数据显示，从2000年至今年第一季度，中国在美国投资了近1200亿美元。但是爆炸式的投资也带来了出人意料的麻烦。在福耀的车间里，已经出现了很大的文化冲突。Fuyao’s plant sits on what was once the site of an abandoned General Motors facility in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
MORAINE,
Ohio — When a giant Chinese glassmaker arrived here in 2014 and began
spending what would become more than a half-billion dollars to fix up
an abandoned General Motors plant, it seemed like a tale from
opposite land: The Chinese are supposedly stealing American jobs — as
no less an authority than President Trump has pointed out.
But now the Chinese were suddenly creating them. More than 1,500 jobs, in fact.
去年11月，联邦职业安全与卫生署（Occupational
Safety and Health
Administration，简称OSHA）对福耀的一些违规行为处以了逾22.5万美元的罚款，比如没有足够好的锁定机制，以在工人修理或保养设备时，关闭机器电源。在今年1月份之前担任OSHA负责人的乔治华盛顿大学教授戴维·迈克尔斯(David
Michaels)表示，这种失误在竞争激烈的汽车零部件行业中很常见，它很容易导致断肢甚至死亡事故。
密歇根大学(University of
Michigan)的利伯索尔-罗杰尔中国研究中心(Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese
Studies)主任玛丽·加拉格尔(Mary
Gallagher)表示，曹德旺这样的企业家通常会雇佣农民工在自己的工厂里工作，他们认为那些人比较顺从，与美国工人不同，后者期望更友好平等的管理风格。“他之前很可能从未经受过来自劳方的这种压力，”她说。
The Chinese company, Fuyao Glass Industry Group, decided the money was worth spending in this Dayton suburb to be close to its key customers, the big American-based automakers that buy millions of windshields each year.
And it was not alone.
From
2000 to the first quarter of this year, the Chinese have invested
almost $120 billion in the United States, according to the Rhodium
Group, which tracks these flows. Nearly half of that amount has come
since early 2016, making China one of this country’s largest sources of
foreign direct investment during that time.
But
with the explosion of investment has come unexpected trouble. At
Fuyao, a major culture clash is playing out on the factory floor, with
some workers questioning the company’s commitment to operating under American supervision and American norms.
Fuyao faces an acrimonious union
campaign by the United Automobile Workers and a lawsuit by a former
manager who says he was let go in part because he is not Chinese.
Photo
The company has hired more than 1,500 American workers.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
The investment has even prompted hand-wringing in China, where comments by the company’s chairman, a self-made billionaire
named Cao Dewang, stirred a debate over the country’s competitiveness.
“Cao Dewang behaved like a traitor,” wrote one person on Weibo, the
popular Chinese microblogging site. “You set up a factory in the U.S.
to solve employment there.”
Solving
employment is, of course, the promise that Mr. Trump rode to office.
Since his victory, foreign companies like Bayer, SoftBank and Infosys
have moved to align themselves with that goal — and avoid an
America-first backlash — by promoting plans for thousands of United
States-based jobs. But the experience of the Fuyao plant shows the potential pitfalls along the way.
The union,
which began meeting with workers in 2015, escalated its public efforts
in April with a fiery meeting highlighting arbitrarily enforced rules
and retaliation against those who speak up.
An employee named Lisa Connolly
complained that Fuyao disciplined workers for absences if they didn’t
request their paid time off far enough in advance, while a former
employee named James Martin said the company had exposed him to harsh
chemicals that blistered his arms and diminished his lung capacity.
(Mr. Martin lost his job for excessive absences while on workers’
compensation leave in January.)
James Martin said he was exposed to harsh chemicals at Fuyao and missed work. He later lost his job.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
Fred
Strahorn, the Democratic minority leader of the Ohio House of
Representatives, told the audience that Fuyao’s operation felt like “a
little bit of a hostage situation” and pledged to “show Fuyao that we do
things a little bit different in Dayton, Ohio.”
In November, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration fined Fuyao more than $225,000 for
violations such as insufficient access to locks that shut down power to
a machine when workers fix or maintain it. Such lapses are common in
the brutally competitive auto parts industry, said David Michaels, a
professor at George Washington University who headed OSHA until
January, but they can easily lead to amputation or even death.
The company reached an agreement in March that reduced the amount to $100,000 and required corrective measures.
