A two-day strike by workers at a car parts plant of Japan's Denso Corp., in south China's Guangdong Province, has stopped production and supplies to Toyota, Honda and other carmakers in China.

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, almost 300 employees, mainly teenagers or people in their twenties, were sitting in the factory in Nansha District in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, demanding more pay and improved welfare.

The strike started at 8:30 a.m. Monday when more than 200 employees began a sit-in in the factory and others gathered at the south gate of the plant.

"The salary is only 1,300 yuan (191 U.S. dollars) a month, including meal subsidies, while my rent costs me 200 yuan a month. The salary is too low," said a worker surnamed Zhang from central China's Hunan Province.

A two-day strike by workers at a car parts plant of Japan's Denso Corp., in south China's Guangdong Province, has stopped production and supplies to Toyota, Honda and other carmakers in China. [Rednet.cn]

One of the workers, who hoped to raise their salaries by 800 to 1,000 yuan a month, said the strike was "an explosion after long time of accumulated rancor."

"I feel not respected by the human resources department. They often say, 'You can leave if you think other plants are better,' when we ask for something. We do not have the sense of belonging," a female worker told Xinhua.

Zeng Qinghong, general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Group, talked to the striking employees Tuesday. An employee surnamed Zhang, from Hunan, said Zeng advised them to return to work first and select delegates to discuss the pay issue later.

Zhang said Zeng promised to resolve the salary problem in three months, but he gave the workers no specifics.

Other automobile part suppliers near the Denso factory called a holiday Monday.

"Our salary is also 1,300 yuan a month. I came here to see whether the Denso workers would succeed," said a 20-year-old worker at the Yingtai company, a supplier of car seats for Toyota.

The strike at Denso had halted orders from Toyota to other suppliers, which lead to the "holiday," said the employee.

As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, no delegates had been selected and the employees left on buses.

"We need time to select delegates," said an employee surnamed Zhang.

Officials of Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Labor Union of Nansha District Government have arrived at the factory and launched an investigation.

Union officials tried to distribute pens and paper so the strikers could write down their demands, but they simply sat and refused to comply, said Liu Xi, a spokesman of the district government.

The strikers said strikes at the Honda and Toyota factories in Foshan City, also in Guangdong, had influenced them.

The first strike occurred at Foshan Nanhai Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Company on May 17 and lasted until June 1, ending with a pay rise of 600 yuan a month.

The second ended on June 9 after Foshan Fengfu Autoparts Co. Ltd., a parts supplier to Honda, agreed to raise each worker's monthly salary by 135 yuan with regular annual increases and to allow the formation of a trade union.

Both strikes forced Honda assembly plants in China to halt production.

Zhu Linjie, a Beijing-based spokesman for Honda, said the Denso plant was only one of the factories in China hit by strikes, which had affected Honda production.

Production would not be suspended again in the near future, but other suppliers might be affected if the the strikes continued, Zhu s