Report says Chinese electronics workers end strike

[July 03, 2010]  BEIJING (AP) -- Workers at a Japanese-owned electronics plant in northern China have ended a strike over pay and benefits after four days, Chinese state media said Saturday.

Mitsumi Electric Co. said the plant in Tianjin resumed production Saturday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

A Mitsumi Electric statement gave no details of any agreement between the plant and its estimated 2,800 workers, Xinhua said.

The company could not be reached for comment Saturday, and there was no update posted on the website for its Tianjin plant.

The strike was the latest in China involving foreign-owned companies as workers grow more demanding about better conditions. A Mitsumi spokesman earlier said the workers probably were inspired by similar strikes in recent weeks at Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. plants in China.

About 100 Mitsumi workers were seen Thursday standing and sitting on the steps leading into the factory. Handwritten signs posted on the factory gates called on the owners to "Return Our Blood Money," and for local leaders to give workers a fair wage.

One worker earlier told Xinhua that a new hire makes 1,500 yuan ($220) a month, working six days a week with two hours of overtime every day.

The Chinese government is normally quick to crush mass protests, but labor strikes have spread this summer as it tries to restructure its export-driven economy to become more self-sustaining though measures aimed at increasing the incomes of ordinary people.

Workers' salaries as a share of China's economy have declined for the last two decades, dropping from 57 percent of gross domestic product in 1983 to just 37 percent in 2005.

China's authoritarian leadership sees the gulf between rich and poor as a threat to Communist Party rule and has cited widening income disparities as a factor in the protests. Policies aimed at raising incomes for working-class Chinese and promoting more equitable growth are a priority in the next five-year plan currently being drafted by the government.

[Associated Press]

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