BEIJING – Fresh from settling a strike in southern China that paralyzed its car production in China for days, Honda Motor Co. was hit by another strike in the same city at an affiliated parts company that supplies exhaust pipes for the Japanese auto maker.
Takayuki Fujii, a Beijing-based Honda spokesman, said workers at Foshan Fengfu Autoparts walked off the job Monday, paralyzing production at the plant owned by Japan's Yutaka Giken, a 70%-Honda-owned subsidiary, and its partner company.
The strike, the second to hit Honda in China's Guangdong province, the country's export powerhouse, since mid-May, raises the possibility that workers at the Foshan exhaust-pipe plant have taken a leaf from the workers involved in the previous strike in the hope of quickly securing wage increases.
The most recent strike "isn't likely to have immediate impact on our final assembly operations here," Mr. Fujii said.
But given inventory controls that help keep inventory of parts at Honda's final assembly factories to a minimal level, "we're likely to see shortages of parts unless this is resolved soon," the Honda spokesman said.
The strike-affected plant, according to information on its website, is owned 65% by Japan's Yutaka Giken Co. and 35% by Moonstone Holding Ltd. It produces exhaust systems for three Honda models -- the Accord midsize sedan, the Fit subcompact and the Odyssey minivan -- that Honda produces at its plants in China.
The new strike comes just days after Honda settled a two-week walkout at a Honda-owned engine-gear factory that paralyzed its car-production lines in China for more than a week.
The company settled the strike last week by agreeing to give the strikers at the engine gear factory a 24% increase in pay and benefits, a significant concession that highlights the new challenge from organized labor facing foreign investors on the world's factory floors. According to their leaders, strikers were pushing for a 53% boost to bring their total compensation package to 2,300 yuan ($337) a month.
A spokesman at Yutaka Giken's head office in Japan said the Foshan exhaust pipe plant suspended production Monday morning. Asked if the walkout was triggered by the recent engine gear strike at Honda's wholly owned factory in Foshan, he said the latest one is "probably somehow affected by the [earlier] strike."
The Yutaka Giken spokesman declined to say why the workers walked off the job. The company and the strikers are currently in talks and the company hopes to resume production "as early as possible," he said.
