"Factories treat all workers unfairly, but especially trainees," said Tan Guocheng, one of two strike leaders fired May 22. Honda has said the two workers were let go for violating the plant's in-house work and contract rules but not for leading the walkout.
In Guangdong province, China's main manufacturing hub where the Honda transmission factory is located, local law caps the use of student trainees at 30% of a factory's overall labor force, according to Baker & McKenzie. Mr. Tan said the ratio of trainees at the transmission factory "definitely exceeds 30%."
Trainees usually come to factories under an internship program, which Baker & McKenzie says isn't covered by China's employment law system but under separate, much vaguer sets of national and local regulations.
Mr. Tan and Xiao Lang, the other fired strike leader, suggested that the trainee system is a deliberate way to allow factories to pay workers below minimum wages. The two strike leaders say that in some cases, trainees at the Honda gearbox factory are paid 20% below the minimum wage set by the city of Foshan for qualified workers, which is 920 yuan, or approximately $135, a month. Baker & McKenzie's Mr. Lauffs said such a practice is within legal limits in China.
Honda strongly disputes the characterizations made by the two fired workers. Roughly 30% of workers at Honda's transmission plant in Foshan, or about 600 of the plant's 1,900 employees, are trainees, said Takayuki Fujii, a Beijing-based company spokesman. They receive "near the minimum wage" in Foshan, he said. He declined to provide a precise wage figure.
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