Chapter 12: Ten Mile Cannon City
"And that's it..." Liu Biao pondered for a moment, then continued, "This year I plan to increase the rewards for this military-to-civilian technology program. Anyone who can provide a new product technology program and wins first place in the factory-wide public evaluation will be rewarded 800 yuan in cash by the factory, and will be given priority in being selected as this year's model worker or advanced worker!"

"Forehead."

Hearing this, several workshop leaders present showed surprised expressions.

There is no doubt that the reward plan proposed by Factory Director Liu Biao for this technological transformation far exceeded everyone's expectations.

You know, this kind of military-to-civilian technical transformation activity started a few years ago, but the reward program is nothing more than a few dozen yuan in bonuses, a certificate, and public praise at the factory meeting. Apart from that, there are not many material rewards.

In fact, this is a very normal thing. After all, in that era, state-owned enterprises mainly relied on honorary rewards. For workers at that time, if they could be praised by their leaders, it was definitely a very honorable and happy thing. The material rewards were basically enamel cups, towels, soaps and the like, and cash was rare.

But now, Liu Biao has actually increased the bonus amount directly to 800 yuan, which is a very high reward. You know, nowadays a 14-inch black and white TV costs less than 500 yuan!
As for the selection of model workers and advanced workers, that is also a very high reward. According to the regulations of Shengli Machinery Factory, the factory's model workers can have their wages upgraded every year, with a one-level (position) salary, and their retirement pension ratio increased by 1%, with a cap of 8%.

From this we can see that Liu Biao really attaches great importance to this military-to-civilian technology solicitation, and he really wants to greatly mobilize the enthusiasm of the factory workers to participate.

"Bang bang bang!"

After a few knocks, the office door was pushed open and Secretary Wang appeared at the door of the office.

"We're in a meeting..." When Liu Biao saw Secretary Wang suddenly push the door open, a look of displeasure flashed across his face.

"Director, this is the person you specifically instructed to do, Xu Qiang, the son of Xu Zhenguo who died in the line of duty some time ago. He came to report to the factory today..." Secretary Wang observed Liu Biao's expression and immediately stepped forward and whispered to him.

"Ah." Liu Biao's expression relaxed immediately after hearing that. He quickly stood up and said to Xu Qiang in a gentle tone, "Xiao Xu, find a chair and sit down."

Seeing this, Secretary Wang immediately moved a stool from the side and motioned Xu Qiang to sit down.

"Hello, Director Liu." Xu Qiang was somewhat surprised to see Liu Biao being so polite to him, because through the memories of his previous life, he had heard his father say that Director Liu Biao had a very strong style. He served as both the factory director and the party branch secretary in the factory. He was a man who had the final say and treated his subordinates very seriously during normal work.

"Xiao Xu, I am deeply saddened by your father's accidental death. When the factory was first established, your father also made contributions to the factory and was considered one of the veteran employees of our factory. I am also partly responsible for this accident. The weather was indeed bad at the time, but the delivery date was too tight, and the superiors issued an order..."

"This is not your fault, Director Liu. If you have anyone to blame, you can only blame God. You don't need to blame yourself." Xu Qiang said quickly.

"Your father is an excellent worker, hard-working and progressive. He has previously submitted an application to join the Party. I hope you can inherit your father's excellent work style and ideological awareness and do your job conscientiously."

"Understood, I will."

"Your father worked in a workshop before. Considering that you have no work experience, your job will be arranged separately. I wonder what your opinion is? Or what kind of job do you want to do?" Liu Biao asked.

"I was more interested in chemistry when I was in school. Does our factory have a chemical workshop?" Xu Qiang asked almost without thinking.

Since he came to work in this factory, Xu Qiang naturally had to choose a job that matched his major.

"You want to go to the chemical workshop?"

"Yes."

"Hahaha."

As soon as Xu Qiang finished speaking, several workshop leaders around him laughed. It turned out that Shengli Machinery Factory did have a chemical workshop, which was relatively small in scale and mainly produced some engineering explosives to complete the tasks assigned by the superiors. The entire chemical workshop, including worker management and logistics, had only more than 300 people.

However, compared to other workshops, the chemical workshop has "extra benefits", which is an extra pound of pork belly every month. In fact, this is equivalent to labor insurance. Although it is only an extra pound of pork belly, for the regular employees of the factory, they don't think much of this benefit, but for the rotation workers from the village, the temptation is still quite large.

