After more than a week of work disruptions, a strike a unit of Atsumitec, which supplies gear shift levers for Hondas, ended. Honda said on July 22 that production remained unaffected.
"We have heard (from Atsumitec) that the strike is over," a Honda spokesman in Japan said. "What we can say is that all assembly plants are operating as usual," he added, declining to elaborate further.
Officials at Atsumitec Co -- 48% owned by Honda -- were not immediately available to comment.
Workers were seeking a pay rise of 500 yuan (US$73.70) a month, Xinhua news agency reported previously, but it was not clear if their demands had been met or when the workers had resumed their duties.
A separate strike at an electronic components factory owned by Japanese firm Omron Corp also had not disrupted Honda's production, the spokesman said. That work stoppage lasted only one day this week, and operations fully resumed on Thursday, Omron spokesman Arihiro Yokota said. He said the strike ended "as the company agreed part of the workers' demands for a pay rise," but refused to disclose details of the agreement.
Honda president Takanobu Ito apologized on July 20 about the "commotion" created by the strikes. "What we have discussed within Honda is that employees and the local management did not have enough communication," he said.
"There are lessons to be learned from the China case -- we need to have good communication.... It is an area we need to work on (and) measures have been introduced at the management level."
Honda said last week its sales had fallen 2.7% year-on-year in June after its China operations were crippled in recent weeks by work stoppages.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010
