DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Two factory bosses and two engineers were arrested in Bangladesh on Saturday, three days after the collapse of a building where low-cost garments were made for Western brands, as the death toll rose to 341 but many were still being found alive.

As many as 900 people could still be missing, police said.

The owner of the eight-story building that fell like a pack of cards around more than 3,000 workers was still on the run.

Police said several of his relatives were detained to compel him to hand himself in, and an alert had gone out to airport and border authorities to prevent him from fleeing the country.

Officials said Rana Plaza, on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, had been built without the correct permits, and the workers were allowed in on Wednesday despite warnings the previous day that it was structurally unsafe.

Two engineers involved in building the complex were also arrested at their homes early on Saturday, Dhaka district police chief Habibur Rahman said. He said they were arrested for dismissing a warning not to open the building after a jolt was felt and cracks were noticed on some pillars the previous day.

The owner and managing director of the largest of the five factories in the complex, New Wave Style, surrendered to the country's garment industry association during the night and they were handed over to police.

The factory, which listed many European and North American retailers as its customers, occupied upper floors of the building that officials said had been added illegally.

'People are asking for his head'
"Everyone involved -- including the designer, engineer and builders -- will be arrested for putting up this defective building," said junior internal affairs minister Shamsul Huq.

An alliance of leftist parties which is part of the ruling coalition said it would call a national strike on May 2 if all those responsible for the disaster were not arrested by Sunday.

Rahman identified the owner of the building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League's youth front.

"People are asking for his head, which is quite natural," said H.T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister.

Wednesday's collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh, the second-largest exporter of garments in the world. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory nearby the latest disaster killed 112 people.

Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages, and could taint the reputation of the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports.

Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh's 3.6 million garment workers -- most of whom are women -- has grown since the disaster, triggering protests.

Hundreds were on the streets again on Saturday, smashing and burning cars and sparking more battles with police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Eyewitnesses said dozens of people were injured in the latest clashes.

Remarkably, people were still being pulled alive from the precarious mound of rubble -- 21 in all since dawn on Saturday.

"We must salute the common people who dared to enter the wreckage to rescue them, as even our professionals didn't dare to take the risk," Mizanur Rahman, deputy director of the fire service, told Reuters.

Marina Begum, 22, spoke from a hospital bed of her ordeal inside the broken building for three days.

"It felt like I was in hell," she told reporters. "It was so hot, I could hardly breathe, there was no food and water. When I regained my senses I found myself in this hospital bed."

Frantic efforts were under way to save 15 people trapped under the concrete who were being supplied with dried food, bottled water and oxygen.

About 2,500 people have been rescued from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 20 miles from Dhaka.

Wrong permit, illegal floors
Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-story building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it.

"Only CDA can give such approval," he said. "We are trying to get the original design from the municipality, but since the concerned official is in hiding we cannot get it readily."

Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. "Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that reason no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza," Islam told Reuters.

Islam said the building had been erected on the site of a pond filled in with sand and earth, which meant its foundations were too weak.

"There were three big and very heavy generators that shook the whole building when they were operating. On that day the generators were being used and within seconds the building collapsed," Islam said.

Sixty percent of Bangladesh's garment exports go to Europe. The United States takes 23 percent and Canada takes 5 percent.

North American and European chains, including British retailer Primark and Canada's Loblaw, a unit of George Weston Ltd, said they were supplied by factories in the Rana Plaza building.

Loblaw, which had a small number of "Joe Fresh" apparel items made at one of the factories, said on Saturday that it was working with other retailers to provide aid and support.

It said it was sending representatives to Bangladesh and was also joining what it described as an urgent meeting with other retailers and the Retail Council of Canada.

Related stories:

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Ashraful Alam Tito / AP

Ratna Begum survived the deadly factory fire by jumping from a fifth-story window.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — As 112 of her co-workers died in a garment-factory fire, Dipa Akter got out by jumping from the third floor through a hole made by breaking apart an exhaust fan. Her left leg is wrapped in bandages and she has trouble walking.

