LG’s Chinese workers demand equal bonuses

HONG KONG - An estimated 8,000 workers went on strike this week at one of LG Display’s factories in China, protesting discrimination in wages, a labor rights group said yesterday.

New York-based China Labor Watch said the Korean display maker failed in its negotiations with striking Chinese workers at its factory in Nanjing, Jiangsu, who asked for fairness in the company’s compensation system.

The workers claimed that Korean workers at the plant received a year-end bonus equivalent to six months’ salary, while Chinese workers only received a bonus of one month’s salary, it said.

The strike is still ongoing, despite a new offer made by the company’s management to double the year-end bonus for Chinese workers to two months’ pay.

The offer was swiftly rejected by workers, who are pushing for absolute equality in the bonus system, the labor watch group said.

A video posted on 56.com, one of the largest video-sharing Web sites in China, by a worker who claims to have taken part in the strike shows factory representatives attempting on Monday to negotiate with the striking workers in what seems to be a dining hall in the factory.

A banner that says “Christmas Party for all workers of LGDNJ [LG Display Nanjing]” hanging on the ceiling can be seen on the video.

“We are hoping to understand the workers’ grievances and also their demands,” one of the representatives said on the video.

“However, they all must first return the factory to normal operation in an orderly manner,” he said.

The person who uploaded video wrote on the site that the workers did not receive a satisfactory response from the management, adding, “We will be united until we have victory.”

The move is seen as another blow to LG Display, the world’s second-largest maker of flat panels, which has been suffering from a supply glut in the industry, weighing down display panel prices.

Yonhap