{"id":35535,"date":"2013-09-02T21:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T21:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=35535 "},"modified":"2013-09-02T21:55:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T21:55:00","slug":"35535-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=35535","title":{"rendered":"China\\’s Shenzhen Docks \\’Paralyzed\\’ by Strike Over Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2013-09-02<\/div>
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A view of the Yantian International Container Terminals (YICT) in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, Feb 22, 2013.<\/div>
 EYEPRESS NEWS<\/div>
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International container port employees in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen entered a second day of industrial action on Monday amid a dispute over pay and working conditions, strikers and officials said.<\/div>
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Around 800 workers at the Yantian International Container Port Co. walked out on Sunday in protest, saying the company had failed to deliver on a promised school subsidy for their children, according to tweets posted on popular Chinese social media sites.<\/div>
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“All container operations have stopped,” one tweet read. “The company didn’t pay out a promised scholarship for the sons and daughters of workers, and we are currently looking for a solution.”<\/div>
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The user added that the local authorities had been holding meetings to mediate the dispute since Sunday, after receiving a number of complaints about the non-payment of benefits a day earlier.<\/div>
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“The majority of the workers in all department are out on strike,” a second striking worker told RFA’s Mandarin service by direct message on a popular social media site. “A lot of departments are now paralyzed.”<\/div>
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“We aren’t just blindly going on strike,” the worker added. “We are waiting for a decision from higher up.”<\/div>
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“The workers want a peaceful resolution to this strike, but we also want fair treatment,” the worker said.<\/div>
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Denial<\/div>
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An employee who answered the phone at the container terminal company offices on Monday didn’t deny that industrial action was underway, but denied that services had halted.<\/div>
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“We are in a go-slow situation here,” the employee said. “We are still discussing things [with the workers], but we are still providing services.”<\/div>
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An official who answered the phone at the Yantian neighborhood committee of the ruling Chinese Communist party confirmed that talks were underway.<\/div>
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“Yes, yes, yes,” the official said. “Someone [from our committee] has already gone over there to deal with the situation.”<\/div>
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“I heard that the talks began at the weekend…We will make a report to the district government this afternoon, but the people who are at the scene haven’t come back to tell us what happened yet.”<\/div>
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Complaints received<\/div>
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A second official said the committee had received a number of complaints from Yantian port employees on Saturday.<\/div>
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“All of the neighborhood committee leaders are there now,” he said, but declined to give further details of the strike.<\/div>
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The action comes after a long-running strike by workers at the Kwai Tsing container terminals in neighboring Hong Kong, which many feared at the time could jeopardize the territory’s reputation as a leading container port.<\/div>
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Yantian International Cargo Terminals last year handled 10.66 million 20-foot containers, referred to as twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), more than half Hong Kong’s annual throughput.<\/div>
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But labor relations experts said at the time that Hongkong International Terminals (HIT), which is controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, lost 5 million Hong Kong dollars (U.S. $644,760) a day because of poor labor relations, compared with those in Shenzhen’s ports.<\/div>
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Workers at Yantian formed a representative trade union to negotiate a collective agreement on wages and working conditions with management after the Shenzhen dockyard strikes of 2007, according to Geoff Crothall of the Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group, China Labor Bulletin.<\/div>
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“Shenzhen not only survived the strikes, it continued to develop and expand and eventually overtook Hong Kong,” Crothall wrote in a blog post during the Kwai Tsing strike in April.<\/div>
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“If you want a successful, well-run container port; Talk to the workers,” he wrote.<\/div>
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Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>the<\/span><\/a> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>original article<\/a><\/a><\/a>.<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/strong>
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<div>Around 800 workers at the Yantian International Container Port Co. walked out on Sunday in protest, saying the company had failed to deliver on a promised school subsidy for their children, according to tweets posted on popular Chinese social media sites.<\/div><div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}