Now she wants back in.

"If the factory owner reopens the factory sometime soon, we will work again here," the 19-year-old said. "If it's closed for long, we have to think of alternatives."

The Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory had no emergency exits. Police are continuing to question three managers suspected of locking in the workers during the fire.

Clothes from major global brands including Wal-Mart and Disney were being produced at the factory, though the companies said the plant was considered high-risk and they had ordered subcontractors not to use it in recent months.

While major retailers whose products were found in the fire have disavowed the factory, the workers who survived have not. They can't afford to.

Factories like the one gutted Nov. 24 are a rare lifeline in this desperately poor country, and now many of the more than 1,200 surviving employees have no work and few prospects.

Fire sweeps clothing factory in Bangladesh

Akter spent 25 minutes trying to get down the smoke-filled stairs before jumping, which she said was "the only option other than being burned."

Despite her injuries and trauma, she needs the job. Without it, she said, she would either be a housemaid or jobless in her home village.

Almost one-third of Bangladesh's 150 million people live in extreme poverty. There are few formal jobs in villages, where about 70 percent of the population lives.

Garment work is one of the few paths to secure a stable income, collect some savings and send money to family — especially for young, uneducated rural women, who are already trained to make clothes at home.

Sabotage to blame for factory fire, Bangladesh authorities say

The industry has given women in this Muslim-majority, conservative nation an accepted opportunity to leave their homes and join the main workforce.

"I have a life here." Akter said. "I have a timetable to wake up in the morning and I know when I should go to bed."

Akter made about 4,550 takas ($57) a month sewing pants, shirts and nightgowns. Her husband makes about the same at another factory, but she said it is impossible for them to survive just on his salary.

Thousands protest after Bangladesh fire traps workers, kills at least 112

The landlord is demanding rent and she has bills at a grocery shop.

"I am in big trouble because I don't have any savings," Akter said.

The government announced Saturday that it would give 200,000 takas ($2,500) to the families of those who died in the fire and 50,000 takas ($625) to the injured. It also said uninjured workers would get their November wages, but many employees are demanding four months' salary as compensation. It is not yet clear when, or even if, Tazreen will rebuild the factory.

"If I am not compensated, I have to start begging. I have to move to the street," said Ferdousy, a worker who uses only one name.

With overtime, the 20-year-old earned up to 7,000 takas ($87) a month from Tazreen as a sewing machine operator. She fled the factory unharmed by bolting out as soon as the fire alarm went off, ignoring her supervisors' insistence that she stay at her station.

But now she needs to work again, or to be compensated while the company rebuilds.

"I worked hard to support my family. I always tried to cross my production targets so I could earn extra money to support my family. But now I have no place to go," she said.

Ratna Begum, 30, who cannot walk without assistance, is too injured to go back to work for the foreseeable future and wonders how her family will afford rent, food, her medical bills and school for her two sons without her monthly pay of up to 5,000 takas ($62).

She jumped out of a fifth-floor window to escape the flames, thinking, "If I die, my family will at least get my body." 

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Hasan Raza / AP

Bangladeshi firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, late Saturday.

Updated at 3:25 p.m. ET: DHAKA, Bangladesh -- At least 112 people were killed in a fire that raced through a multi-story garment factory just outside of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, an official said Sunday.

The blaze broke out late Saturday at the eight-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which supplies Walmart and other major retailers in the U.S. and Europe. 

By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies, fire department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub told The Associated Press. He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said. 

Local media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation. 

Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of the factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing. 

Working conditions at Bangladeshi factories are notoriously poor, with little enforcement of safety laws, and overcrowding and locked fire doors are common. The cause of this fire was not immediately known. 

