Lessons from Chinese Workers

Chinese workers are unhappy. They have been acting to express their unhappiness. Strikes against car producer Honda have closed production down. A spate of suicides in Foxconn, the huge contract electronics supplier in Shenzhen, caught the attention of the world. Honda is a Japanese MNC, Foxconn is a Taiwanese MNC. In both cases worker action has secured high levels of publicity and offers of wage increases of 20-30%. Chinese wage increases are good news for the world. But the absence of independent unions to channel and negotiate discontent could be a big problem for China.