Toyota Plans to Reopen China Factory as Denso Restarts Plant

San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 2010

June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Denso Corp., Japan's biggest auto parts maker, said employees agreed to return to work at a Chinese factory after a strike that has disrupted Toyota Motor Corp.'s production in the country.

Toyota, the world's largest carmaker, aims to restart a plant in Guangzhou early next week after the walkout at Denso's plant in the southern Chinese city forced it to shut down, said Liu Peng, a spokesman for the automaker in Beijing.

At least eight strikes in the past month have forced suppliers to Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. in China to raise wages, increasing the carmakers' production costs in the world's largest automobile market. Pressure for higher pay is rising as workers demand a greater share of the benefits of economic development, said Bill Russo, a Beijing-based senior adviser at Booz & Co.

The workforce "has not been benefiting or participating in that development through the ability to consume the goods they are producing," Russo said. "That imbalance has to be corrected."

Sadayoshi Yokoyama, a spokesman for Aichi, Japan-based Denso, said talks over wages continue with the workers who struck at the Guangzhou factory, even as they have returned to the production lines.

--With assistance from Takako Iwatani and Tian Ying. Editors: Terje Langeland, Dave McCombs

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/24/bloomberg1376-L4K19Q1A74E901-04B9QINNJKG3M90OPT497186F5.DTL#ixzz0rr7zbwsP