Verified

Feihuang Mobile Phone Factory Workers Strike in Shenzhen

18:13 Aug 22 2007 Shenzhen, He Ping Road, Luohu district, 人民南 Renminnan, Shenzhen City, Guangdong, People's Republic of China

Description
From Sosol.com and Sleepyleo's blog:

深圳手机组装工厂5000多名工人集体罢工

该工厂的工人称,公司上月开始,要求工人每小时组装手机充电器的数量由每小时480个增到570个,工人完成不了,加班也要做完,否则不给底薪。

飞蝗电子的主要产品为手机充电器据香港《文汇报》报道,深圳一家德国手机零配件公司的五千多名员工不满公司延长工时、变相降低工资,连续两日发起集体罢工,并要求与资方谈判。乐清上班族|我爱乐清网(^7g+}2Z&B!s%P(a9D0C(e%S

起因:变相增加工作时间,降低薪水乐清上班族社区|乐清上班族论坛

据了解,这家工厂名为飞煌电子厂,位于深圳宝安区沙井街道办辖区,总厂位于同区的西乡街道办,两厂共有逾万名工人,9成以上为女工,大都来自四川、湖南、湖北等省。而工厂主要是为诺基亚、摩托罗拉等国际知名品牌手机生产电池及充电器等配件。

该工厂的工人称,公司上月开始,要求工人每小时组装手机充电器的数量由每小时480个增到570个,工人完成不了,加班也要做完,否则不给底薪。

此前,该工厂每个普通工人连加班费基本能拿到1000到1200元(人民币)左右的薪水,收入在当地属中等水平,而一些机修技术工种的工人更可拿到每月2000多元的“高薪”。

罢工工人堵塞深圳宝安大道要求谈判

昨晚7时许,该厂夜班机修工人将全厂电源切断,大约5000多人开始罢工,工人打碎厂内的玻璃窗及打卡机。至今早7时许,上早班的工人也加入罢工行列。期间有工人要求厂方加薪及减低工作量,工人情绪开始失控。

上午9时许,数千工人涌到厂外数百米的主干道宝安大道,并将该道路双方向车道堵死。后来,又退入工厂厂区。乐清上班族社区|乐清上班族论坛|我爱乐清社区|我爱乐清论坛.

据悉,当地劳动部门已经介入,但目前还没有谈判结果公布

From Worldpress.org, presumably about the same strike:

On Aug. 22, more than 5,000 workers at a mobile phone component factory in Shenzhen, southern China, struck against their bosses' attempt to increase their work hours without extra pay.

Earlier in the month, 800 miners struck for at least six days in the Tanjiashan coalmine in Hubei province against what they believed to be misappropriation by the management while the mine was privatized, undercutting the miners' redundancy payments.
Meanwhile, workers at the Qingyang Municipal Transport Co. in Gansu province entered their eighth month of protest against unfair dismissal packages. This followed hot on the heels of a June-July strike by more than 3,000 workers in Sichuan province, who protested against their meager redundancy payment while their state-owned employer—the Shuangma Cement Plant—was seeking to sell the firm at knock-down prices to France's Lafarge group.

In the latter three disputes, either company thugs or police were employed to attack striking workers. But in the Shenzhen case, the labor department intervened, seeking to resolve the dispute through negotiations.

Little wonder the standing committee of China's legislature—the National People's Congress (N.P.C.)—worked overtime on Aug. 26 to hear the first reading of a new labor law, which will strengthen the government's ability to "mediate" and "arbitrate," in a clear attempt to dampen the rising tide of workers' unrest.
Even the official organ of the Communist Party's central committee, the People's Daily, has recognized the ongoing tide of workers' actions, noting in its Aug. 27 edition that labor disputes have "continuously" increased in recent years. Quoting N.P.C. statistics, the paper revealed that in the 19 years to 2005, the nation's arbitration network had handled 1.72 million labor disputes, involving 5.32 million workers, representing "a growth rate of 27.3 percent annually," (It didn't say if the growth rate was related to the number of disputes or the number of workers involved.)