Eric Vanetti, the vice president for human resources, conceded
an element of turmoil at the plant late last year. But he said that
the atmosphere had improved significantly in the past few months
and that many of the new safety measures were underway before the OSHA
settlement. The company also recently gave hourly production employees
a $2-an-hour raise.
Photo
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined the company for safety lapses.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times Photo
At
Fuyao, workers say that there have been some improvements, but they
complain that the proportion of Chinese supervisors has increased.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
One
complication at Fuyao is the relative novelty of Chinese “greenfield”
investments in the United States, in which foreign companies build new
facilities rather than acquire existing ones.
The
approach has advantages for both sides. “If I didn’t invest in the
Dayton area, it’s very unlikely anyone would invest any more in the
automotive glass industry in the U.S.,” Mr. Cao said.
Kristi Tanner, a senior official at JobsOhio, the private economic
development corporation for Ohio, which helped lure Fuyao to the
state, said in a statement that the company “has transformed a
long-vacant former G.M. assembly plant and provided an economic lift.”
But
projects can suffer when investors are unfamiliar with the American
regulatory and political environment, as is true for many executives in
China, where labor standards tend to be less strictly enforced.
In
2014, a Chinese copper tube maker called Golden Dragon opened a plant
in Wilcox County, Ala., to Fuyao-esque fanfare, investing more than
$100 million to create an anticipated 300 local jobs. By the end of the
year, amid complaints about lax safety and low wages, workers narrowly voted to unionize.
At Fuyao, workers say there have been safety improvements, though some cite continuing
problems. One employee, DeAnn Wilson, complained that her area lacks
proper ventilation even though she works around machines that emit
smoke. (John Crane, Fuyao’s health and safety director, said the smoke
was vapor that resulted from warm air entering a chilled room.)
Photo
DeAnn Wilson complained of poor ventilation.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
Other
workers said that despite the company’s insistence that it wanted to
hand the plant over to American managers, it had increased the
proportion of Chinese supervisors in recent months.
That contention is consistent
with the legal complaint of David Burrows, who was ousted as a vice
president for the plant in November, along with the plant’s president,
John Gauthier.
“Since
those two have been fired, it has more of a Chinese feel than what it
was before,” said Duane Young, a worker at the plant. He said the
Chinese had little interest in training, sharing responsibility with or even engaging with American employees.
In an interview in Beijing, Mr. Cao said he had replaced
Mr. Burrows and Mr. Gauthier because “they didn’t do their jobs but
squandered my money.” He lamented that productivity at the plant “is
not as high as we have in China,” adding that “some of the workers are
just idling around.”
Athena
Hou, the chief legal officer for Fuyao Glass America, called Mr.
Burrows’s suit “legally meritless.” Mr. Gauthier and Mr. Burrows did not
respond to requests for comment.
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To some extent, cultural norms may explain the tensions.
Mary
Gallagher, who directs the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies
at the University of Michigan, said entrepreneurs like Mr. Cao often
populate their factories with migrants from rural areas, whom they
expect to be relatively submissive, unlike American workers, who expect
a more collegial management style. “He hasn’t ever had probably this
type of pressure from a work force,” she said.
Workers
at the Fuyao plant say Chinese managers seem to elevate production
goals above all else. When employees have trouble with equipment and ask
to shut it down, said Nicholas Tannenbaum, a Fuyao worker who was
fired in late May, “the Chinese look at us and say, ‘No need.’”
“They’re jumping on moving conveyors to fix it as the line is running,” he added.
Photo
Fuyao says it will keep to its original four-to-five-year timetable for handing the plant to a predominantly American management corps.Credit Nathan C. Ward for The New York Times
Mr. Vanetti, the head of human resources, said the company had not sacrificed safety to meet production targets. But he conceded
that “the fundamental difference between Chinese and Americans is that
the Chinese have a bias toward speed; Americans like to process
things, think it through from all angles.”
Mr. Vanetti said that Fuyao remained committed to its original four-to-five-year timetable
for handing the plant to a predominantly American management corps,
and that it recently hired two more American vice presidents.
But Weiyi Shi, a professor of political economy
at the University of California, San Diego, said Chinese overseas
investments in Africa and Asia showed a pattern of reluctance to
transfer operations to local control.
“At
the managerial level, you see that the technical staff tends to be
from China,” she said. “The one local employee they hire at a senior
managerial level would be the human resources director.”
