主题：网易：是为人民说话，还是为人民币说话？ -- 故园湾里

The following is my part of a writeup on Foxconn and the recent strikes that will be modified, toned down, but appear as the cover story of our newspaper in two days. I apologize for not being able to type in Chinese.

The struggle is everywhere.

Manufacturing powerhouses struggling in a declining global economy have learned the hard way that the cheap labor they rely on too have limits, as Honda managers woke up yesterday to the third week of a largest-ever protest that shut down almost all its Chinese production.

About 2,000 workers at Honda Auto Party Manufacturing Co in Foshan, Guandong province had been on strike since May 17, demanding managers to double their wages to 2500 yuan ($366) a month.

The protest grew after the management sacked workers suspected of leading that strike, and protesters, who according to Caixin online were beaten by groups of local union staff on Monday, were now calling for the re-instatement of sacked workers as well as the restructuring of their trade union.

In Tokyo, Honda spokeswoman Yasuko Matsuura on Tuesday said most of the employees on strike at the plant “have agreed to new wages, and some production started there”.

She said “almost all” of those on strike have agreed to increasing the total starting wage by about 24 percent to 1,910 yuan ($280) per month.

Labor disputes are highly uncommon and rarely reported in China. A Constitutional clause in 1975 granting workers the right to strike was deleted in the current Constitution, which was revised in 1980 and came into effect two years later.

Zhang Youyu, who took part in the Constitutional revision, explained that the “freedom to strike” clause in the 1975 Constitution was “a product of ultra-leftist thought” that was unsuitable for enterprises in China, which “belong to the people”.

But a string of recent disputes may indicate the extent of rising awareness among a new generation of low-wage, mostly rural migrant workers, and their growing dissatisfaction of the harsh working conditions their predecessors suffered in earlier decades here in the “world factory”.

In Foshan’s nearby Shenzhen, Foxconn, the largest contract electronics maker anywhere, last Friday promised workers a 20-percent salary jump from the current 900 yuan ($132) – the local minimum wage – after 13 of its staff attempted suicide this year. Ten of them died.

During the past month alone, strikes had been reported in Pingdingshan, Henan; Lanzhou, Gansu; Honghe, Yunnan; Datong, Shanxi; Zaozhuang, Shandong; Suzhou, Jiangsu, Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing.

Despite remarkable achievements – China would surpass Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy this year – the proportion of the country’s GDP that goes towards salaries has steadily decreased since 1983, said Zhang Jianguo, a senior official with the All China Federation of Trade Unions.

The widening of wealth gap is simultaneous with the rise of a younger generation of workers, who were brought up in an era of relative affluence but, according to Liu Kaiming, director of a Shenzhen-based think-tank, “get much, much less pay than their predecessors for the same amount of time at work”.

Wang Yang, Party chief of Guangdong, last week urged Foxconn to adopt a “better, more humane working environment” for its young workers, who he said “need more care and respect and need to be motivated to work with enthusiasm”.

As the government tries to shift from decades of reliance on exports of cheap products by labor-intensive industries along its booming coasts, employers have been complaining of rapidly increasing costs and labor shortages.

Chang Kai, a labor expert at Renmin University, said the shortages mean that the migrant workers are now “pickier in their wages, benefits, social status and working conditions”.

“Our economy can no longer rely on squeezing labor benefits, because workers are unwilling to accept it anymore. I have to say the squeeze is very cruel now,” he said.

The emerging labor movements are a significant departure from earlier years, when Zhang Zhixiong, deputy union chairman at Beijing Hyundai, in 2003 assured the Korean automaker that there would “never be any strike” at its facilities in the Chinese capital.

“Strikes in China would jeopardize the company’s reputation. So there never will be any strike (here),” Zhang then said.

Around 1,000 workers at Hyundai’s parts factory in Beijing went on a two-day strike last Friday, demanding wage increases. The strike ended after the management promised a 15 percent pay rise soon and a further 10 percent rise in July, according to the Beijing Times.

In Guangdong, many young ground-level workers with little education shift from one plant to the next after just a couple of months – when they can no longer continue working 10 to 12-hour days on the assembly line, making no more than 1,500 yuan a month.

Some among them, meanwhile, have been so accustomed to the prevalent urban consumerist culture that they routinely spend up to 70 percent of all their monthly income shopping or texting away on mobile phones, according to a recent study by the department of commerce in Hunan province.

Either way, these workers, who form the basis of China’s 200-million strong migrant labor force, have been much more vocal in defending their rights than in earlier years, the study concluded.

Pan Yi, a senior labor expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said recent events indicate what she calls “the end to the ‘world factory’ model”.

“The existence of migrant labor is a sin of the times – a sin and a mishap. We call for a development model that is more humane and respectable,” Pan said.