Tazreen was given a "high risk" safety rating after May 16, 2011, audit conducted by an ethical sourcing assessor for Wal-Mart, according to a document posted on the Tuba Group's website. It did not specify the conditions or violations that led to the rating. 

A spokesman for Wal-Mart said online documents indicating that the factory received an orange or "high risk" assessment after the May 2011 inspection and a yellow or "medium risk" report after an inspection in August 2011 appeared to pertain to the factory where the fire occurred. 

The August 2011 letter said Wal-Mart would conduct another inspection within one year. Spokesman Kevin Gardner said it was not clear if that inspection had been conducted, or if the factory was still making products for Wal-Mart. 

If a factory is rated "orange" three times in a two-year period, Wal-Mart won't place any orders for one year. The May 2011 report was the first orange rating for the factory. 

There was no indication whether the violations had been fixed since the May inspection. Neither Tazreen's owner nor Tuba Group officials could be reached for comment. 

The Tuba Group is a major Bangladeshi garment exporter whose clients include Walmart, Carrefour and IKEA, according to its website. Its factories export garments to the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and The Netherlands, among other countries. The Tazreen factory, opened in 2009 and employing about 1,700 people, makes polo shirts, fleece jackets and T-shirts. 

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe. 

In its 2012 Global Responsibility report, Walmart said that "fire safety continues to be a key focus for brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh." Walmart said it ceased working with 49 factories in Bangladesh in 2011 due to fire safety issues, and was working with its supplier factories to phase out production from buildings deemed high risk. 

At the factory scene, relatives of the workers were frantically looking for their loved ones. Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, who died in the fire, but had no trace of her son, who also worked at the factory. 

"Oh, Allah, where's my soul? Where's my son?" wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. "I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone."

Mahbub said firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor of the factory alone. He said most of the victims had been trapped inside the factory, located just outside of Dhaka, with no emergency exits leading outside the building. 

Many workers who had taken shelter on the roof of the factory were rescued, but firefighters were unable to save those who were trapped inside, Mahbub said. 

He said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors. 

"The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor," Mahbub said. "So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building." 

"Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower," he said. 

Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. The recovered bodies were kept in rows on the premise of a nearby school. 

Meanwhile, many of the bodies were handed over to families but at least 60 bodies remained unidentified till late Sunday, said police official Moshiuddoula, who uses one name. The unclaimed bodies were later taken to Dhaka Medical College where the corpses will be kept until Monday morning for identification. 

Otherwise, the bodies will be handed over to a charity organization, Anjuman-e-Mufidul Islam, for burial, said local chief government administrator Sheikh Yusuf Harun. The charity group is a voluntary organization which buries unclaimed bodies. 

By late Sunday, firefighters had concluded their search and left the scene, the fire department's control room duty officer Bhajan Sarker told The Associated Press by phone. 

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed shock at the loss of so many lives in the blaze and asked authorities to conduct thorough search-and-rescue operations. 

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would stand by the victims' families. 

Separately, a flyover under construction fell onto a busy market, leaving at least 14 people dead including three construction workers in southeastern city of Chittagong, an official said Sunday. 

Local fire official Abdul Mannan said the concrete structure collapsed on Saturday night, and authorities recovered the bodies by Sunday morning from under the debris in the second-largest city after Dhaka. 

This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.

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Updated at 8:40 a.m. ET: KARACHI, Pakistan -- At least 261 people burned to death as separate fires swept through two factories in Pakistan, police and government officials said Wednesday, raising questions about industrial safety in the country.

Flames raced through a garment factory in the teeming commercial capital of Karachi, killing 236 people. Weeping relatives in hospitals and morgues heaped criticism on the deeply unpopular government.

"People started screaming for their lives," said Mohammad Asif, 20. "Everyone came to the window. I jumped from the third floor."

Rehan Khan / EPA

A man tries to identify body of his relative at a mortuary following a huge fire at a garment factory in Karachi, Pakistan, Wednesday.

