Posted on 06/25/2013 3:38:15 AM PDT by Wolfie
US factory boss held hostage by workers in Beijing
An American executive said he has been held hostage for four days at his medical supply plant in Beijing by scores of workers demanding severance packages like those given to 30 co-workers in a phased-out department.
Chip Starnes, 42, a co-owner of Coral Springs, Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, said local officials had visited the 10-year-old plant on the capital's outskirts and coerced him into signing agreements Saturday to meet the workers' demands even though he sought to make clear that the remaining 100 workers weren't being laid off.
The workers were expecting wire transfers by Tuesday, he said, adding that about 80 of them had been blocking every exit around the clock and depriving him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office. He declined to clarify the amount, saying he wanted to keep it confidential.
"I feel like a trapped animal," Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window's bars. "I think it's inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen."
(Excerpt) Read more at globalnews.ca ...
So it begins. Chinese workers demanding rights, as they should. but maybe we can level the playing field now.
They wouldn’t get away with this in a Chinese owned factory.
“It is not rare in China for managers to be held by workers demanding back pay or other benefits, often from their Chinese owners, though occasionally also involving foreign bosses.”
I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen.”
What can you say?
This is what happens when you try to do business
in a foreign land. It isn’t the USA!
Why are there bars on the window? Is it a factory or a prison? Guess China isn’t the manufacturing paradise the Friedman types say it is.
“I feel like a trapped animal,” Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window’s bars. “I think it’s inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen.”
I can feel a “little” sympathy for him. He could have created jobs here in the U.S. for the last ten years. But with our current anti-business government I can see why he didn’t. But still he wouldn’t have been locked into a U.S. Based factory either. I’m sure it all evens out somewhere/sometime.
The boss needs to let them unionize and then the cost of production will immediately rise to the point that there will be no benefit to manufacture in China any longer. An added benefit would also be that the quality of product would become so sorry that Chinese goods would lose their “luster” in the market.
Yeah! That’s the key! Send the union disease over there.
The only solution is for the Chinese government to nationalize the foreign owned factory. Oops, jumping the gun....
My guess most medical supplies, when made in the USA, are not union factories. I don’t know that for sure but that would be my guess.
In my degree program, last summer, I had to take an international business class. They push trading any US job to China and getting used to it there. Moving there is a part of the deal, for awhile at least. You can make 500k a year doing that, if you get rid of US jobs in the process.
Screw this guy and the profs that push it.
Chinese goods have “luster” in the market? Really? Can I have some of what you’re smoking?
It does happen in the USA with a foreign Pres__ent.
There are suicide nets in some of the large manufacturing villages (prisons)
Once we(USA) have off shored all of our entire manufacturing base we will have a two tiered economy which is what the gloBULLists want. Totally weak, to the point of being unable to fight a war of attrition.
Forget the personal visits... fire’em by email.
Morale of the story: Build your factories in the US in NON-UNION states.
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