More than 1,000 workers at the cloth-weaving section of the Heze Cotton Textile Factory, formerly a state-owned enterprise, in Shandong have been staging a strike against low pay since 10 February.

Most of the striking workers were women workers and the workers' actions had affected the production of the company's other factories, a factory staff told China Labour Bulletin.

The factory said the strike broke out because of low pay. Each worker was only given a little more than 300 yuan each month. A message posted on a mainland-based online forum said that the workers in the Heze factory could only earn less than 5,000 yuan per year, but each of the eight factory managers earned 500,000 yuan a year.

An official of the Heze City Government said he did not know about the strike, saying that such affairs should be handled by the local Economic and Trading Committee. An official of the local Economic and Trading Committee first said the strike was only a "rumour", but later admitted that he only heard about that from other people and he could not confirm if there was a strike at the factory or not.

A security supervisor at the factory confirmed that the workers had staged the strike for five days and he said the official trade union in the factory and the city-level trade union did not intervene in helping the workers.

The security staff said the factory leaders had issued a form for the workers to fill out, asking them to sign it to agree to go back to work. If they did not sign it within 15 days, they would be considered resigning voluntarily.

17 February 2006