BEIJING — China is getting its exchange-rate adjustment whether it likes it or not. While Chinese officials continue to mull the right time to let the renminbi rise, manufacturing workers are voting with their feet — and their picket lines.
Honda has offered its transmission- factory workers in China a 24 percent wage increase to head off a crippling strike. Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer for Apple and Dell, has announced wage increases of as much as 70 percent. Shenzhen, to head off trouble, has announced a 16 percent increase in the minimum wage. Beijing's municipal authorities have pre-emptively boosted the city's minimum wage by 20 percent.