension, and some employees have hearing damage due to long-term work in noisy environments.
IV. Workshop Working Conditions (Taking the Slaughter Workshop as an Example)
1. Labor Processes for Various Jobs:
1. Workshop production is mainly divided into two forms: on the production line and off the line. Work on the production line consists of conveyor operations, with main processes including: driving pigs → hanging pigs → sticking and bleeding → scalding → automatic hair removal machine → preparing for hook hanging → anal incision and tail cutting → head trimming → cavity opening and organ removal → splitting carcass → singeing and scraping hair → spray rinsing → trimming belly and neck fat → removing slab fat → trimming scraps and lymph nodes → grading and storage
2. Off-line operations include two teams: cold packaging room and neck trimming room, both on permanent day shifts, mainly responsible for by-product packaging and fine trimming of necks.
3. Production plans are formulated by planners in the Operations Department coordinating with sales representatives based on order volumes; after planners confirm orders with sales representatives, they coordinate with slaughter schedulers to plan slaughter schedules and determine slaughter quantities. Workshop directors arrange specific job tasks for workshop personnel based on attendance; internal inspectors and quality control department inspectors supervise the specific production process.
4. Workers must maintain a standing posture during production; movement on the assembly line is not allowed, and bathroom breaks are restricted.
2. Working Environment: Overall environment is poor, with no clear distinction between clean and non-clean areas; workshop noise is high (including equipment noise and animal noise), and employees lack noise-reducing protective gear; summer temperatures are high, annual humidity is generally high, and there is no clear separation of dry and wet areas.
3. Working Hours: Generally start at 8 AM, finish around noon at 12 PM, resume work at 5 PM, and finish around midnight at 12 AM; specific hours are flexibly adjusted based on order volumes, with no fixed start or end times. The most tiring period of the day is in the evening, when production volume is high and duration is long, generally exceeding 6 hours.
4. Work Injury Risks: Workshop work injury risks are high, mostly cuts from knives; main reason is employees not correctly or as required wearing cut-resistant gloves; occasional slips and falls occur, and some employees experience dizziness, nausea, vomiting due to overexertion. After a work injury occurs, first aid with iodophor, alcohol, etc., is administered in the office, followed by hospital treatment; employees declare work injuries according to regulations, and the company reimburses treatment costs while assessing the safety department and involved departments.
V. Compensation and Benefits
1. Accommodation and Meals: Housing provided but meals not included; accommodation deposit 300 yuan, utilities self-paid; cafeteria meal cost approximately 10 yuan per meal (meal allowance previously existed but has been cancelled)
2. Wage Composition: Basic wage 1500-2000 yuan, seniority allowance 200 yuan, attendance bonus 300 yuan; production wage calculated at 0.04 yuan per pig (previously 0.07 yuan); technical positions have additional subsidies of about 500-1200 yuan. Total earnings is approximately 4500-7500 yuan.
3. Work intensity: management increased the conveyor speed from about 240 to 260–270. The source does not specify the unit of measurement.
4. Wage Increases: No significant increase in the past 5 years, even some decline. Main reasons: first, the industry is not thriving, pig farming industry is sluggish, and live pig prices continue to fall; second, competition within the industry pressure has increased, with an increasing number of pig slaughterhouses.
5. Payment Time: Wage calculation starts around the 10th of each month, previous month's wages can be queried around the 15th, and wages are paid between the 20th-25th, basically equivalent to withholding one month's wage.
6. Peak and Off-Peak Patterns: November to February of the following year is the production peak season, with obvious seasonal characteristics; orders significantly increase before holidays, especially in December (high demand for cured pork products) and before Chinese New Year (January-February); off-peak season is generally March to September, with June-July being the lowest due to hot weather reducing pork demand and student vacations reducing orders.
7. Other Benefits: No overtime pay; company explains that wages are calculated based on production volume; social security only covers five social insurance schemes (no housing provident fund), contributions to the five social insurance schemes are based on actual wages; no fixed holiday benefits, generally issuing company's own products such as sausages and chicken fillets.
VI. Working Hours and Leave
1. Working Hours: Generally start at 8 AM, finish around noon at 12 PM, resume work at 5 PM, and finish around midnight at 12 AM; specific hours adjusted based on order volumes, no fixed start or end times.
2. Management Staff Schedule: Department managers do not work alongside production lines, generally finish around 5 PM, with 4 days off per month.
3. Leave System: No fixed rest days on weekends or holidays; if employees need leave for personal matters or rest, they must apply in advance; during leave, daily production wage is deducted, and attendance bonus is fully deducted if leave exceeds 2 days.
