Faced with layoffs and wage cuts as falling demand in the West hits the country’s vast manufacturing sector, the workers who have powered China’s breakneck growth are refusing to go quietly.
Over the past month, thousands of factory workers in China’s southern manufacturing heartlands have wrested concessions from employers facing shrinking exports and rising costs in a wave of labor unrest.
In Shenzhen, workers recently gathered at the office of labor rights organization Little Bird to debate a possible strike at a factory that employs them to demand better overtime pay and compensation.
“We have never experienced this situation. We want to learn the different methods for protecting our rights,” said Ran Lin, 30, who spends 11 hours a day, six days a week testing thousands of circuit boards on an assembly line.
Ran, who supplements his 2,000 yuan (US$315) monthly wage by working overtime at the Hong Kong-invested Dongguan Yong Jie Electronics Co Ltd factory, said the company had reduced perks such as meals and housing, even as the cost of living rose.
“We made contributions to economic development. We gave so much to the company. I hope they can give us suitable compensation,” Ran said.
As a manufacturing slowdown forces employers to cut back on benefits and lay off staff, workers are reaching out to grassroots groups, such as Little Bird, and even -government-linked agencies that offer legal advice and address complaints.
“Workers’ recognition of protecting their rights has increased. They have learned to unify,” Little Bird founder Wei Wei said.
Wei said the dense concentration of factories in China’s Guangdong Province had helped to spread news of the strikes, which emboldened workers.
Thousands of workers in Guangdong and elsewhere downed tools last month as factories hit by slowing demand in the US and Europe passed the pressure of rising costs and falling orders on to staff.
China’s manufacturing activity contracted last month for the first time in 33 months, as the export-led economic growth moderated to 9.1 percent in the third quarter from 9.5 percent in the previous quarter due to falling demand.
The Chinese Communist Party fears an independent labor movement could threaten its grip on power, so it only allows only one, government-linked trade union.
However, activists say government officials have been more sympathetic to individual grievances against factories, especially those funded by foreign firms or investors from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
“The government is afraid of simmering grievances. They don’t want workers to go on the streets or to demand trade unions,” said Debby Chan of Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour.
Authorities have addressed concerns of workers by giving more teeth to a revised labor contract law, consulting industry groups and allowing courts to handle disputes.
And in an apparent response to recent unrest, authorities in Shenzhen recently announced plans to hike the minimum wage by 14 percent to 1,500 yuan per month from January, following a 20 percent rise in April.
Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesperson for the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, said some of the recent action showed a new level of sophistication.
He cited the example of workers at five PepsiCo bottling plants across the country who protested on the same day after the US beverage giant sold its plants in China.
“That is a level of organization that we’ve not really seen before, in terms of coordination of factories in different parts of China,” Crothall said.
In strikes last year against Japanese companies, workers cloaked their protests in anti-Japanese rhetoric to make them more acceptable to the government.
“They know it’s a motivating tool to get people on their side. Chinese workers are quite politically savvy,” Crothall added.
At a Shenzhen factory owned by Hong Kong women’s underwear maker Top Form International, last month hundreds of workers refused to return to their sewing machines for several days until management paid every worker 1,000 yuan.
“They swear at us. They never give us overtime. Why should we work?” one of the strikers said outside the aging green factory building.
Another two-week strike last month by nearly 1,000 workers, which paralyzed a Shenzhen factory invested by Japanese watchmaker Citizen Watch Co, revolved around rest breaks.
Managers made employees work additional time without pay to make up for breaks, which lasted 15 minutes every two hours, workers said. They returned after talks negotiated 70 percent pay for the rest periods.
Deng Shiping, who joined a strike of thousands against a -Taiwan-invested electronics factory last year, said organizing was made easier since everyone lived together in dormitories — a typical arrangement for migrant workers.
Workers chose representatives to inform other shifts and departments about the planned strike.
“There was no leader, it was us — the workers — all together,” he said.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
TAIWAN VALUE CHAIN: Foxtron is to fully own Luxgen following the transaction and it plans to launch a new electric model, the Foxtron Bria, in Taiwan next year Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) yesterday said that its board of directors approved the disposal of its electric vehicle (EV) unit, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), to Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co (鴻華先進) for NT$787.6 million (US$24.98 million). Foxtron, a half-half joint venture between Yulon affiliate Hua-Chuang Automobile Information Technical Center Co (華創車電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), expects to wrap up the deal in the first quarter of next year. Foxtron would fully own Luxgen following the transaction, including five car distributing companies, outlets and all employees. The deal is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission, Foxtron said. “Foxtron will be
RSS