If passed into law, the regulations could trigger a major overhaul of the collective consultation system that has prevailed in China over the last two decades. Photo by Travel Geographer.

Spurred by the Foxconn suicides, and aided by an exploding Internet, China's labor ranks are organizing for higher wages and more rights

Workers at Japanese electronics maker Omron's southern China factory have gone on strike, the latest disruption in the manufacturing hub over demands for better wages and working conditions.

As Foxconn plans to move more production inland, workers at its flagship facility in Shenzhen face an uncertain future. Photograph of Shenzhen by Nako

Zhang Liwen found out that she was about to go on strike over a breakfast of steamed buns and congee rice porridge at her factory dormitory. Fifteen minutes later, she was taking part in industrial action for the first time in her life.

abour rights campaigners have warned that more industrial discontent is likely in China despite a round of minimum wage increases that took effect yesterday. The minimum pay rates in at least nine provinces and cities were increased, in some cases by as much as a third, after a series of strikes over pay at manufacturing plants.

When workers at a Honda transmission plant in China went on strike for higher wages last month, they touched off a domino effect of high-profile labor disputes. As the strikes, many of them at foreign-owned plants, rippled through China's southern manufacturing heartland, the government — usually quick to crush mass protests of any kind — did not step in, but allowed them to spread.

As Honda workers in Guangdong savour their pay rises gained through strategy and persistence, strikes at Toyota supplier factories in Tianjin last week appeared much less organised and crumbled at the early intervention of police and officials. From the workers' perspectives, Guangdong and Tianjin could not be more different in terms of the way the strikes were handled and their effectiveness. Even within the same company, strikes at Toyota parts suppliers in the southern manufacturing hub this week led to a three-day production halt at Guangqi Toyota, while similar strikes in the northeastern municipality held out only long enough to delay production at FAW Toyota by one day.

City governments across China need to repay the debt owed to the migrant workers who have generated their tax revenues for so long, says prominent workers’ rights advocate Han Dongfang