Honda China Workers Strike Another Parts Plant

Honda had barely resumed production at its four assembly plants in China following the end of the victorious workers’ strike in Foshan, when a second Honda parts plant went on strike in the same city. On 7 June twenty workers staged a demonstration at the entrance to the Foshan Fengfu Autoparts plant (producing exhaust systems for Guangqi Honda Automobile), and by evening 250 of the 300 front line production workers had joined the strike. The strikers are demanding higher wages, less strenuous working hours, and the right to elect their own trade union chairperson.

Not only were the workers striving to match the wage increase won by the strikers at the transmissions plant, they were outraged because they had been forced to work unpaid overtime to make up for hours lost when their plant was closed due to the strike at the transmissions plant.

Most strikes in China go unreported, and are quickly settled or repressed. For instance a major strike that began on 5 June at the Taiwanese-owned KOK International (rubber)plant in Kunshan (Jiangsu province) resulted in a violent assault on the strikers by riot police, resulting in at least 50 injuries and 30-40 arrests. The strike is over unbearable working conditions, poor health and safety, enforced unpaid overtime, as well as low pay. The strike is continuing, but strikers are locked inside the plant, and denied access to the media.

The Honda case is different. The two Honda strikes in Foshan were reported extensively in the national and business press, though apparently not in the mass media read in populous Guangdong Province. But news spread rapidly through chat rooms and the internet, and perhaps also through the vocational schools where many of the Honda parts workers are or have recently been students.

Honda’s highly profitable and rapidly expanding system in China is based on “just-in-time” production, and assembly and parts plants alike do not build up inventories. Therefore a labor dispute anywhere in the system rapidly shuts down all Honda production, which is mainly for the booming internal Chinese market (though one model is exported to Europe). Honda, which demands relatively skilled technical workers on its highly automated production lines, can afford to pay higher wages, and has every incentive to avoid disruption.

Chinese reformers who want to build up mass domestic purchasing power to reduce over-reliance on exports, and therefore favor a more effective collective bargaining system that would permit controlled wage rises are cheered by the peaceful resolution of the Honda transmissions strike. It will be interesting to note the outcome of the second strike. It is possible that pro-capitalist elements in the Chinese Communist Party will so fear “contagion” (the term used by the New York Times) and loss of control over the working class that they will push back against further gains by self-organizing workers.

There is much trepidation in the global business press that the Chinese low-wage economy is being threatened by worker unrest, as well as some optimism among socialists over the awakening and growing consciousness of Chinese workers. It is not clear yet whether those fears or hopes are justified. We cannot yet speak of a growing strike wave in China, even if the second Honda strike is clearly inspired by the success of the first. There are indeed more strikes being reported throughout China, but many of these resemble earlier less reported strikes that remained sporadic and confined to individual workplaces. The prohibition of independent union activity remains in effect, and much depends on whether the trade unions at all levels can be reformed quickly enough so as to “ride the tiger” of workers’ struggles rather than try to stifle them.

I reported earlier on this blog that ten “trade union officials” tried to physically shut down the workers’ picket line at the Foshan transmission plant. It is clear that these individuals sported badges of the ACFTU, that they identified themselves as union officials and that they were sent by the local government. District level unions also issued a limited and qualified apology for their actions. However it also seems to be the case that this shameful intervention was made without informing or obtaining sanction from higher level provincial trade union authorities. Just as it is important that management and union roles be separated at the workplace level, it is similarly crucial in China to separate trade union functions from those of local governments. Workers will not trust “trade unions” that are in fact controlled by management or by government bureaucracies. Collective bargaining will function properly in China only if workers have confidence that trade unions are primarily responsible to their interests.