The nerve of those Chinese workers for wanting US$300/month to assemble Honda cars

Danny Tse

For your information, 2,000 yuan is equal to a little bit less than US$300

According to the below article in The Economic Times, that's the demand....

SHANGHAI: Japan's number two auto maker Honda Motor said production resumed Friday at two vehicle assembly plants in southern China, where operations have been on and off in recent weeks due to strikes.

However, there is "no update" about an ongoing labour dispute involving workers at a factory in the southern province of Guangdong that produces car locks and key sets, a Beijing-based Honda spokesman told.

Production at the two plants run by Honda's Chinese joint venture Guangqi Honda Automobile was halted Wednesday and Thursday, mainly due to a strike at Foshan Fengfu Autoparts, which produces exhaust and muffler systems.

Tokyo-based Honda said earlier that the labour action at Foshan Fengfu, a joint venture between Honda's subsidiary Yutaka Giken and a Taiwanese firm, had been resolved and work resumed Thursday.

"Production has resumed (at the assembly plants)," the spokesman said.

The new dispute involving workers at the company's joint venture Honda Lock (Guangdong) Co, which has about 1,500 employees, erupted on Wednesday, the third strike to hit Honda's suppliers in China in recent weeks.

Officials in Xiaolan county, where the joint venture is located, said negotiations between Honda and the workers were ongoing and several hundred workers had gathered at the factory gate Friday morning.

Honda has offered workers at Honda Lock (Guangdong) a pay rise of 100 yuan (15 dollars) from the current salary of around 1700 yuan per month but the workers were demanding salaries above 2,000 yuan, county official Dong Zuwen, who is involved in the talks, told AFP.

"Such an incident has never happened here before," said Dong, adding that workers may "have taken a leaf from the strike" at an earlier walkout at the carmaker's main engine parts unit in Guangdong.

Honda, which has a production capacity of 650,000 vehicles per year in China, last week resolved an initial strike at Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co by offering workers a 24 per cent pay rise.

tonyb

300 bucks a MONTH ?? Yeah,we can compete with that.:rolleyes:

nadams

Well... they're not building the cars... just the locks and keysets. As per the article.

Also, no mention on if they're provided with housing, healthcare, food, etc (as a lot of factories overseas do).

tonyb

And the quality of that housing,healthcare,etc, is...?

Making locks,widgets,whatever, 75 bucks a week ?

6 billion people on the planet,5 billion at or below poverty levels, somethings wrong.

LessisNevermore

tonyb wrote: »

6 billion people on the planet,5 billion at or below poverty levels, somethings wrong.

Still waiting for it to trickle down......

WilliamM2

LessisNevermore wrote: »

Still waiting for it to trickle down......

You're lucky. The economy turned to a trickle here a long time ago.

tonyb

LessisNevermore wrote: »

Still waiting for it to trickle down......

Actually, from your standpoint, I believe the term was "trickle up",which as you can tell, is working so well.

LessisNevermore

tonyb wrote: »

Actually, from your standpoint.....

Care to elaborate? I'd love to hear your assumptions.

cnh

I saw this in the Chinese Press....It's OK to publish anti-Japanese copy here. But it is NOT acceptable to form a UNION outside the state sponsored Federation...which is really not a Union that represents workers at all. But just a way to keep labor 'cheap' and free in China.

You've hit the nail on the head. American manufacturing cannot compete with 150 dollars a month.

There have been a series of worker demands and strikes since the 'suicides' associated with the Apple facility that manufactures iphones, etc. But the 'coverage' has been, let's say LESS THAN COMPLETE here! A kind of 'cascade' workers effect is occurring as a result of the suicides.

Not ALL companies house and provide health care and other perks for their workers. But the more profitable ones do. Howeve some of the housing can be overloaded, crowded and alienating. And some is actually 'acceptable' it really varies too much to form a general statement about.

cnh

hearingimpared

Geez, makes one wonder about the quality of Honda's.

polkatese

cnh wrote: »

I saw this in the Chinese Press....It's OK to publish anti-Japanese copy here. But it is NOT acceptable to form a UNION outside the state sponsored Federation...which is really not a Union that represents workers at all. But just a way to keep labor 'cheap' and free in China.

You've hit the nail on the head. American manufacturing cannot compete with 150 dollars a month.

There have been a series of worker demands and strikes since the 'suicides' associated with the Apple facility that manufactures iphones, etc. But the 'coverage' has been, let's say LESS THAN COMPLETE here! A kind of 'cascade' workers effect is occurring as a result of the suicides.

Not ALL companies house and provide health care and other perks for their workers. But the more profitable ones do. Howeve some of the housing can be overloaded, crowded and alienating. And some is actually 'acceptable' it really varies too much to form a general statement about.

cnh

www.foxconn.com

To have 250,000 employees who are living in dormitories, with a max of 10 minutes break per 2 hours, strictly no talking during work time, these working conditions would be a capitalism in its best, if you are the owners, wouldn't it? (i.e. maximum productivity).

nooshinjohn

polkatese wrote: »

www.foxconn.com

To have 250,000 employees who are living in dormitories, with a max of 10 minutes break per 2 hours, strictly no talking during work time, these working conditions would be a capitalism in its best, if you are the owners, wouldn't it? (i.e. maximum productivity).

Don't confise Capitalism with a Free Economy. I would rather see the restoration of the Free Market system than it's systematic destruction.:)

sucks2beme

At some point as these countries go forward, their people will want
to make a decent living. The question is, what is that amount?
This is a normal thing that happens. It happened here, and will slowly happen other places. At some point their wages and our wages will come into line with
each other. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it will happen. If you had said most of
our factories would be in China 40 years ago, most of you would have thought the same thing. Right up there with taking vacations to Vietnam.

apphd

Remember reading/studying about the American Industrial Revolution in HS? Amazing similarities can be found. If you do not recall, rural America moved to the cities for work. Many under terrible conditions in today's standards. Not only did this foster great American financial growth and innovations/inventions. It also fostered many of our child labor laws, and unions. That's all I see going on. We can not always compare things else where to how we are today but sometimes need to compare them to where we were sometime in the past.

tonyb

apphd wrote: »

Remember reading/studying about the American Industrial Revolution in HS? Amazing similarities can be found. If you do not recall, rural America moved to the cities for work. Many under terrible conditions in today's standards. Not only did this foster great American financial growth and innovations/inventions. It also fostered many of our child labor laws, and unions. That's all I see going on. We can not always compare things else where to how we are today but sometimes need to compare them to where we were sometime in the past.

Very true... but since we have grown out of that era, alot of the rest of the world has not. Now we have to trade with these countries, who is at the disadvantage ? I'm talking money wise,not socially. Is it by will of the people in those countries to work under the conditions,and for the pay,that they do ? I blame their associated governments for wanting to keep the general populus depressed and dependant. Thats how you retain power and control the people, and that movement is making it's way here too. I realize we cannot be isolationist in a global economy,but we do need to manufacture more,and tax more cheap asian goods comming in. Again,a balance is needed and I want to say most people today feel that balance is tilted to one side.

apphd

^^^^^Whole heartedly agree Tony. Trying to keep pol. out of it, but I think you hit the nail on the head that we need to make some changes here first.