4. Mandatory Rotational Leave: During off-peak seasons, the company requires mandatory rotational leave citing poor performance and deducts the monthly attendance bonus.
5. Time without a day off: some employees have worked for up to six months without leave.
VII. Workshop Management Structure
1. Management Architecture: Department Manager (Vice President) — Workshop Supervisor — Team Leaders and Management Trainees — Employees
2. Responsibilities at Each Level:
1. Department Manager: Responsible for overall department management, organizing department meetings, conveying company requirements, calculating employee wages, coordinating with other departments, personnel recruitment and interviews, workshop technical upgrades, and production process adjustments.
2. Workshop Supervisor: Responsible for on-site production management in the workshop, personnel arrangement, and filling in for individual positions as needed.
3. Team Leaders: Responsible for managing team members and mentoring them.
4. Management Trainees: Responsible for learning workshop positions, inspecting production sites, and organizing production reports.
3. Management Staff Salary Structure: Department managers earn over 12,000 yuan, workshop supervisors around 10,000 yuan, team leaders 7-8 thousand yuan, management trainees around 7,000 yuan.
4. Labor Relations Dynamics: In cases of strikes or labor disputes, some team leaders stand together with workers; management trainees do not publicly take sides but privately offer advice; department leadership takes the capital side's stance to suppress workers.
VIII. Management and Assessment Systems
1. Strict Management: Enterprise Management Department, Inspection Department, Quality Control Department, and internal production departments all have corresponding management assessment indicators.
2. Leave Approval: Employees applying for 1-3 days of leave need signatures from the workshop supervisor and department manager; 3-7 days require signatures from the Enterprise Management Department and General Manager; over 7 days requires approval from the Chairman.
3. Resignation System: Employees must submit a resignation application one month in advance, reviewed by department leadership and approved with sequential signatures; if resigning urgently, the company deducts 40% of the employee's current month's wages.
4. Holiday Regulations: Employees have no annual leave or rest days, only 3 days for marriage, death, or wedding events.
5. Attendance System: Late arrival fined 50 yuan; absence exceeding 1 hour is considered absenteeism; repeated late arrivals and absences face job transfer or dismissal.
IX. Class Analysis
(I) Fundamental Methodology
We conduct class analysis first by determining the basis of analysis, with two fundamental classic works as references:
First is how to determine the proletariat. Engels wrote in the 1888 English edition annotations of "The Communist Manifesto":
"The proletariat refers to the modern wage-earning working class that has no means of production of its own and therefore must sell its labor power to maintain life."
This means that not owning means of production and living by selling labor power is the general method for judging the proletariat. However, this general method cannot distinguish different functions within the proletariat; we need to conduct more specific analysis based on rich real-world materials and the second basis, namely the duality of collective worker and supervisory labor.
Marx pointed out in Volume I of "Capital" that with the development of cooperation:
"Products transform from direct products of individual producers into social products, into common products of the collective worker, i.e., combined labor personnel. Each member of the collective worker acts more directly or indirectly on the object of labor... As long as one becomes an organ of the collective worker and completes a certain function belonging to him, that is sufficient."
This means that engineers, technicians, and even some management personnel, as long as they participate in production as "organs" of the "collective worker," belong to the category of productive laborers. However, Marx also pointed out that capitalist management has duality.
"Supervisory and commanding labor, as long as it arises from an opposing nature, from capital's rule over labor... this labor is directly and inseparably combined with the production function handed to each individual as special labor by all combined social labor."
This means that management labor simultaneously contains productive functions (cooperation itself requires command) and exploitative functions (capital's rule over labor). The key to distinguishing between petty bourgeoisie and proletariat lies in which function dominates in their roles. If the latter dominates, it means possessing control over surplus value (such as setting wages, deciding hiring and firing). Possessing such power, even without owning means of production, one acts as an agent of capital in function, thus becoming petty bourgeoisie; without such power, even if bearing some management coordination work, one remains a member of the collective worker, thus being proletariat.
(II) Specific Class Analysis
1. Chairman: The chairman is unequivocally part of the bourgeoisie. According to Engels' 1888 English edition annotations of "The Communist Manifesto":
"The bourgeoisie refers to the modern capitalist class that owns social means of production and employs wage labor."
The Chairman owns all the means of production in the factory (slaughtering workshop, cutting assembly line, cold storage, brand channels), and extracts surplus value based on hired labor. Whether he personally participates in management here is not decisive; what is decisive is ownership of the means of production. He is the only person directly possessing capital in this factory; he is the bourgeoisie.
