Hundreds of Chinese workers strike at factory supplying Uniqlo

Workers at a Chinese factory producing clothes for Uniqlo, the low-cost Japanese fashion retailer, have gone on strike in the latest example of strained labour relations in the world’s main manufacturing hub.

Hundreds of employees at the Shenzhen Artigas Clothing & Leather factory in Guangdong province have been on strike since June 8 because of fears the company wanted to shut down the operation, according to a labour activist.

“The workers invited the management to negotiate with them about fair compensation but the factory managers showed no interest in talking to them,” said Alexandra Chan, a campaigner for Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, a labour rights organisation in Hong Kong. “Around 500 workers are sleeping in the factory to ensure machines won’t be moved out.”

Labour relations in China’s factories, which produce many of the world’s consumer goods from iPhones to T-shirts, have been deteriorating as wage expectations have risen sharply and manufacturers’ profit margins have been squeezed.

In March the Chinese Communist party’s Central Committee instructed officials to “make the building of harmonious labour relations an urgent task”, noting that “labour tensions have entered a period of increased prominence and frequency and the incidence of labour disputes remains high”.

The official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has recorded a tenfold rise in the number of collective labour disputes involving between 100 and 1,000 workers.

These increased from just 23 in 2007 to 209 in 2012. Over the past year there have been industrial actions involving thousands of workers — and in some instances tens of thousands.

Fast Retailing, the rapidly growing Japanese company that operates Uniqlo, confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that some of the workers at the factory were currently on strike.

It said that it was “in the process of confirming the facts related to the strike” and that it had asked the management of the factory’s owner, Lever Shirt, to “discuss this matter with the workers and reach a peaceful resolution”.

Lever Shirt and the Artigas factory are units of Lever Style, a Hong Kong-based garment manufacturing group, according to the company’s website.

In addition to Uniqlo, the company says it produces clothes for Armani, Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren, among other global fashion labels.

No one from Lever Style was immediately available to comment, while calls to the Artigas factory went unanswered.

Ms Chan said her organisation, one of several labour rights groups based in Hong Kong, started investigating the Uniqlo supply chain last year.

She said she started a dialogue with Fast Retailing after publishing a report in December that criticised working conditions at two other factories in China producing clothes for Uniqlo.

“They promised us that the two investigated factories in China would have remedial action plans,” she said. “They’ve been trying to change their monitoring system but unfortunately, we’re told by some workers that the situation hasn’t changed a lot.”

Additional reporting by Kana Inagaki in Tokyo