Riot police in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong onWednesday clashed with workers at a shoe factory on the third day of a strike over housing benefits, workers said.
Some 5,000 workers at the Stella International Xing Ang plant in Dongguan began their strike onSundayamid complaints over long-term failure to pay out housing assistance.
ByWednesday, many had been forced inside factory buildings, but hadn't begun work, workers told RFA.
A striking worker surnamed Zhou said all the workers had been pushed back and were kettled inside the factory buildings by police in riot gear onWednesdayevening, and police were now guarding all entrances and exits.
"They sent the riot police and the regular police to suppress the strike in the morning, and they surrounded the workers so they had nowhere else to go," Zhou said.
"So we are all on strike, but on the factory floor."
Hundreds, not thousands
A spokeswoman for Stella International said only "a few hundred" workers had gone on strike, not 5,000.
"Discussions are still ongoing, but as ofthis morningalmost all workers have returned to work," the spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency in an email onWednesday.
Stella International Holdings Ltd, lists Guess? Inc, Michael Kors, Prada and Burberry among its clients.
Zhou said three people had been detained during the clashes.
"The riot police came over and started beating people up, and detained three of our comrades," Zhou said. "They were beating up and detaining anyone who was out on the street wearing a factory uniform."
"The police are now watching all the main roads on the factory campus, which is very large, and they are beating up any worker who tries to leave the factory building."
Labor activist Zhang Zhiru, who helped striking workers at the Yue Yuen shoe factory negotiate a similar dispute in one of the largest-ever work stoppages at a private business in China last April, said workers from Xing Ang's sister factory Xing Xiong were also involved in the dispute.
Last April, some 40,000 employees of Adidas and Nike supplier Yue Yuen went on strike to demand social insurance payments, in the biggest industrial action to hit China in decades.
Housing payments
Zhang said workers at Xing Ang were angry over recent changes to the rules governing housing payments.
"[To begin with], Xing Xiong didn't strike but Xing Ang did, with 300-400 people, but later [onTuesday] 5,000 people came out on strike at Xing Ang and then Xing Xiong joined the strike, with 3,000 people," Zhang said in an interview onTuesday.
Zhang said factory management had begun talks with the workers, but with no result, and so the strike over whether or not outstanding housing payments would be made by aMarch 1deadline had continued.
"Tensions rose [onTuesday] as the Dongguan government sent in the riot police and police dogs, and some workers were bitten by police dogs," he said.
"Some had to go to hospital. Some were beaten."
Hundreds of strikes
The Stella strike comes after Chinese premier Li Keqiang told lawmakers last week that the government would "improve the mechanisms for supervising the handling of labor issues and disputes, and ensure the law fully functions as the protector of the rights and interests of anyone in employment".
Chinese workers have staged hundreds of strikes in recent months, many of them over unpaid wages ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday, according to a recent report.
Construction workers, teachers and miners joined factory workers in a wave of strikes and protests across China in the final quarter of 2014, the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said in a January report on its website.
The group said it had recorded 569 incidents during the fourth quarter, more than three times the number in the same period in 2013, and that unrest had intensified ahead of Chinese New Year on Feb. 19.
Last year, the number of strikes more than doubled to 1,378 from 656 the year before, CLB said.
Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Pan Jiaqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.