2. Executive Deputy General Manager (Son of the Chairman). He may not yet possess legal ownership of the means of production, but his position is a channel for inheriting capital power. He exercises the chairman's agency and is a direct extension of capital function. In Marxist class analysis, the relationship of capital inheritance within the family itself is part of class reproduction. His class attribute depends on the bourgeoisie; he belongs to members of the bourgeoisie who have not yet completed legal transfer but are already exercising capital control. Legal relationships are often merely a ratification act after the factual production relations are determined.
3. General Manager, Deputy General Managers. They are petty bourgeoisie, more advanced agents of capital. They do not own the means of production and live on high salaries, conforming to the form of "hired laborers." However, they hold operational decision-making authority authorized by capital—final approval on production plans, cost control, personnel appointments, etc. Marx pointed out in Volume III of "Capital" that,
"Capitalist production itself has made command labor completely separated from capital ownership commonplace. Therefore, such command labor no longer needs to be undertaken personally by the capitalist."
The General Manager and Deputy General Managers are precisely those who undertake this "command labor that does not need to be undertaken personally by the capitalist." Their high salaries are absolutely different from those of the general proletariat; they do not reflect the value of labor power but are remuneration for their agency rights in capital functions. They belong to the upper stratum of the petty bourgeoisie and are direct agents of capital at the level of management and operations.
4. Department Managers. They are petty bourgeoisie. Specifically, department managers are slightly lower than general managers and vice general managers; they are agents of capital who hold authority over the distribution of surplus value. The power to set wages in this factory lies with department managers, which determines their class attribute as petty bourgeoisie. When analyzing the duality of supervisory labor, Marx pointed out that
"the exploitative function of management is determined by the inevitable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw materials he exploits."
Determining the amount of salary for each person is precisely at the core of this oppressive or antagonistic function. Department managers directly decide what proportion of the working day belongs to workers themselves and what proportion goes unpaid to capital. Although they do not own the factory at all, they hold agency rights over the primary distribution of surplus value. In their management labor, production coordination functions (organizing production) coexist with exploitative functions (setting salaries, assessments, suppression), but the existence of salary-setting authority inevitably places them on the side of capital. They belong to the petty bourgeoisie and are extensions of capital in the workshop.
5. Workshop Supervisors. They belong to the proletariat. A specific analysis of this factory's situation reveals that workshop supervisors belong to the proletariat. Ninety percent of a workshop supervisor's time is spent filling positions, with only ten percent used for statistics. Marx pointed out in the concept of "collective worker" in Volume I of "Capital":
"To engage in productive labor, one no longer needs to work with one's own hands; it is sufficient to become an organ of the collective worker and perform a certain function within it."
Ninety percent of a workshop supervisor's time directly acts upon objects of labor (sticking and bleeding, opening cavities, splitting halves), possessing labor skills that other workers do not have; they are authoritative regarding specific processes and are advanced-skill organs in the collective worker that act more directly upon objects of labor. Their statistical function is auxiliary and does not constitute authority over the distribution of surplus value. Although their salary (about 10,000 yuan) is far higher than that of ordinary workers, this is compensation for their higher skills and longer labor input, unlike department managers who receive remuneration for agency rights in distributing surplus value. They are part of the proletariat, specifically the skilled portion. Note that this experience applies only to this factory, or factories with smaller scale and lower technical content; specific problems must be analyzed specifically, and blind application is not appropriate.
6. Team Leaders, Management Trainees. They belong to the proletariat. Their "management" functions are extremely limited—team leaders are responsible for training group members and coordinating production on-site, while management trainees are responsible for inspections and compiling reports; sometimes they also fill positions. They neither hold salary-setting authority nor personnel appointment/removal authority nor final decision-making power over assessments. They remain part of the collective worker; their function is coordination required by the production process itself, not capital's rule over labor. In labor-capital conflicts, individual team leaders may stand up together with workers, proving their class position: they are in the same exploited status as frontline workers and are not a "worker aristocracy."
7. Personnel in functional departments such as General Office, Enterprise Management Office, Finance Department, Inspection Department, etc. They belong to the proletariat and can be called commercial proletariat or office proletariat. These positions do not directly act upon objects of labor and do not produce surplus value, but they are employed by capital, live by selling their labor power, and are exploited by capital. Engels used the term "commercial proletariat" in a note to Volume III of "Capital." When analyzing commercial hired workers, Marx pointed out:
"For an individual merchant, his profit volume depends on the amount of capital he can employ in the process; the greater the unpaid labor of his clerks, the more capital he can use for buying and selling. Commercial capitalists entrust their workers with much of the work through which their money functions as capital. The unpaid labor of these clerks, although it does not create surplus value, enables him to appropriate surplus value; this is completely identical in result for this capital; therefore, such labor is a source of profit for commercial capital. Otherwise, commerce could not be operated on a large scale, nor could it be operated in a capitalist manner."
