Production lines were stopped in a strike at the Foshan Honda plant in May. The strike led to Foshan Honda eventually offering 1,900 workers in Foshan a 24 to 32% pay raise. The strikers were prepared to accept an increase of their monthly wage by 800 Yuan and nothing less. After an initial strike on 17 May Honda persuaded the workers to return to work the next day promising to consider the demands. However, when no deal had been struck by 21 May, the workers went back on strike. Anticipating retaliation and no support from the official trade union, the two workers who led the strike, Tan Guocheng and Xiao Lang, quit and left the workplace not long after the strike. The negotiation representatives elected by the workers were also subject to pressure from both management and the government. On 4 June, after negotiations involving the local government in Foshan and Japanese executives, Honda agreed to the large pay raise, though short of the workers’ demands.
In June some 1,500 workers at the Honda Lock factory in Guangdong disrupted production for a week over pay. The dispute was finally resolved with management agreeing to increase wages. Previous strikes at Guangqi Honda were also resolved. In July, strikes broke out at another Honda parts factory, Sumitec Co. in Foshan, after workers demanded higher pay rates which they had calculated after researching comparative rates in the region. They also asked the company to apologise over its threats to fire 90 workers involved in the complaint and to promise not to lay off any employees for the next two years.
Strikers were also calling for the election of workers’ own representatives and the re-election of trade union officials after the union had done nothing to support them, siding instead with management. With the intervention of the upper level trade union, re-elections of the trade union officers were held at the Foshan Honda plant after the strike.
Hundreds of further strikes were reported during May, June and July in car manufacturing and electronics in the south but also in Shanghai and Tianjin, and included strikes at other Honda and Toyota factories.