Uniden is a Japanese-owned wireless phone manufacturer.

Its main customer, Wal-Mart, agreed November 23 to allow unions in its 39 Chinese stores, which employ 20,000 people. The decision came after the All-China Federation of Trade Unions threatened to sue the U.S.-based retail giant.

According to the Times, workers at Uniden said they work 11-hour days and earn a monthly salary of 484 yuan, about $58. They spend nearly half of that on housing in the company dormitories. Most of the workers have recently arrived from the countryside. Like tens of thousands of fellow working people, they are resisting bad working conditions.

“If you get sick, they won’t give you leave unless it is very serious,” said Liu Shuangyan, a worker at the plant who is a native of Hunan province.

The factory has no union, something workers say they want to change. “If there were a union, things would be fairer for us,” a 32-year-old worker from Henan province, told the Times. “Right now, one person says one thing, another complains about another, and the boss doesn’t listen to anything.”

One possible spark in the walkout was the company’s recent firing of workers with seniority to make way for replacements whom the company could pay less.

Workers said their most important demands are a shorter workweek and the enforcement of minimum wage laws.

Workers held a one-day strike at the same factory four years ago, protesting low wages and alleged beatings by a supervisor, according to an article in the South China Morning Post. The workers ended the strike when the accused supervisor was transferred and the company agreed to increase wages.

Press reports indicate labor actions are becoming more common among migrant workers in the area. Liu Kaiming, who studies conditions of migrant workers in Guangdong province, told the Times, “The migrant workers have learned to protest with their feet, they are more capable of negotiating, and they can choose not to work. That has especially been true recently, with a lot of the migrant workers who were born in the 1980s entering the workforce. They’ve had a better education, they’re young and emotional, and they’ve been emboldened by media reports about their conditions to demand their rights.”

Striking Uniden workers told the Times they are not afraid of losing their jobs, as workers are in short supply in Shenzhen’s large manufacturing zone.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home