Dramatic though they are these statistics don't fully reflect the actual level of labor unrest in China. Disputes not accepted for mediation or arbitration aren't included in the official "labor dispute" statistics compiled by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. For example, the Tanjiashan, Qingyang, and Shuangma disputes are unlikely to be included in the ministry's statistics.
Beijing has also devised a new trick to downplay the 2006 dispute statistics. For the first time, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security reported it helped resolve 130,000 industrial unrest cases during the year before they got to the arbitration stage, thus reducing the "labor disputes" figure for that year from 447,000 cases to 317,000.

Compared to the 314,000 labor dispute cases in 2005, the scaled-down 2006 figure represented an increase of only 9.9 percent rather than the 42.4 percent that it should have been. Even then, more than 680,000 workers were involved in the "official" dispute cases.

Labor disputes have surged ever since China's pro-capitalist measures escalated in the early 1990's, rising from 19,098 cases in 1994 to 314,000 in 2005. The year-on-year growth of such cases in 1997, 1998, and 1999 was particularly sharp—48.6 percent, 30.9 percent, and 28.3 percent respectively—corresponding to the escalating attacks on workers as privatization sped up in 1996-97.

The disputes in 1994 involved 77,794 workers. Three years later, 221,000 workers were involved in disputes, jumping by 62 percent to 359,000 in 1998. The number of workers involved peaked in 2003 at 800,000 but still stayed at a high 740,000 in 2005.

Of the 260,000 labor dispute cases in 2004, 19,000 cases were "collective actions," a jump of 73 percent from 2003. The last time a similarly big surge took place was in 1998, when the "collective" cases rose 65 percent to 6,767 cases, involving 251,000 workers. More than 410,000 workers were involved in the 19,000 collective actions in 2005.

China's labor unrest falls into three main categories. There are workers and pensioners of formerly state-owned firms resisting the wave of privatization that involves attempts to slash or not honor entitlements earned through accepting deflated nominal wages in return for a package of housing, health, and other material provisions.

Then there are workers at foreign-funded or other private Dickensian-like sweatshops, concentrated along China's southern and eastern coasts, which seek to squeeze the last drop out of their workers. The third group comprises mainly casual construction workers involved in the numerous projects that have fueled the country's prolonged construction boom. Wages in arrears is a very serious issue among this third group.

A lot of the workers in the latter two categories are from the rural areas, seeking temporary relief from rural poverty. They are deprived of most urban entitlements and are not allowed to move to the cities on a permanent basis. Various estimates put these rural-to-urban temporary migrants at 100-150 million. They tend to go back to or stay in their rural towns on a regular basis, which is not conducive to getting themselves better organized to fight for their rights.

This partly explains the spontaneous nature of workers' struggles in China over the last two decades. Struggles are mostly based at a single work site or enterprise. The state-controlled official trade unions' key agenda is to pacify the workers rather than defend their rights. Previous attempts to organize independent trade unions, notably in 1989, were violently suppressed.

From CLB:

Feihuang electronics factory. Over 10,000 workers. Protests over pay cuts and increased workloads. Strike, roadblock. Dispersed by police, outcome unclear.

From RFA via Boxun:

记者方媛的采访报道/深圳宝安一个手机工厂上千名工人因为工资福利低等问题进行两天的罢工和堵路抗议,几百名警察维持秩序,其间有三,四名工人被警方带走,政府及劳动部门人员出面调停,罢工直到星期二下午截止,有关增加工资的情况正在商量中。下面是自由亚洲电台记者方媛的采访报道。

