China urges improvements at work as Honda strike ends

* Chinese premier urges improved treatment of workers

* Workers waiting until Friday for new deal

* Factory continues replacement hiring campaign

By James Pomfret

ZHONGSHAN, China (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged better treatment of the nation's vast army of migrant laborers as employees at a Honda factory halted the latest strike that has laid bare growing worker assertiveness.

The strike at the factory making locks for Honda vehicles was the latest labor dispute to hit factories in southern China's Pearl River Delta, a sprawling industrial zone that makes nearly a third of the country's exports, by workers demanding a greater piece of China's growing economic wealth.

If it spreads, the ripples of unrest could present hard choices for China's ruling Communist Party, which has vowed to raise the incomes of hundreds of millions of farmers and migrant workers, but also wants to keep export-driven industry humming and stifle any threats to top-down Party control.

In the most high-level comments to touch on migrant worker conditions since the strikes broke out, Wen said he recognized that a new generation moving from poor villages to work in factories and on building sites would not be satisfied with the same tough conditions their parents endured.

"Rural migrant workers are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce. Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat," Wen told a group of migrant workers in Beijing on Monday, the official People's Daily reported on Tuesday.

"Your labor is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society. The government and all parts of society should treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children."

Wen's published comments did not directly address the recent labor unrest. But he told a group of young and vocal migrant workers that he "understood" their complaints about demanding conditions, long hours, and drab lives.

Some workers, however, both at a striking Honda plant and at a nearby work center plastered with notices for jobs paying slightly more than minimum levels, dismissed Wen's rhetoric and called for more formal policy intervention to extend recent increases of minimum wages in Chinese coastal regions.

"At least he (Wen) makes us feel that workers aren't being ignored," said one striking worker. "But what he's doing is limited ... wage levels shouldn't be set just by factory bosses, the government needs to do more."

A recent survey by Hong Kong's trade promotion body in the Pearl River Delta indicated worker wages had already risen 17 percent over the past six months, partly given labor shortages and to retain skilled workers as export orders pick up again.

At the Honda Lock factory, hundreds of workers streamed back to work on a drizzly morning in the South China city of Zhongshan, ending a work stoppage that began nearly a week ago when hundreds of the plant's 1,500 workers went on strike.

Some said they'd agreed to come back until Friday, when management has promised to give a new offer on their wage demands, after an earlier raise of 200 yuan was deemed too low.

"If it's a small increase (on Friday), we'll probably go on strike again," said one young woman arriving for work.

NEW OFFER

The labor unrest has hit some foreign-owned factories in China as a new generation of migrant workers presses for more of the nation's growing wealth. The government has estimated that there are about 130 million migrant laborers.

The outburst of strikes continues a pattern of recent years that took a pause during the global financial crisis, and it could intensify pressures for higher industrial wages in the world's third biggest economy, which produces many of the world's consumer goods.

The Chinese strikes prompted the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor group, to consider asking President Barack Obama's administration to investigate whether China gains an unfair trade advantage by denying workers' rights.

Some workers said they had agreed to return only grudgingly, and might not do much inside the factory, while others said they'd been subject to threats by officials and pressured to end the strike and be replaced by fresh recruits.

About 50 potential new hires hopped aboard a large coach parked outside the factory gates and were taken to a local training center as police monitored proceedings.

"We haven't signed anything yet ... but they said they'll train us first and the wages they've offered seem good," said one migrant from Guangxi province at the training center.

Honda spokesman Hirotoshi Sato said it was the Japanese company's understanding that workers at Honda Lock had returned for three days ahead of an expected new offer. He said, however, that he hadn't heard about any new hires nor of threats directed at workers.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in BEIJING; Isabel Reynolds in TOKYO; Writing by Doug Young and Chris Buckley; Editing by Nick Macfie)