HONG KONG--Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong threw a police cordon around a Taiwan-owned factory following clashes involving 1,000 striking workers in which a woman reportedly died.
"There are large numbers of police at the gate of the factory and they are detaining people left, right and center," one worker at the Li Sen (Boluo) Wood Co., a Taiwan-invested wood processing plant in Boluo county, told RFA's Cantonese service.
"There aren't many people around now," another worker said. "Officials have come from Huizhou city and from the Boluo county government, but I don't know what they are up to."
The township was calm following Monday's clashes, when a woman was said by workers at the factory to have died following injuries sustained when she was hit by a tear-gas canister during clashes.
"A worker died," one Li Sen worker told RFA's Cantonese service at the time. "We only learned the news last night. We can’t continue to work under this situation. So now nobody goes to work and all the operations in the factory have come to a halt."
Media blackout
We can’t continue to work under this situation. So now nobody goes to work and all the operations in the factory have come to a halt.
Another worker said they did not know where the body of the woman, from central Hunan province, had been taken.
But they said police from Hunan province had already gone to the Boluo county public security bureau to claim the body, so that they can help the victim’s relatives handle the issue.
"The dead woman was about 30 years old, from Hunan," the second worker said. "The police from Hunan province have come to the county already. They asked for the body but has not been handled yet."
The second worker also confirmed the continuing detention of 14 workers including five labor leaders by local authorities.
He slammed a media blackout enforced by local government leaders, and called on overseas media to fill the gap.
The telephone number listed for the village police station was put through to a fax line.
An officer who answered the phone at the Buluo county police station said: "We know nothing about this incident. Who should be responsible for this area? I can’t answer you."
Experts on the labor movement in China point to a wave of industrial disputes to hit Guangdong in recent months, as foreign and domestic companies are faced with the newly effective Contract Labor Law.
Workers use new law
Companies have complained that the new legislation and rising costs may force them to close factories and relocate to other regions or countries.
But Guangdong trade union and government officials say that wages in the economically booming province have consistently failed to keep up with inflation.
More than 4,000 workers in a factory owned by Japan's Casio went on strike last week in Panyu, another major city in the province.
More than 20 workers calling for a wage increase were injured and a dozen detained in clashes with more than 1,000.
And in Panyu city's Shilong township, strikes erupted at the end of February at the Sankyo plant after a pay dispute involving some 3,000 workers.
The striking workers were protesting salaries which they said were too low, because the overtime pay they were getting didn’t comply with the new Labor Contract Law.
Labour expert Han Dongfang, who hosts RFA’s Mandarin service program, Labor Bulletin, says the Pearl River Delta, China’s industrial powerhouse, sees at least one major labor dispute daily. By ‘major’, he means involving at least 1,000 people.
Han said there were also many smaller strikes daily in the region, where about one-third of Chinese exports are manufactured and where, according to a published study, workers lose or break about 40,000 fingers on the job every year.
Original reporting in Cantonese by Lee Kin-kwan. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie and edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.