Guangdong

Two days, two strikes in the Pearl River Delta

Emboldened by the successful strike of their colleagues at Honda’s transmission plant, about 250 workers at the company’s exhaust plant in Foshan went out on strike Monday morning (7 June) demanding higher wages and overtime payments. This followed an almost identical strike action at Taiwanese-owned Merry Electronics (美律电子有限公司) in Shenzhen’s Bao’an district, on Sunday morning.

SCMP: Strike forces Honda to halt China factories

A 10-day-old strike at a key Honda component factory outside Guangzhou has forced Japan's No 2 carmaker to suspend production in China, the world's largest and fastest-growing car market.

In These Times: China’s Labor Landscape. Debating Currency, Demanding Change

Last month, American workers got data confirming their worst fears: An Economic Policy Institute analysis revealed that China has sucked up hundreds of thousands of jobs that used to belong to the domestic economy. These reports coincide with growing political and economic tensions over the Chinese government's currency policies.

Financial Times: China’s exports powerhouse lifts wages

Guangdong, the province that produces about a third of China’s exports, on Thursday announced plans to raise its minimum wage more than 20 per cent, fuelling inflation fears and dealing a blow to manufacturers emerging from the global credit crisis. The province, which borders Hong Kong and forms part of the manufacturing powerhouse known as the Pearl River Delta in southern China, was not the first to introduce a mandatory wage rise this year, but the increase was sharply higher than the 13 per cent introduced by Jiangsu province last month.

Reuters: South China firms see investment dip, wages rise

Foreign investment in south China is expected to fall 4.9 percent this year, with firms facing the challenge of labour shortages and rising wages, according to a survey by the region's American business chamber.

AFP: China's exporters fret over labour shortage

Huada Electrical Appliances has piles of orders from abroad -- a welcome sign that China's exports are bouncing back after the global economic crisis. But the television and computer components company has just one-fifth of the 300 people it needs to work the assembly line to fill those orders by the end of June. "Our hair is turning grey because of the anxiety," a company executive, who would only give her surname Wu, told AFP, explaining that the firm was recruiting everywhere -- on pavements, near food markets and with job agencies.

SCMP: Tables turn for migrant workers

In the old days Guangdong migrant workers like Liu Xiaorong would have been treated as factory fodder, given the bare minimum in wages and easily replaced if they complained. The tables have turned with an acute labour shortage in the so-called "factory of the world" meaning workers like Liu now call the shots. Even the lure of three times the normal pay and perks such as air conditioning, basketball courts and television is not enough to get workers to sign up.

Radio Free Asia: Calls Grow for Migrant Rights

Buoyed by a wave of new orders, Chinese companies are scrambling to recruit manual laborers, as pressure mounts on the country's lawmakers to boost the rights of China's millions of migrant workers.

New York Times: Defying Global Slump, China Has Labor Shortage

Just a year after laying off millions of factory workers, China is facing an increasingly acute labor shortage. As American workers struggle with near double-digit unemployment, unskilled factory workers here in China’s industrial heartland are being offered signing bonuses. Factory wages have risen as much as 20 percent in recent months.

Financial Times: Chinese province raises wages 13%

A decision by the province that is China’s second-biggest exporter to raise minimum wage rates has heightened expectations that other provinces and cities will soon follow, just as the central government’s attention is shifting from economic stimulus to rising inflation. Eastern Jiangsu province, which exports more than Brazil and South Africa combined, raised its monthly minimum wage rate 13 per cent to Rmb960 ($140) last week. It was the first time the rate had been adjusted in two years.

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