In the eastern city of Lahore, a fire raged in a shoe factory, killing at least 25 people.

More photos: Blazes at factories in Karachi and Lahore

Critics say Pakistan's corrupt and ineffective government has failed to tackle the country's problems. The country is racked by a Taliban insurgency, widespread poverty, spiraling crime and daily power cuts.

"The owners were more concerned with safeguarding the garments in the factory than the workers," said garment factory employee Mohammad Pervez, holding up a photograph of his cousin, who is also a worker there and is missing. "If there were no metal grills on the windows a lot of people would have been saved. The factory was overflowing with garments and fabrics. Whoever complained was fired."

The Guardian newspaper quoted injured factory worker Mohammad Ilyas, who also said that bars on the windows had stopped workers from escaping easily:

"Some of us quickly took tools and machines to break the iron bars," he said, speaking from a hospital in Karachi, the Guardian reported. "That's how we managed to jump out of the windows down to the ground floor."

"Within two minutes there was fire in the entire factory," said worker Liaqat Hussain, 29, from his hospital bed where he was being treated for burns all over his body. "The gate was closed. There was no access to get out, we were trapped inside."

Supplied international firms?
Ali Ahmad, 33, who owns a Karachi firm called Nizam Textiles, which does not own or operate either of the affected factories, said the Karachi factory was owned by two brothers. One was out of the country and the other was missing, he said.

"The word in the industry is that he has gone AWOL, which is, frankly, a natural reaction to the way the cops and media are investigating this," he told NBC News.

Ahmad said the factory likely supplied the international market.

"If these factory owners had international clients, that means they had to worry about social compliance, which is a trip or two per year from the compliance and standards guys and other auditors who report to their foreign buyers," he said. "If the social compliance checks had been failed by the factory owners, and they were still producing for foreign buyers, then this is both a local and an international crime. It's also an ethical problem for international buyers."

He said it was difficult being an entrepreneur in Pakistan.

"You have strikes, load shedding [power outages], local mafias charging you turf protection money -- you name it," Ahmad said. "Plus you have ruthless buyers sitting in the U.S. who don't care what you do, as long as you do it on time ... we take a hit every time we're late. That means lost margins. That means we do what we need to do to make our orders, fast. This factory owner may have been working extra shifts just for that purpose." 

'New radicals': Pakistan's Generation Y battles to shape country's future

On Wednesday, a provincial minister ordered an inspection of all factories and industrial plants in Sindh province within 48 hours. Karachi, home to 18 million people, is the capital of Sindh.

A preliminary provincial government report on the Lahore fire concluded that the closure of the emergency exits led to the deaths and labor and safety regulations were not applied, government sources said.

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Pakistani firefighters work to extinguish a sudden fire after it trapped dozens of workers in a factory in Lahore on Tuesday.

At a Karachi hospital, about 30 bodies burned beyond recognition were lined up at a morgue.

"There is no space left here. It's full," said ambulance worker Wasif Ali. "They keep coming."

Senior Superintendent of Police Amir Farooqi told Reuters that police were raiding buildings in different parts of Karachi to search for the factory owners.

In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable

Farooqi said 35 people were injured in the garment factory fire and bodies were still being recovered from the facility, which employed about 450 people.

The latest death toll in Karachi was 236, said police chief Iqbal Mahmood.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

Smoke was still rising from the factory as rescue workers pulled out charred corpses and covered them in white sheets. Relatives of workers stood in the street awaiting word of their fate. Several wept.

Aid workers become targets as Pakistan faces new humanitarian crisis

The cause of the garment factory fire was not clear.

In Lahore, workers at the shoe factory suspected that the fire was caused by a problem with a generator.

"We saw our colleagues burning alive, in flames," said Shabdir Hussain, from his hospital bed. "We could do nothing. We saved our lives by jumping from the roof."

US, Pakistan should 'divorce,' ex-ambassador to Washington says

Al-Jazeera reported that the factory had been built illegally in a residential part of Lahore.