Clerks in the General Office, accountants in the Finance Department, administrative personnel in the Enterprise Management Office—their labor does not create surplus value but provides conditions for capital to appropriate surplus value. They are office proletariat hired by capital, not petty bourgeoisie. The Inspection Department is responsible for assessments; although they seemingly have "power," the assessment standards they execute are formulated by capital. They themselves do not formulate distribution rules nor appropriate surplus value. They are part of the proletariat.
8. Sales Department Business Representatives. They are part of the proletariat, more specifically commercial proletariat. Business representatives develop markets and interface with clients; on the surface, they have considerable autonomy. However, from the perspective of class relations, they do not own means of production nor client relationships (because client relationships belong to the company); they live by salary and commissions. Their labor is commercial labor realizing surplus value, not productive labor creating surplus value, but they are equally exploited by commercial capital. Their commission income is remuneration for their ability to realize surplus value through labor, not agency rights in distributing surplus value. They are part of the proletariat.
9. Ordinary Workers in Slaughterhouse and Cutting Workshops. They are the main component of the factory's proletariat and also the core part from a functional perspective. They are direct creators of surplus value. Their labor conditions are quite harsh: no fixed shift times, average night shifts exceeding 6 hours, line speed increased from 240 to 260-270, salaries not increasing but decreasing over five years—completely conforming to Marx's description in Volume I of "Capital" regarding absolute surplus value production. They are the core of the factory's proletariat.
10. Technical Workers (sticking and bleeding, opening cavities, splitting halves, etc.). They also belong to the proletariat; compared with ordinary workers, they belong to the skilled core. They and ordinary workers both belong to the proletariat; the difference lies in skill level. Their skills are part of labor power, not means of production. Slightly higher wages are compensation for higher labor power value and do not alter class attributes.
11. Warehouse Keepers and Warehouse Workers in the Warehousing Department. They are part of the proletariat, auxiliary organs within the collective worker. They are responsible for receiving goods, acceptance, registration, shelving, outbound shipment, and inventory control. Their labor is a continuation of the production process in the circulation sphere and an organ in the collective worker that "acts more indirectly upon objects of labor." They do not own means of production and live by salary; they are part of the proletariat.
12. Loading/Unloading Workers and Weighing Operators in the Operations Department. They are part of the proletariat and also physical organs within the collective worker. Loading/unloading workers are direct bearers of physical labor, while weighing operators fulfill measurement functions in the circulation process. They are both components of the collective worker and part of the proletariat.
13. Quality Control Inspectors in the Quality Control Department. They are part of the proletariat, belonging to supervisory organs within the collective worker, but they supervise "things" rather than "people." Inspectors supervise execution of production processes and check hygiene environments. Their supervision targets quality of the production process, not obedience of laborers. This is a technical function required by production itself, not capital's rule over labor. The exploitative nature of "supervisory labor" that Marx referred to refers to supervising people (forcing workers to obey capital discipline), whereas inspectors supervise things and processes. They are organs in the collective worker undertaking quality functions and belong to the proletariat. However, it should be noted that this supervision of things can actually provide excuses for oppression of people.
14. Warehouse Keepers, Storekeepers, Loading/Unloading Workers, Packing Workers in the Energy and Safety Department. They belong to the proletariat; their job nature is similar to those in the Warehousing Department, serving as auxiliary and physical organs within the collective worker, belonging to the proletariat.
15. Security Guards and Cleaning Staff. They belong to the proletariat; specifically, they are non-productive hired laborers. They do not participate in the production process but are employed by capital, living by selling their labor power. Their labor is non-productive labor maintaining order and hygiene at production sites, but they are equally exploited hired laborers by capital. They belong to the proletariat.
(III) Comprehensive Conclusion
Bourgeoisie: Chairman, Executive Deputy General Manager. Total of two people.
Petty Bourgeoisie: General Manager, Deputy General Managers, Department Managers. Total of twelve people.
Proletariat: Production part within the collective worker: Workshop Supervisors (advanced technicians filling positions 90% of the time), Team Leaders, Management Trainees, Slaughterhouse/Cutting Ordinary Workers, Technical Workers, Warehouse Workers, Loading/Unloading Workers, Weighing Operators, Quality Inspectors, Packing Workers.
Commercial Proletariat: Business Representatives, Finance, Administration, Clerks, and other office hired laborers.
Non-productive Hired Laborers: Security Guards, Cleaning Staff.
The above three categories of proletariat total approximately 390 people.
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