Rights row workers return to jobs after freeing bosses
Tuesday 22 January 2013
Printable
EmailAbout 1,000 Chinese factory workers at Shanghai Shinmei Electric Company were due to return to their jobs this morning after releasing their captured managers following an angry dispute over workers' rights.
The staff at the factory had reacted furiously to new rules enforcing strictly timed toilet breaks and fines for starting work late.
They held 10 Japanese and eight Chinese managers inside the Shanghai factory from Friday morning until midnight on Saturday, when they were released uninjured after 300 police officers were called to the factory.
A security guard at the Shanghai plant said today that the "workers had demanded the scrapping of the ridiculously strict requirements stipulating that workers only had two minutes to go to the toilet and would be fined 50 yuan (£5) if they were late once and fired if they were late twice.
"The managers were later freed when the police were called and they agreed to reconsider the rules."
If you appreciated this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep developing your paper.
Editorial
Exploit Tory woes, Labour
Lord Feldman says that he didn't call grassroots Tories "mad swivel-eyed loons" while his accusers stand by their stories that he did.
Features
Let's get Britain back on track
As Aslef's annual assembly of delegates begins in Edinburgh tomorrow the general secretary explains the challenges his members - and workers across the country - face
The vicious cycle of eurozone decline
France is the latest to face clamour from the EU to enforce crippling 'structural reforms.' The medicine is killing the patient