Successive governments have been unable to provide a reliable power supply so factories have to have their own generators, powered by diesel or petrol, if they want to avoid regular, lengthy power cuts.

NBC News’ Waj Khan in Islamabad and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Reuters

Local residents gather in front of a municipal government building in Shifang county, Sichuan province, in this handout picture taken Monday.

Updated at 10:52 a.m. ET: While Shifang city government officials have announced that construction on the refinery will be halted, some residents have continued to protest in the streets to demand the release of some protesters detained during the protests including an unknown number of college students from a nearby aviation academy.

BEIJING -- Construction of a copper factory in central China has been halted, an official said Tuesday, after days of angry protests over fears of pollution culminated in clashes that saw riot police fire stun grenades and tear gas to break up a crowd of thousands.

Residents of the town of Shifang, Sichuan province, have been slowly gathering around a local city government office since Saturday, the day after a foundation-laying ceremony put on by Sichuan Hongda – a conglomerate specializing in minerals, real estate and finance – to celebrate the first phase of construction on the $1.64 billion proposed molybdenum-copper alloy refinery nearby.

When -- or now if -- completed, the refinery could generate an estimated $8 billion a year.

According to local Sichuan newspaper reports, the protest started with around a dozen people, but by Sunday it had grown as fellow residents and high school students joined them.

By Monday, there was a crowd of thousands, a police officer on duty there told the Chinese newspaper, Global Times. However, the South China Morning Post reported the figure was in the tens of thousands. 

By early Monday afternoon, tensions had escalated and protesters attempted to occupy the city government offices, forcing their way past police inside where they reportedly threw bricks through windows and destroyed offices there. Riot police were brought in to restore order, firing tear gas and stun grenades to break up the crowd.  

Some 13 injuries were initially reported by official state media, but witnesses on the ground reported far more wounded.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, protesters were reportedly still on the streets of Shifang, effectively locked in a standoff.

Local government officials were facing pressure from provincial-level and central government leaders to stifle social unrest.

'No longer suitable for living'
A protester surnamed Wang told NBC News that their numbers had thinned out as the city boosted its police presence.

“The two sides are just standing, facing each other,” Wang said. “There are a lot of police and the roads are blocked.”

“Yesterday, the protesters were all concentrated in front of the government building,” said another protester who requested anonymity. “But today, the police have blocked all the roads around the government building so people cannot concentrate in one area and are scattered everywhere… I am not sure how many people there are, but fewer than yesterday."

Bathed in smog: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off lifespan, expert says

Asked what he would do if construction went ahead on the refinery, the man responded, “As far as I’m concerned, I have settled here, but this place will be no longer suitable for living.” 

“If my economic situation and other conditions meet, I will definitely move away," he added.

Concerns over the pollution created by the alloy refineries that dot China’s resource-rich regions have grown in recent years as China’s economy develops and its people become better educated about the effects of industrial waste on human health.

“I think in general smelters are heavily polluting facilities no matter what, they smelt,” said Ma Tianjie, a Greenpeace campaigner in China specializing in heavy metal waste. “We have seen a lot of cases with heavy metal smelters where there is substantial release of all kinds of toxic pollutants.”

Those pollutants are released into the air through smoke and into the nearby area's ground and water supplies through the highly toxic slag waste that is a byproduct of a refinery’s production phase. Arsenic, an element that can cause severe kidney and liver problems in humans, is often found in worrying levels in this slag.

As these health concerns have become increasingly more public, so too has opposition to these refineries in urban areas.

While companies and local governments have up until now been largely able to duck growing NIMBY-ism in urban centers around China, officials here are increasingly finding themselves accountable for the environmental legacy of these lucrative, but highly polluting industries. 

A legacy that Ma warns can stay with a population for a long time. “Generally the smelters will leave a quite heavy legacy to the local community” he warned, “even decades after the facilities leave.”

