On Monday morning, a strike at a Honda auto parts factory in southeastern China fizzled out, as Honda’s employing of a large number of substitute workers on Sunday drove majority of the strikers back to work.

Over 100 strikers held a protect outside the factory premises on Monday morning, noticing silently and glumly as replacement employees and ex-strikers waded through the factory gates.

A factory manager started the countdown for the morning shift and encouraged the strikers to return to work, saying, “We won’t give your job to the new workers if you come in now”.

In the last five minutes before the gates were shut down, around half a dozen strikers went back into the factory, with disappointed looks on their faces. Some strikers had remained at home from the protest, and might have lost out on their jobs.

Though the factory increased salaries and benefits, the raise was well short of what the strikers had claimed.

A number of members of the factory’s committee of workers, selected by the employees to stand for them when the strike started on Wednesday, have gone underground, dreading vengeance, whilst others have gone back to work in an endeavor to carry on looking for an improved arrangement.