Video Editor

Chapter 2650

Because of the recent surge of negative news surrounding Tianchao Group, CCTV has also begun to pay attention to it.

CCTV's Finance Channel and News Channel jointly formed a production team, led by a senior producer, and submitted an interview request to the public relations department of Tianchao Group a week in advance.

The application letter was written in a very formal manner, stating that it hoped to conduct on-site filming and interviews in various enterprises under the Tianchao Group to fully understand the Tianchao Group's employment system, employee benefits and corporate culture, and to produce a special documentary to objectively present the true face of the Tianchao Group, which is currently at the center of public opinion.

When Li Hui took the application letter to Suning's office, he was actually a little uneasy.

He didn't know if his boss would reject him outright again, just like he had with other media outlets.

At that moment, Suning was looking at the progress report on the assimilation of the acquired Japanese technology submitted by the Tianchao Science and Technology Research Institute. He took the application letter, glanced at it, and said, "Let them take pictures as they please, don't stop them."

Li Hui paused for a moment, then confirmed, "President Su, CCTV's film crew goes into the workshops, the canteen, and the dormitories. What if they film something they shouldn't..."

Su Ning looked up at him, put the application form back on the table, and said, "Is there anything we shouldn't film? The production line, the canteen, the dormitory, and the technical school are all open and transparent. Let them film every part, and let them ask any questions they want."

"Understood." Li Hui nodded.

“Tell the heads of all subsidiaries that once the CCTV crew arrives, let them watch whatever they want, ask whomever they want, but no rehearsals in advance, and no stooges.” Su Ning’s tone left no room for negotiation. “Anyone who engages in formalism will be held accountable.”

"Understood." Li Hui turned and left the office.

……

Soon, the CCTV crew carried their equipment into the gate of the Shunyi factory.

They originally planned to shoot only two hours of footage, take a quick tour, film a few panoramic views of the workshops, interview one or two managers, and then put together a program to complete their task.

But once inside, they realized they were completely wrong.

There were just too many things to film, and we didn't even finish walking through the final assembly workshop in two hours.

In the end, they stayed inside for a whole day, filming from dawn till dusk.

The production team's director kept adding scenes to the shooting schedule, and eventually the cameraman ran out of spare batteries, so he had his assistant run back to the interview vehicle to get more.

What first captivated the film crew was the employee welfare notice board next to the final assembly workshop.

It was a whole wall of glass display cases, and instead of slogans and mottos, they were covered with densely packed tables and numbers:

Basic salary, performance bonus, contribution ratios for the five social insurances and one housing fund, application conditions and allocation lists for welfare housing, reimbursement standards for children's school enrollment subsidies, and reimbursement limits for major medical expenses subsidies are all followed by specific amounts and calculation formulas.

The CCTV reporter with glasses stood in front of the notice board for a long time, taking notes rapidly in her notebook as she looked at it.

Halfway through her note-taking, the female reporter stopped and turned to ask the accompanying HR manager, "Children's school subsidies, covering everything from kindergarten to high school? And there are special scholarships for universities?"

The head of the human resources department nodded as if it were commonplace and said, "Tuition and miscellaneous fees for kindergarten and compulsory education are fully reimbursed, and high school tuition and fees are reimbursed proportionally. For employees' children who are admitted to university, Tianchao Group has a special scholarship that covers tuition and basic living expenses. Last year, the group's total expenditure on this was more than 20 million yuan."

The female reporter paused for two seconds before asking, "What do you mean by 'no upper limit' in the section on serious illness medical subsidies?"

Instead of providing a direct explanation, the head of the human resources department opened the cabinet door under the notice board and took out a stack of bound expense reimbursement cases. Each page had photocopies of the expense reimbursement form and diagnosis certificate attached, and some pages even included photos of employees after their recovery.

He flipped to the top book, pointed to a case, and said, "Wang Deyou, an old welder in the stamping workshop of the Shunyi factory, was diagnosed with valvular heart disease two years ago and needed to have valve replacement surgery. From preoperative examinations to surgery to postoperative rehabilitation, it cost a total of over 100,000 yuan. Medical insurance covered most of it, and Tianchao Group covered the remaining out-of-pocket expenses. He is still working in the stamping workshop now and has recovered very well."

The female reporter carefully read through that case, then flipped through the next few pages and discovered that there were many similar cases...

For cancer surgeries, emergency car accident care, and long-term medication for rare diseases, every reimbursement amount is clearly recorded.

The female reporter and the filming crew were shocked; such benefits were truly substantial.

……

Next, the film crew filmed workers eating lunch in the canteen.

The canteen is very large and can accommodate thousands of people at the same time. There are rows of windows serving Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Northeastern cuisine, and there is also a special noodle window.

The workers lined up to get their meals, all wearing identical Tianchao Auto work uniforms. Some had just come off the production line, their uniforms still covered in welding slag and oil stains.

The reporter did not ask the accompanying staff to arrange interviewees, but instead took a boxed lunch and randomly sat down at a table.

At the same table were several young assembly workers.

