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Mimi Lau

Workers at a Honda parts factory in Foshan  reached a settlement with the company last night after more than six hours of negotiation.
They had threatened to resume their strike if  demands for better pay and union representation were not met by yesterday.
'We just reached an agreement with which both sides were basically satisfied,'  said a worker representative who took part in the negotiations from 3pm to 9.30pm. 'That means we won't go on strike again, at least for a short period of time.'
Both sides appear to have made compromises.
Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co agreed to offer another 134 yuan (HK$153) a month to its regular workers - on top of a 366 yuan  pay increase promised earlier this week, according to a Foshan-based worker who declined to give his name.
This means regular workers have  won a 500 yuan  wage increase after nearly three weeks of strike action. They had been demanding  800 yuan extra a month. 
Bonuses would be  paid twice a  year - one before the annual National Day holiday and the other by the end of the year, the representative  told the South China Morning Post. 
Japan's No 2 carmaker also promised to increase grass-roots worker representation  in the union within two months, another striking worker said.
'Then we'll try to convey our messages through established channels to the management,' he said. 
The workers had given  the management until yesterday to respond to a list of demands, which also included an annual pay rise of 15 per cent and rehiring of  workers sacked for taking part in the strike. 
Most of the striking assembly line staff had earlier in the week agreed to return to   work for three days from  Wednesday, after a two-week work stoppage that forced the closure of Honda's four car factories in Guangzhou and Wuhan . 
Following scuffles on Monday between the striking component plant staff and representatives of the local chapter of the official Communist Party-controlled All- China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the workers took the bold move of sidestepping the official union and elected their own 16-member negotiating committee. 
The move by workers to directly initiate collective bargaining with management is remarkable in a country where independent unions are banned. The strike, which began May 17, is the biggest and most effective to date against a multinational on the mainland. 
Members of the negotiating committee, supported by an unknown number of the 1,900 employees at the plant, began meetings with Honda management yesterday afternoon that stretched well into the evening. 
At one point in the afternoon, assembly line workers in the installation division stopped work for about 20 minutes. But they resumed work after management got word and threatened to call off negotiations. The workers' representatives are being advised by prominent mainland academic Chang Kai, the director of the institute of labour relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
Following Wednesday's temporary return to work at the Foshan parts factory, Honda said it would resume production at its four mainland car plants yesterday and today.  
A government source who took part in the negotiations said: 'Production at the parts plant and car factories will  go back to normal on Monday. 
'We've got instructions from higher up; all issues must be solved by Monday,' he said. 
He later revealed that it was the Guangdong provincial party chief Wang Yang who gave the order.
Strike breaker
The workers have accepted a monthly pay rise of, in yuan: 500 yuan



Honda workers agree deal on pay and bonuses