19 Mar Yue Yuen Faces Factory Strike
Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings Ltd said on Wednesday thousands of workers at a factory in South China have gone on strike following changes to production processes.
About 2,000 employees in Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong province, were affected, according to Bloomberg. Reuters put the protesting worker count at between 4,000 and 5,000
“Due to changes in the economic environment, we need to reorganise some of the production,” Jerry Shum, the firm’s Hong Kong-based investor relations director, told Reuters. “As a consequence, workers are not very happy to see the change in the production…and that led to some disagreement.”
Yue Yuen is working with labor unions and government officials and expects to resolve the issue in a few days. The strike represents 2 to 3 percent of Yue Yuen’s staff in China and has had no impact on Yue Yuen’s production schedule so far, Chum said.
Yue Yuen, which also operates factories in Vietnam and Indonesia , globally employs more than 400,000. Last April, more than 1,000 workers led to a week-long production stoppage over better benefits.