Workers at the Toyota automotive manufacturing plant in Tianjin agreed to resume work on Sunday morning in exchange for a pay raise of 200 yuan a month. This represented a 13 percent improvement over their existing salaries, short of the 20 percent they had demanded at the outset of the three-day strike. It was unclear how many of the plant’s 1,300 workers had accepted the offer, and whether their return to work indicated a permanent acceptance of the deal, or merely a temporary reprieve.
Workers organized the strike over the internet, and the company offered a 17 percent raise before the strike even began. The workers typically receive a 15 percent annual raise. Edward E. Lehman, Managing Director of Lehman, Lee & Xu, commented that “labor disputes are an unfortunate byproduct of the expanding Chinese manufacturing sector.” Furthermore, he added that he “remains optimistic” that firms will be able to negotiate equitable wages for workers in the future “without resorting to strikes that threaten to interrupt global supply chains.”