Industrial unrest growing in China

Wages for Chinese workers have increased in recent years, but the gains have been offset by inflation that has pushed up costs for housing, schooling and healthcare in urban areas.The recent strike, like previous stoppages, also reflects Chinese workers anger about what they see as unequal treatment compared with foreign employees.Workers at an LG Display factory in eastern China have gone on strike, halting some production, the company said on Wednesday, in the latest show of strength by Chinas increasingly assertive labour force.The front gate of the LG factory was guarded by police who lined up along the street, obscuring what was happening inside, while two black police trucks waited nearby. But there were no signs of outright confrontation.A spokeswoman in Seoul for the South Korean company, Claire Ohm, confirmed the labour dispute after an earlier report by the New York-based China Labor Watch that said the strike began on Monday, triggered by anger over year-end bonuses that workers say favoured South Korean staff.Some of our production has been suspended, Ohm said about the Nanjing plant. She did not confirm that bonus issues were the cause of the strike.Chinas industrial workers, many of them migrant labourers from villages struggling to establish a foothold in urban areas, have increasingly resorted to strikes in recent years.Ohm did not say how many workers had stopped work or how much production had been curtailed.We and the Nanjing city government are jointly negotiating with workers to smoothly reach an agreement and we expect the problems to be resolved soon, she said.While South Korean staff at the factory received the equivalent of six months wages, Chinese workers received the equivalent of one months pay, China Labor Watch said in an email. The NGO campaigns for improved labour conditions.The strike is still ongoing, despite threats made by management to close the plant entirely and prosecute the leaders of the strike, China Labor Watch said of developments up to Wednesday.It said that 8,000 workers at the factory were on strike.LG Display, the leading flat-screen maker, produces LCD modules for notebook computers and monitors at the Nanjing plant, Ohm said. The company has two other module plants inChina.Chinese Internet sites circulated pictures said to be from the Nanjing plant, with hundreds of workers massed at a factory building and standing around a toppled Christmas tree. Reuters could not confirm that the pictures were from the plant.Chinas growth-focused government has often punished strikers for disrupting production and sullying the countrys reputation for maintaining a cheap, disciplined workforce.But strikes have become increasingly common and more tolerated by the central government, which has said wages for workers must grow to nurture more consumer spending.Officials in several Nanjing government departments contacted by Reuters either said they had not heard about the strike or referred inquiries to other departments.Earlier this month, nearly 1,000 workers at a Japanese-owned factory in southern China protested to demand compensation in accordance with their length of service after a change in the plants ownership, according to media reports at the time. A succession of strikes last year disrupted production at Japanese-owned vehicle parts plants across southern China.