The female reporter looked at a young worker who looked to be in his early twenties and asked, "Comrade, how much do you make a month?"

The young worker was eating when he heard this. He looked up at the reporter, then at the camera, and put down his chopsticks a little embarrassedly. He scratched his head and said, "My basic salary plus performance bonus, after deducting social insurance and housing fund, is more than 4,000 yuan. There is also a year-end bonus. Last year, I received four months' salary."

Then he added, "The senior workers in the workshop who do a good job earn much more than me. Our section chief received six months' worth of bonuses last year."

The reporter asked again, "Where is your hometown?"

"I'm from a rural area in Dazhou, Sichuan," the young worker said. "I graduated from a technical school in China last year and was assigned to a factory in Shunyi. I studied welding."

Where do you live now?

The worker pointed to a row of six-story red brick buildings not far from the window. "These are company-allocated apartments. We got married last year and were allocated a two-bedroom apartment, over 70 square meters. The rent is deducted symbolically from our salaries each month; it's basically just for utilities and property management fees. My wife works in sales at Mingju Real Estate, so our combined salaries are very stable."

The reporter pressed further, "Can you support your family with your current job?"

The young worker put down his chopsticks and started calculating on his fingers: "My salary alone is enough to support my wife, my parents, and my newborn baby. My wife's salary is almost all saved. The company covers all the expenses for my wife's childbirth... From prenatal checkups to hospitalization to the C-section, I only paid for the taxi fare. The company will subsidize the child's future tuition, and the child will be assigned to the Tianchao Group's employee kindergarten based on the designated area, with all fees waived."

"..." The reporter looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I wouldn't dare say I'm rich or famous," the young worker said. "But my parents farmed all their lives in our hometown. They were sick but didn't dare go to the hospital, just toughed it out. Now I work for Tianchao Auto. When I went back to my hometown for the Spring Festival, I brought my dad to Beijing. The company paid for a full checkup at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and they found out he had a heart problem. They also arranged for a specialist consultation. My mom cried and told me, 'Your boss saved your dad's life.' I told her, 'Your son found a good job.' She wiped away her tears and said, 'This isn't a good job; this is a real secure job.'"

The reporter then asked, "Do you think you can stay at Tianchao Auto forever?" The young worker nodded without hesitation, "As long as I don't do anything reckless, the company won't fire me. There's a saying posted at the entrance of our workshop... Tianchao Group doesn't promise a guaranteed job, but it promises to give every hard-working person the opportunity to have one. My mentor has been working here for five years, and now he's a section chief, his salary has doubled, and he even joined the Party last year. He says he's dedicated his life to Tianchao Auto."

"Tianchao Group has always prioritized hiring employees with rural household registration. Is this fair to young people with urban household registration?"

"What's unfair about this! Those parents with capable and stable jobs don't even look down on this kind of work. They should be striving to go to university. They've been exposed to quality education since childhood, and their lives are incomparable to those of us from rural areas. If someone really doesn't do well in school and can't get into university, that's just their personal problem, and their parents are capable of arranging jobs for them. But it's different for us rural kids. Most of our parents don't have stable jobs and can only make a living by farming. They can't help their children much, and the level of education we rural kids receive is limited. Tianchao Group is willing to give us rural kids a chance to change our fate. I think that's the most important fairness, justice, and fairness."

"The slogan of Tianchao Group is common development. Do you think it can achieve this goal?"

"Of course, no problem! In the past, we could only go to the city to work or stay in our hometown to farm, earning the lowest wages and without any benefits. When we got older, we had to go back to farm, and our children had to repeat our tragic lives. So for us ordinary people, life is getting better and better now."

"..."

……

The film crew followed the school bus of Tianchao Technical School to the technical school campus located on the edge of Shunyi District.

The gray teaching buildings are not tall but sturdy, with the four characters "Learning by Doing" painted on the walls.

Next to the playground is a row of training workshops. Through the glass walls of the workshops, you can see that they are filled with engine benches, welding machines, CNC machine tools and simulated production lines. The roar of the machines can be heard even through the glass.

Just as the CCTV cameras were being set up, a group of new trainees were having a welding class in the training workshop.

The trainees wore the same uniform of the Tianchao Technical School. The dark blue fabric was sturdy and dirt-resistant, and the four small characters "Tianchao Technical School" were embroidered on the left chest.

Wearing automatic light-changing masks, they bent over and practiced flat and vertical welding on steel plates. The moment the welding rod touched the steel plate, dense sparks flew out, and the air was filled with the unique smell of burning metal.

A young female trainee took off her mask, revealing a round face wet with sweat, with red marks on her forehead from the mask, and her hair stuck to her temples with sweat.

A CCTV reporter handed her the microphone and asked, "Young lady, how old are you?"

The female trainee wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve and said frankly, "I'm not young anymore, I just turned eighteen this year. My hometown is Xinyang, Henan. My family grows rice. After graduating from junior high school, I helped with the farm for two years. This year, the local school contacted us and helped us get jobs at Tianchao Group. Three people from my village came with me in the same batch, and the other two are in the CNC class next door."

