Angry Chinese Workers Resort To Direct Action

[Fire Walk With Me]

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Angry Chinese Workers Resort To Direct Action http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-angry-chinese-workers-resort-to-direct-action/ …


http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-angry-chinese-workers-resort-to-direct-action/

When Chinese workers have a grievance, they are increasingly taking dramatic and direct action.

As we've reported, an American executive at a Chinese factory has been prevented by workers from leaving the plant since last Friday. Chip Starnes, of Specialty Medical Supplies, says it's a misunderstanding following a decision to shut down part of his medical supply business and move some jobs to India where wages are lower.

He says workers erroneously believe he plans to lay them all off. As of Wednesday, he still wasn't allowed to leave the plant on the outskirts of Beijing.

snip

As the Wall Street Journal noted: "While bosses aren't held captive in their companies every day in China, Starnes is not the first one. In January this year, around 1,000 workers at Shanghai Shinmei Electric Company held Japanese and Chinese managers hostage in the factory, claiming that work rules for bathroom breaks and punishments for tardiness were too harsh."

(More at the link.)

[Skeeter Barnes]

1. Work Or Riot. One Or The Other.

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They don't trust the owner and I don't blame them. The government won't force this guy to pay them if he skips town so they take matters into their own hands. Good for them.

"Generally, a lot of worker protests are similar to this because of unpaid wages," he told NPR through a translator. "Bosses move factories without a heads-up to workers, and so workers are left unpaid."

Indeed, as the Journal says: "Numbers for such disputes are hard to come by, though an investigation by the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper published by the official Xinhua news agency, found that more than 400 bosses ran away from bankrupt factories in eastern China's Zhejiang province in 2008.

Most of those executives worked for foreign companies, meaning workers had virtually no hope of claiming months or even years of backpay owed to them."

http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-angry-chinese-workers-resort-to-direct-action/