China expresses concern as Singapore charges drivers for strike

China said on Friday it was “very concerned” about the arrest of four of its citizens by Singapore authorities for their role in a labour protest, the island’s first strike since the 1980s.

The Chinese nationals were charged in court on Thursday with instigating SMRT Corporation bus drivers to take part in an illegal strike this week, according to court filings. Police arrested the four after the company said more than 170 drivers from the mainland failed to report for duty on November 26 and 88 halted work on November 27, disrupting some bus services.

“The embassy is very concerned about this,” the Chinese consulate said in a statement on its website, referring to the arrests. The embassy in Singapore is seeking to visit the detained drivers as soon as possible and hopes their rights will be protected, it said.

Singapore moved swiftly to quell the rare public display of labour discord this week, reinforcing a decades-old focus on avoiding what the government calls “adversarial and confrontational” industrial relations. The last legal strike was in 1986, involving the Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Employees Union and Hydril Pte., and the most recent illegal one concerned airline pilots in 1980.

The four drivers are charged with conspiring to instigate workers employed by SMRT Buses, according to charge sheets filed at the city’s subordinate court yesterday. If convicted, they can be jailed for as long as 12 months, fined as much as S$2,000 (about HK$12,400), or both.

One of the drivers was also charged with inciting the strike with a post in Chinese on Baidu entitled “The insults and humiliations suffered by Singapore Drivers (SMRT)” that asked “where is the dignity of the People’s Republic of China bus drivers,” according to the court document. Baidu owns China’s most popular search engine.