The sixth of July, a Monday.

Nine o'clock every Monday morning was when the Youwei garment factory held its weekly meeting.

Ordinarily Pei Youwei chaired it, and the people attending were basically the Taobao team, plus Factory Manager Cao and the two workshop supervisors.

Today was different. Today a great many of the workers from downstairs had been called up as well, and another chair had been added at the very front beside Pei Youwei's. Everyone knew whose chair it was, since the notice had gone up at the factory entrance the day before.

When Xu Ye came into the meeting room it was a din inside. He didn't say anything about it — he simply sat down beside Pei Youwei as though it were the most natural thing, and only once he was seated did the staff gradually quiet down.

Before the meeting began, Pei Youwei brought up Xu Ye's appointment as general manager once again, and then handed the running of the meeting straight over to him.

Pei Youwei was very curious about how Xu Ye was going to deal with Factory Manager Cao's application for a raise.

What she didn't know, though, was that Xu Ye had no intention of solving only that one thing today. In a month he would be going back to Shanghai, and if he only solved the factory's current problems on the surface, then new ones would appear the moment he left — and by then Pei Youwei, a woman on her own, certainly wouldn't be able to solve them.

So the problem had to be solved at the root.

Xu Ye said with a smile, "There are two things I mainly want to talk about today, and both of them concern every one of you here, which is why everybody has been called up."

He came straight out with it. "Those two things are reform of the factory's system and the question of pay and benefits. I'll take them together. As you all know, our factory was only set up at the start of this year. The scale was small to…