The reporter asked her, "Why didn't you go to high school?"

The female trainee put her mask aside and said calmly, "I have a younger brother in school. My parents struggle to support one, let alone two. I originally planned to go to the south to work, but the principal said that vocational schools in China have nationally recognized degrees, tuition is free, room and board are provided, and graduates are guaranteed jobs. So I told my dad to let me try. At first, my dad was worried that I would be scammed, so he went to the county education bureau to inquire and confirmed that it was true before letting me go."

The training instructor next to him quickly added, "More than 80% of the trainees in this batch are from rural areas, and less than a third have parents with formal jobs. Many of the children had never even touched a vernier caliper when they first came, but after six months they can independently complete welding tasks of medium difficulty."

"Do you all recruit directly from local schools?"

"Yes! Local schools understand the specific circumstances of students, and Tianchao Group will give priority to hiring those from families with financial difficulties who are unable to continue their education."

In the classroom for academic subjects, several students who had just finished lunch were hunched over their desks doing basic electrical engineering exercises.

The textbook was worn out, with the corners of the pages curled and frayed, but the notes were neatly written, with dense annotations on every circuit diagram, and different colored pen marks appearing alternately.

Red indicates key points, blue indicates supplementary information, and black indicates practice questions.

The reporter asked them, "Do you have any plans to go to university?"

A bespectacled boy looked up and explained, “I want to take the exam. The teacher said that after graduating from vocational school, I can directly take the college entrance exam, or I can work and study at night school. Anyway, it’s all part of the education system run by Tianchao Group. After passing the college entrance exam, the group will reimburse the tuition and provide a basic salary. One of my seniors from the previous year passed the exam for the mechanical engineering college program jointly run by Tianchao Automotive Research Institute and Beijing University of Technology, and he’s now an assistant engineer in the engine laboratory.”

Another boy next to him chimed in, "I plan to work for two years before taking the exam, to gain some practical experience in the workshop first. Just knowing how to pass exams but not how to work won't get you anywhere in Tianchao Group. Our teacher said that the biggest advantage of students from Tianchao Technical School is that they can start working right away without needing a mentor to teach them from scratch."

The reporter then asked, "After graduating from a technical school in China, where will you be assigned?"

The bespectacled boy put down his pen. "Internship positions are assigned. Those with good vocational school grades choose their own, while those with poor grades are assigned. Some get to work on the Tianchao automobile production line, while others go to Kunyu Shipping to work on ships. The overseas allowance is high, but it's hard work, with half the year spent at sea. Tencent and Alibaba also recruit from vocational schools every year, mainly for customer service and basic operations and maintenance. They require fast typing speed and standard Mandarin. If you're lucky, you can get assigned to the Dongqu Chunlai Hotel, where the salary is high and the environment is good. However, the interview also assesses service etiquette and basic English speaking skills, and I doubt my speaking level is up to par."

As the reporter was leaving, he encountered a person who was hunched over filling out an application form in the corridor of the teaching building.

When the reporter approached him and asked, he learned that the man was a college graduate from the mechanical engineering department of a certain university, and he was here waiting for a second job assignment.

"After I entered China, I had to attend vocational school for on-the-job training. What I learned in university was too disconnected from production practice, and my practical skills were not up to par. The machine tools used in university were old products from the 1960s, while the machine tools used in China's automobile industry are the most advanced CNC equipment in the world. From self-testing upon startup to precision calibration to routine maintenance, I had to relearn every process. As a university graduate, I had to go back to vocational school to relearn everything after graduation. I was afraid my classmates would laugh at me if I told them."

The reporter countered, "Do you feel wronged?"

He thought for a moment and said seriously, "At first I felt really wronged. My classmate who didn't get into university now runs a repair shop in the county town and makes a good living without having to go back to school. I went to university for three years and now I have to sit in the same classroom as junior high students to learn the basics of welding. It's really embarrassing."

"And then?" the reporter asked.

"Later I came to terms with it. Universities teach theory, while vocational schools teach practical skills. I learned mechanical principles in university, but I couldn't even operate a CNC machine properly, let alone control the machining accuracy. Once I got through this hurdle, I could be reassigned after obtaining my work permit."

……

The program caused a sensation the night it aired.

The program filmed everything from the employee benefits bulletin board to the canteen, the dormitory, and the technical school training workshop, a documentary that lasted a full hour and a half.

On the television screen, a migrant worker from Sichuan was counting on his fingers to tell the reporter how he supported his family of five on his own; a girl from Henan was taking off her welding mask and wiping her sweat with her sleeve; and a college graduate was bending over in the training workshop, learning the basics of welding with a junior high school student.

After the program aired, viewers from all over the country flooded the TV station's hotline with calls.

The operators, working in three shifts, are still overwhelmed with calls. On the other end of the line are recent graduates looking for jobs and farmers worrying about their children's future.

They all asked the same question...

"Is Tianchao Group still hiring? How do I apply?"

...(End of this chapter)