Work­ers who make bike lights at a fac­to­ry in Shen­zhen, Chi­na, have been on strike since April 30, demand­ing that the com­pa­ny pay up what it legal­ly owes them.

New An Lun Lamp, a Tai­wanese-owned fac­to­ry, pro­duces bicy­cle lights for brands includ­ing the Ger­man Mess­ingschlager and Buchel and the Dutch AXA.

There are about 100 work­ers in the fac­to­ry, most­ly mid­dle-aged women, with some near­ing retirement.

Though their actions have been peace­ful, thus far 13 work­ers have been fired and nine arrest­ed by police for ​“dis­rupt­ing pub­lic order.” Sev­en out of the nine detained work­ers were released with­in 24 hours. The oth­er two — includ­ing one of the work­ers’ elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives — were held by police for sev­en days. Dur­ing the police raid on May 13 these two clutched the legs of the gen­er­al man­ag­er and his son, cry­ing and beg­ging them not to remove the fin­ish goods.

Last year, accord­ing to a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate by Chi­na Labour Bul­letin, there were 1,379 strikes and labor protests in Chi­na, up from just 185 in 2011. One of the biggest was a strike by 48,000 work­ers at the Yue Yuen shoe fac­to­ry, the world’s largest man­u­fac­tur­er of ath­let­ic shoes, whose cus­tomers include Nike and Adidas.

Mon­ey owed to workers

New An Lun Lamp has bro­ken China’s labor laws and social insur­ance poli­cies by fail­ing to con­tribute to both the work­ers’ pen­sion fund and a hous­ing fund aimed at help­ing work­ers buy or rent apartments.

The work­ers also haven’t been paid for the sick leave, mater­ni­ty leave, work injury leave and mar­riage leave to which they are legal­ly enti­tled. And they have been request­ed to report for duty 10 min­utes ear­li­er in the morn­ing and after lunch every day, with­out being paid over­time. In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny has failed to pay a legal­ly-required high tem­per­a­ture allowance.

Access to bath­rooms is anoth­er major griev­ance. Bath­rooms are locked dur­ing work­ing hours — leav­ing the more than 70 women to use the eight female stalls dur­ing the break.

The com­pa­ny has adopt­ed dic­ta­to­r­i­al man­age­r­i­al prac­tices, includ­ing penal­iz­ing work­ers who fail to meet the pro­duc­tion tar­gets or are seen as trou­ble­mak­ers by lock­ing them in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment. The strike was part­ly trig­gered by an inci­dent in which one female work­er faint­ed and was hos­pi­tal­ized after being put into Soli­tary Con­fine­ment for a whole day.

In April, work­ers sent a peti­tion demand­ing that the fac­to­ry cor­rect these prob­lems. In response, the com­pa­ny asked them to elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives, with whom it held one nego­ti­at­ing session.

When work­ers didn’t get a sat­is­fac­to­ry response, they went on strike on April 28 and began an occu­pa­tion of the fac­to­ry the next day.

Fac­to­ry sent thugs

Once the strike began, the com­pa­ny, togeth­er with var­i­ous gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the dis­trict lev­el, asked the work­ers for fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions. But so far it has refused to ful­ly address their demands.

For instance, while many work­ers are owed sev­en to 12 years of pen­sion fund con­tri­bu­tions, the com­pa­ny is only offer­ing to pay for two years, claim­ing this is in line with gov­ern­ment policies.

Fac­to­ry man­age­ment has deployed dirty tac­tics. It sent a gang of thugs on May 11 to attack the work­ers and try to remove fin­ished bike lights from the work­er-occu­pied fac­to­ry. Work­ers suc­cess­ful­ly stopped the thugs from remov­ing box­es of prod­ucts, but some work­ers were injured in the conflict.

On May 13, the fac­to­ry fired six of the work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives with­out fol­low­ing the pro­ce­dures dic­tat­ed by nation­al and provin­cial labor laws, which state that com­pa­nies must noti­fy trade unions of any dis­missals and prompt­ly con­sid­er any objec­tions from the unions. More­over, man­age­ment has turned a blind eye to the new Guang­dong Provin­cial Reg­u­la­tions on Col­lec­tive Con­tracts for Enter­pris­es, which state that enter­pris­es can­not fire work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives while they are per­form­ing their duties of negotiation.

But new reg­u­la­tions in Guang­dong (where the New An Lun fac­to­ry is locat­ed) also make it ille­gal to strike dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions — the first such law offi­cial­ly pro­hibit­ing strikes. Work­er advo­cates fear that this law will be used to crack down on the grow­ing num­ber of strikes and sen­tence work­er lead­ers to long Prison Terms — some­thing the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has thus far hes­i­tat­ed to do in most cases.

Police raid

Even worse, the same day the work­ers were fired, the local police sta­tion sent 100 police offi­cers to the fac­to­ry to help the com­pa­ny trans­port the fin­ished bike lights.

Police arrest­ed nine work­ers, includ­ing four of the fired strike rep­re­sen­ta­tives. They accused the nine of dis­rupt­ing ​“pub­lic secu­ri­ty,” despite the fact that the strike has been entire­ly peace­ful. In Chi­na the gov­ern­ment sel­dom arrests work­ers on the grounds of strik­ing. Instead, work­ers are arrest­ed under var­i­ous charges of dis­rupt­ing pub­lic order when they march out­side of fac­to­ries or pre­vent the deliv­ery of fin­ished products.

On May 18 the com­pa­ny fired anoth­er sev­en work­ers for not per­form­ing their duties. One was a work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive, while five oth­ers were among those arrest­ed by the police.

Labor groups and trade unions from Tai­wan have launched a peti­tion to urge the Tai­wanese boss to respect the rights of the New An Lun Lamp work­ers. In a May 15 press con­fer­ence they con­demned the company’s ille­gal actions.

The same day, labor groups and trade unions vis­it­ed the Taipei Eco­nom­ic and Cul­tur­al Office and the Tai­wan Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion in Hong Kong, to urge them both to more seri­ous­ly mon­i­tor Tai­wanese firms in China.

Inside Chi­na, 14 orga­ni­za­tions have signed a joint let­ter to New An Lun Lamp and its major Euro­pean cus­tomers. Labor groups sup­port­ing the strik­ers are also seek­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty from trade unions in Ger­many and the Netherlands.