By the afternoon, however, busloads of employees were returning to the plant after LG Display posted notices saying shifts would resume and year-end bonuses would be equal to "200 percent," apparently indicating that Lunar New Year bonuses would be equivalent to two months' salary, addressing workers' complaints that their bonuses were too small.
A spokeswoman in Seoul for the South Korean company, Claire Ohm, confirmed the labor dispute after a report by the New York-based China Labor Watch said the strike began on Monday.
"Some of our production has been suspended," Ohm said about the Nanjing plant. She did not confirm that bonus issues were the cause of the strike but said the company would resume production on Thursday.
China's industrial workers, many of them migrant laborers from villages struggling to establish a foothold in urban areas, have increasingly resorted to strikes in recent years.
Ohm did not say how many workers had stopped work or how much production had been curtailed.
"We and the Nanjing city government are jointly negotiating with workers to smoothly reach an agreement and we expect the problems to be resolved soon," she said.
A worker at the factory told Reuters that the core of contention was disappointment over year-end bonuses after employees were told that they would receive the equivalent of one month's wages as a bonus later in January.
"The workers are upset because we understand that bonuses can be low in a bad year, but 2009 wasn't good and they paid three times base salary," said the worker, who declined to give his name. "We don't understand it."
LG Display, the leading flat-screen maker, produces LCD modules for notebook computers and monitors at the Nanjing plant, Ohm said. The company has two other module plants in China.
The notice making the new bonus offer said LG Display's business had suffered since the second half of 2010 "due to the global slump in the LCD sector," and that the factory stoppage since Monday had "brought major losses for the company."
It also threatened to seek punishment of workers who "refuse to return to work and spread false information."
RISING ANGER
Chinese Internet sites circulated pictures said to be from the Nanjing plant, with hundreds of workers massed at a factory building and standing around a toppled Christmas tree. Reuters could not confirm that the pictures were from the plant.
Wages for Chinese workers have risen in recent years, but the gains have been offset by inflation that has pushed up costs for housing, schooling and healthcare in urban areas.
This strike, like previous stoppages, also reflects Chinese workers' anger about what they see as unequal treatment compared with foreign employees.
China's growth-focused government has often punished strikers for disrupting production and sullying the country's reputation for maintaining a cheap, disciplined work force.
But strikes have become increasingly common and more tolerated by the central government, which has said wages for workers must grow to nurture more consumer spending.
Officials in several Nanjing government departments contacted by Reuters either said they had not heard about the strike or referred inquiries to other departments.
Earlier this month, nearly 1,000 workers at a Japanese-owned factory in southern China protested to demand compensation in accordance with their length of service after a change in the plant's ownership, according to media reports at the time.
A succession of strikes last year disrupted production at Japanese-owned vehicle parts plants across southern China.