Construction suspended
The mass public protest in Shifang has for now, had its desired effect: Late Tuesday afternoon, Shifang’s local Communist Party chief, Li Chengjin, announced through the government’s Weibo microblog feed that the government was halting construction of the refinery and would no longer allow it to go ahead.

“It’s definitely a piece of good news that construction is being halted, this is absolutely what we wanted,” said Wang upon hearing the news of the government’s decision to halt construction.

However, similar recent cases suggest that such success could just be temporary. Last summer, thousands of residents of the northeastern port city of Dalian took to the streets to protest a chemical factory after a dike broke following a storm, potentially exposing the city to the threat of a toxic spill.

Local officials were successful in keeping the crowd peaceful and eventually broke up the protests when they emphatically pledged to halt production at the factory and have it moved out of the city.

But production resumed soon after, though local officials there have stressed since then that the factory was still slated to be moved.

NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.

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ZHENGZHOU, China -- In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last.

The 26-year-old has worked in factories making products as varied as coffee makers, jewelry and Apple's LED screens. Each time, she quit, blaming low wages and unreasonable supervisors, then joined another factory.

Reuters

In eight years, Zhang Shuxiang -- seen posing for a photograph at her home in Zhengzhou, China, on Wednesday -- has worked in 20 factories. She wants the Foxconn plant to be her last.

"Factory work is too tiring," she said when asked about life after Foxconn, which she plans to leave by June. "Since last year, I've kept on telling myself I would never want to enter a factory ever again, but I'm still doing it in spite of myself."

She embodies the shifting expectations and opportunities of tens of millions of young Chinese workers from the countryside who have turned their country into a workshop of the world.

Their changing attitudes pose a deep challenge for thousands of manufacturers, such as Foxconn and its big customer Apple, which have relied on what they once thought was a virtually endless stream of inexpensive, compliant workers.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou has pledged to keep on increasing worker salaries and cutting the hours of work, after it came under fire for poor working conditions for employees making Apple iPhones and iPads.

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Zhang now works on an assembly line for computer motherboards, in a factory inside a mammoth industrial complex on the outskirts of Zhengzhou, which Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook visited in late March during a trip to China.

Before finally deciding whether to quit, Zhang said she will wait to see what changes come from the agreement signed by Foxconn and Apple to improve working conditions.

Workers more aware of rights
Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China's economy -- officially estimated at 159 million -- is crucial for the government. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions.

They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.

"They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them," said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers' rights group China Labor Bulletin.

"Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers ... have to agree to some of their demands," he added.

Apple, supplier pledge to improve conditions

Duncan Innes-Ker, senior China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, said there is a "perfect storm of factors" coming together to support workers as they push for higher wages: sustained economic growth, government policy support for a higher minimum wage and demographics.

Joe Tan / Reuters, file

Employees eat their meal on a guardrail of a bridge near the Foxconn recruitment center in Shenzhen, Guangdong province in this Feb. 22 file photo.

The number of young Chinese workers aged 15-24 years of age will likely fall by a third in the next 12 years, giving more bargaining power to this younger blue-collar generation, Beijing-based consultancy Dragonomics has projected.

Advocates decry Foxconn treatment of student interns

The average monthly wage of China's migrant workers in 2011 rose 21.2 percent from 2010 to 2,049 yuan ($320), with wages higher in the more developed coastal areas like Guangdong. Even so, despite the recent increases, such wages are still many times lower than in Western developed economies.

On a recent afternoon outside a labor market in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, a scattering of people were scrutinizing recruitment placards on a fence. Companies were looking for store managers, retail assistants and accountants. Some were offering salaries that range from 1,200 to 6,000 yuan.

'All menial work'
Xie Wen, 22, an unemployed former nurse, looked horrified when asked whether she was considering a job at a factory.