据海外大纪元网站星期二报道说,以加工及生产名牌手机配件为主要业务的深圳宝安西乡航城工业区飞煌世亚电业有限公司星期一爆发工潮,由上千名工人因为厂方大幅增加工作量并降低工资而引发,从早七点半开始,几百名工人聚在107国道旁的南泰天桥,后来工人越聚越多,约有一千人企图堵路,这时约100名全副武装的防暴警察出动驱赶工人,其他的交警,治安员等也到场,估计共有500人,报道说,他们把参与罢工的工人围在圈里,特别是靠近国道那边的防暴警察,不时使用盾牌撞击工友身体,有工友因为反抗被警察带走。报道引述目击者说,有一名男工的腿部被打断后带走,另外有3、4名工人被带走。现场的工人强烈要求警察放人。

大纪元还登载了几张由香港大学生监察无良企业行动提供的照片,照片所见,场面人头涌涌,群情激愤,远处是一排排的警车,近处看到有摸样是政府官员的人在维持秩序。本台记者星期二打电话到宝安区公安局询问有关情况,对方虽然承认有此事,但不承认抓人及打人。

他说:没有没有,我们怎么能抓人呢?

记者:有说,一名男工的腿被打断,有三,四个工人被抓。

对方:不可能的,有这种事的话不可能现在就解决了。

记者:就是说工人已经放了?

对方:不存在已经放了,就是因为工人跟厂方有工资,待遇方面的纠纷,他们觉得太低了,我们通过区领导去解决,他们跟厂方代表,员工代表已解决了。

但香港明报报道说,有一名男工人腿被打断,3,4名工人被带走。而据这位官员表示,星期二上午还有工人罢工,之后在区领导等的调和下,工人回厂,等待解决方案。

记者:上午闹得还挺厉害,下午就解决了。

对方:他们人多么。

记者:他们有上千人吧。

对方:没有上千人,他们是一个公司的两个工厂,加起来上千人,一边有五,六百人吧,他们去堵路的实际有两百人吧。

记者:他们就去堵国道吧。

对方:想堵,还没有堵成,及时给阻止了。

记者;昨天是堵国道,今天也是堵国道。

对方;对对!,不同的厂,一个是总厂,一个是分厂,可能是昨天堵了有点效果,今天又有一个厂去堵。

而据本台了解,目前厂方正在与工人代表开会,研究增加工资问题,结果还没有出来。

该厂办公室的人员对本台表示;这件事正在解决当中,五分钟之前我们开会,一会解决方案就出来了,新方案。工人情绪已平复,现在等会议结束才有结果。

记者:我一会打电话给你。

对方:这个时间不确定,因为他们昨天开会开了三个半小时。

记者;昨天有工人参加开会吗?

对方:这不包括工人在内的。

记者:当地媒体有没有过来采访?

对方:有。

记者:报道了吗?

对方:这个我就不太清楚了。

本台记者在五点半左右又打电话到工厂,但电话一直没人接听。
Credibility: UP DOWN 0

Additional Reports

Huangxing Light Industry Products Workers Protest in Shenzhen

20:28 Jan 31, 2007

Shenzhen, He Ping Road, Luohu district, 人民南 Renminnan, Shenzhen City, Guangdong, People's Republic of China, 0 Kms

Wal-Mart Distribution Center Workers Protest in Shenzhen

22:05 Jan 02, 2008

Shenzhen, He Ping Road, Luohu district, 人民南 Renminnan, Shenzhen City, Guangdong, People's Republic of China, 0 Kms

Bank of Tokyo Employees Strike in Shenzhen

22:02 Jul 28, 2007

Jian She Road, Guomao, Luohu district, 人民南 Renminnan, Shenzhen City, Guangdong, People's Republic of China, 1 Kms

Luohu, Shenzhen Sanitation Workers Strike

11:09 Jan 10, 2012

深南东路东门, 1.6 Kms

Shenzhen Electronics Factory Workers Strike

12:53 Jun 11, 2011

中華人民共和國广东省深圳市宝安区人民北路224号, 1.94 Kms