China: Workers Stage Strikes for Better Pay, Working Conditions

In the factory town of Pingdingshan, China workers at the textile factory have staged a strike. The Pingdingshan Cotton Textile Company is the latest in a rash of labour walkouts in the People's Republic.

About 5 500 workers have been on strike at the Pingdingshan factory for 20 days facing a show of force by the police. Workers claim that people have been beaten and disappeared.

"A third woman leaned into ever-growing circle of people keen to vent to a visiting journalist. “Today they beat people,” she said. “They beat people in plain daylight! They took away eight workers. The more they resisted — the more they beat them!”The Star

The spark that set off the strike was the news that for workers who have earned a pension, they would receive only the equivalent of $16 per month. Most workers at the factory earn about $0.65 per hour and that may be reduced by arbitrary fines. Now the workers want working conditions addressed as well. Heat in the factory reaches over 40 C. and cotton fibres abound in the air.

While news of labour unrest in China is usually given no publicity, we have seen the well publicized Foxconn factory where multiple suicides occurred and the Japanese owned Honda factory struck by workers. Workers are seeing factory owners become wealthy while they are trading their health and years for a bleak future.

Labour laws in China are quite different from those in the Western world. Labour unions which are legal may not represent workers with the same enthusiasm as western ones.