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30,000 Guangdong shoemakers still on strike having rejected first offer

SOME 30,000 workers at six Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) shoemaking plants in Dongguan, adjacent to Guangzhou, have dismissed a company offer to improve the "social benefit plan" and continue their strike into a third week.

Yue Yuen claims to be the world's largest "branded footwear manufacturer", making 300 million pairs a year for Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Asics and Converse has posted 2013 net profits of US$434.8 million revenues of $7.58 billion.

Reuters reports that the strikers complain of unpaid social insurance, improper labour contracts and low wages. Workers have called on Nike to pressure management to reform the firm's labour union and allow workers to elect their own president.

"The factory has been tricking us for 10 years," said a female worker inside a giant industrial campus in Dongguan's Gaobu district run by Yue Yuen. "The Gaobu government, labour bureau, social security bureau and the company were all tricking us together."

Said a Yue Yuen company spokesman: "If we raise the social security payment on the company part, it will also be a larger deduction from the employees' cheques, so their net pay may be lower."

Labour activists claim that more than 400 factory probes conducted over the past decade, not one company bought the full mandatory social insurance for workers as stipulated by law.

Thousands of workers, mostly out of uniform but still wearing factory ID cards, loitered in and around the industrial estate on plastic chairs, sitting on curbs, chatting and drinking tea.

Hundreds of police remained stationed in the area, some with riot shields and German shepherds.

In over 400 factory probes conducted by the group over the past decade, none was found to have bought full mandatory social insurance for workers as stipulated by law.