Therefore, in this workshop, among the more than 200 people on the front line, more than half are rotation workers, and most of them come to work in the chemical workshop just for the extra pound of meat every month.

"Okay, that's no problem." Liu Biao smiled and turned to a short and strong middle-aged man sitting on the other side and said, "Captain Sun, Xiao Xu will work in your workshop from now on. You can take him to the finance department to handle the formalities and find a mentor to help him. As for accommodation, he can stay in the dormitory where his father used to live."

This Captain Sun is the director of the chemical workshop. His real name is Sun Yulin, and he is also one of the “18 heroes” who founded the Shengli Machinery Factory.

The so-called "Eighteen Heroes" are actually the first batch of veteran employees who came here to open up new territories when Victory Machinery Factory was first established. The conditions when the factory was built were very poor. These eighteen people overcame numerous difficulties and built a prototype of the factory. Now they have basically entered the factory's management positions.

"Okay." The man next to him nodded.

"Xiao Xu, then you should go through the formalities with Captain Sun first. If you have any difficulties in work or life in the future, you can look for Captain Sun. If he is not here, you can also look for me directly. In short, you must work hard. The factory will not treat you unfairly!"

"Thank you, Director Liu!" Xu Qiang thanked him gratefully.

The next moment, Liu Biao waved his hand, and Sun Yulin led Xu Qiang out of the office.

The two first went to the finance department to complete the entry procedures. After walking out of the office building, they went straight to the chemical workshop.

Shengli Machinery Factory is known as the "Ten-Li Cannon City". The entire factory is built in a winding ravine, and most of the production workshops are built against the mountain. One workshop is completely built in a cave, and workshops two and three are on open flat ground not far away. As for the chemical workshop that Xu Qiang is about to go to, it is workshop four, which is at the tail of the "long dragon" of the factory.

As a workshop mainly responsible for the production of No. 2 rock ammonium nitrate explosives, the workshop is not large and is relatively far from the living area for safety reasons. Workers have to ride for about ten minutes to get to work every day.

After spending nearly a morning, Xu Qiang finally got a general understanding of the situation in the chemical workshop and the surrounding factory area.

In fact, in the early years, this was an industrial and agricultural synthetic factory, known as the Minsheng Fertilizer Factory. It mainly produced ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It was not until the mid-1970s that it merged with the Guangming Machinery Factory and became a workshop of the factory.

The chemical workshop has its own layout, divided into living area, office area and production area. It stretches for several kilometers from the living area to the production area, and there are production brigades of local people in between. This was called "industrial village" at the time.

After turning from the highway into the factory's dedicated road, there are the staff and family dormitories, followed by the office area and production area. The office area has offices, organization department, political work department, labor and wages department, finance department, technology department, production planning department, logistics department, security department, mobility department, supply and marketing and transportation department, infrastructure department and other management departments, as well as a hospital, canteen, kindergarten, guesthouse, radio station, and telephone exchange.

There are also "May 7th" combat schools organized by family members (mainly doing some auxiliary work around the factory, and engaging in some side jobs to serve the employees).

As for the production workshop here, this may be the most "shabby" chemical workshop Xu Qiang has ever seen. The scale of the entire workshop is very small, but it is small but complete. Commonly used chemical equipment such as condensation towers, steam compressors, reactors, flash reactors and heat exchangers are installed on both sides of the workshop. On the other side of the factory building, there is also a material conveyor belt where several workers are loading materials.

Due to backward equipment, the annual ammonium nitrate production here is very small, less than 2000 tons. Compared with large factories in later generations that produce tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons, this output is indeed not worth mentioning, but at that time, this was an important military task.

Shengli Machinery Factory has several living areas, each of which has its own code name, such as the 24th Floor, Grand View Garden, Great World, Xia Liu, and Jinshui Bridge.

The single dormitory where Xu Qiang was assigned was located in Xialiu, which could be said to be the oldest living area in the entire Shengli Machinery Factory. The entire living area consisted of three rows of two-story buildings, most of which were occupied by rotation workers like Xu Qiang. It was far from the center of the factory, but very close to Xu Qiang's village.

Under the guidance of Sun Yulin, Xu Qiang finally saw his single dormitory, a small house of only ten square meters located next to the toilet on the floor.

(End of this chapter)