"It sounds good, but it's all menial work. If you want to earn a lot, you have to work a lot of overtime," she said, adding that she does not want her next job "to be too tough. I don't want any night shifts and I don't do overtime."

Her friend, Jin Jin, 27, who has been looking for work since she quit her job at a pharmacy a month ago, said she resigned because it was "meaningless" work. Since 2004, she has held four to five jobs and is now seeking one in sales that pays about 2,000 yuan, with about 4-6 days off a month, subsidized meals and overtime fees.

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Clad in a black blazer, jeans and pink sequined shoes, Dou Jing, 20, said she worked in the quality control department in an electronics factory for a year after high school.

"It was very tiring. I had to work night shifts that lasted 12 hours," Dou said. She later found a job as a receptionist for a small company, greeting guests and pouring tea for them.

"I didn't feel I could learn anything," she said, adding she wanted to learn some skills in her next job and open a shop.

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Walking through the crowd, a man surnamed Yang was trying to recruit telemarketers. He was distributing flyers that offered wages of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan a month, but not many people expressed interest.

"Workers are more choosy, they want a high salary, a job that's close to home and work that has very little responsibility," he said. "I think that's unrealistic."

Although the younger, more finicky cohort of migrant workers could pose a challenge for China's exporters, Innes-Ker said "we're still a long way away from the idea that foreign companies are moving out of China because it's too expensive."

"It's very difficult to find somewhere with the similar strengths of China," he said. "When it comes down to it, China has massive clusters that allow a very high degree of specialization to occur, and that helps to push down costs quite dramatically."

'Eat bitterness'
Zhang's elder brother, Zhang Junfeng, 30, who also works at Foxconn, said turnover is particularly rampant among younger factory workers, particularly those born in the 1990s.

"They'll resign the minute they get angry," Junfeng said. "Very few of them can eat bitterness."

Reuters

Zhang Junfeng (left), picks vegetables with his relatives at their home in Zhengzhou, Henan province Wednesday.

Eating bitterness is an expression used by Chinese who have endured decades of natural and man-made hardships throughout China's tumultuous history -- a term that also applies to Zhang's parents, who are both 61 and were farmers their whole lives.

On a recent afternoon, the pair sat in the courtyard of their home in Yezhang village, an hour's drive from Zhengzhou along several unpaved roads that cut through fields of wheat. They were picking through freshly harvested spinach from their fields to sell in Zhengzhou.

Zhang laughed when asked how her life is different from her parents, whose faces are brown and wrinkled from the sun. "At that time how can there be factories? That time, there were communes," she said.

China tells activist Ai Weiwei to turn off webcams

The round-faced Zhang, clad in a red tunic and black sweatpants, knows a thing or two about eating bitterness.

She was 18 when her mother paid a middleman 600 yuan to find her a factory job in Dongguan, a gritty city in Guangdong. When she arrived after a two-day rickety bus ride in 2004, she called home and cried to her mother after only a few days.

Unreasonable quotas?
In a Foxconn factory in Longhua in a suburb of Shenzhen, Zhang said she was hospitalized for two weeks in late 2011, blaming her supervisor for setting unreasonable quotas. She finally protested with her feet, quitting after about three months.

In one day, Zhang is required to paste 5,000 round dots by hand on a component for motherboards.

Yet even with the tedious work, Zhang says conditions at the Zhengzhou factory are better than at the previous Foxconn factories where she's worked. Her workday is about eight hours and she is given eight days off a month.

Foxconn pays her a base salary of 1,550 yuan a month, an increase from 1,320 yuan the year before, and extra for overtime duty. She lives four to a room in her dormitory, which she pays 150 yuan a month to rent and is Spartan with just two metal bunk beds and a desk.

Back at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen where Zhang worked in 2010, workers on the assembly line were banned from talking to one another and taking toilet breaks that exceed 10 minutes, according to Zhang.

"At that time, that made me think of the phrase: 'We're humans, we're not machines'," she said.

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