Days after Honda reached an accord with striking workers at a parts plant in Foshan, another strike has broken out at another plant affiliated with the auto maker in the same city. From the New York Times:
Natsuno Asanuma, a Honda spokeswoman based in Tokyo, said workers went on strike Monday morning at the parts factory in Foshan, Guangdong Province, a joint venture between Honda subsidiary Yutaka Giken and Taiwan Fui. She refused to give details on any demands made by the employees.
The factory supplies exhaust parts for Guangqi Honda, a joint car assembly venture between Honda and Guangzhou Automobile of China, Ms. Asanuma said. Production for Guangqi Honda hasn’t been affected so far, she said.
“The employees at the Foshan plant are continuing to strike,” Ms. Asanuma said. “There has been no effect on production at Guangqi Honda, but if the strike continues, that could change. We are keeping a close eye on the situation.”
See also reports from the Wall Street Journal and Business Week.
Read more about the previous strike at the Honda parts factory and about dissatisfaction among the new generation of workers in China, via CDT.
Update: See “Labour strife rolls across China” from the Toronto Star:
Last week much of the country’s attention focused on a strike at a Japanese-owned Honda factory in southern China — for which Chinese authorities allowed rare and open reporting. Workers there won a 24 per cent pay hike.
Authorities also allowed reporting on the Taiwanese-owned Foxconn electronic assembly plant, where a scourge of suicides by workers corralled in regimented factories rocked the nation.
Foxconn responded with a 30 per cent wage increase – and announced a further 70 per cent Monday.
But few in China heard about the clash in Pingdingshan — or more than 15 other strikes that spilled into the streets of China in May.
While it was fine for Chinese media to report on strikes at large, foreign-owned factories — the government suppressed news about worker actions at other, Chinese-owned and operated plants. It didn’t want the contagion to spread to other pools of cheap labour across China.
And few are as cheap as those in Pingdingshan.
And from the New York Times “With Strikes, China’s Workers Seem to Gain Power,” while the Huffington Post has published a slideshow titled, “Why The END Of Cheap Chinese Labor Is Near.”
