Toyoda Gosei Co, a car parts maker affiliated with Toyota Motor Corp, said on Friday it has halted production since Thursday afternoon at a plant in Tianjin, China, due to a strike.
The strike took place at the No.2 plant of Tianjin Toyoda Gosei Co, a manufacturing venture which employs about 1 800 to operate two factories, a Toyoda Gosei spokesman said.
The affected plant makes interior and exterior parts such as instrument panels.
"Workers are demanding higher wages. We don't yet have an idea of when we can resume operation at the plant, but we aim to reach agreement with the union early enough to avoid an impact on our clients," the Toyoda Gosei spokesman said.
It was not immediately clear how much capacity the affected plant has, though the spokesman said the No.2 plant has slightly more capacity than the other.
The strike comes against a backdrop of walkouts in recent weeks that has paralysed several factories across China.
Toyoda Gosei faced a 1-day production stoppage on Tuesday at another Tianjin plant, which makes car doors, due to strike action. The strike at the Tianjin Star Light Rubber and Plastic Co plant was resolved by an agreement to review wages.
A Tokyo-based spokesman at Toyota Motor, whose biggest assembly plant in China is in Tianjin and uses parts supplied by Toyoda Gosei's Tianjin plants, said on Friday its public relations department was checking whether operations at the assembly plant were impacted.
On Thursday, Toyota said it keeps some spare parts in inventory in China to allow it to cope with unexpected situations and that it had not been impacted by the production suspension on Tuesday at the Tianjin Star Light plant.
Shares of Toyoda Gosei fell 1.7 percent to 2 379 yen, and Toyota was down 1.8 percent at 3 235 yen.
The shares underperformed the Topix subindex for the auto sector, which slipped 1.3 percent. The benchmark Nikkei stock average was up 0.2 percent. - Reuters