Honda Motor Co said yesterday that work would resume today at two car assembly plants in southern China that were paralyzed by a strike at a parts supplier.
Operations at the two joint-venture plants with Guangzhou Automotive Group (廣州汽車集團) were not affected by a strike at another parts supplier that began on Wednesday and is still unresolved, Honda said in a faxed statement.
Honda has suffered three strikes in China in less than a month.
An earlier one, which ended last week, lasted two weeks and forced the company to temporarily halt operations at all four of its China car assembly plants.
While strikes and other labor protests are common in China, they rarely receive much attention in the state-controlled media. Honda’s woes come as China reassesses the ability of its state-affiliated labor unions — the only ones allowed — to handle growing discontent among young workers.
Workers at Foshan Fengfu Autoparts Co (佛山豐富汽配), a joint venture between Honda subsidiary Yutaka Giken Co and a Taiwanese partner, walked off the job earlier this week, seeking pay raises, just days after Honda settled the two-week strike at a wholly owned parts supplier.
Honda would not provide details on the agreement reached with the workers.
The Honda strikes followed an outcry over 11 suicides and three suicide attempts — mostly by jumping off tall buildings — at Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), a contract manufacturer in China of iPhones and other name-brand electronics.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Brother Industries Ltd said a weeklong strike that had stalled production at an industrial sewing machine factory in Xi’an had ended, with the workers back on the job.
The human resources manager, who gave only her surname, Ma, refused to give details about wages or the agreement that was reached.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
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