A Chinese glass manufacturer’s decision not to comply with a congressional oversight inquiry prompted Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to convene a revealing roundtable with the plant’s former workers, where they described a series of hazardous work conditions and fears for their safety. Khanna, the ranking member on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), first reached out to Fuyao Glass America and its Chinese parent company Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co., Ltd. in July, requesting documents detailing the company’s business and labor practices.
Fuyao quickly drew the attention of Americans in the Rust Belt and beyond when it became the subject of the 2019 Netflix documentary "American Factory," which chronicled its takeover of a former General Motors plant outside of Dayton, Ohio. LAWMAKERS PRESS DHS IN LETTER OVER CHINESE FORCED LABOR ALLEGATIONS, FLAG POPULAR LABUBU DOLLS The company has since been mired in scandals ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for workplace safety violations to the 2018 death of factory worker Ricky Patterson. In a subsequent October letter to Fuyao leadership, Khanna decried the company’s refusal to dialogue, condemning them for only sending one single letter in response to his numerous inquiries.
Fuyao's Sept. 23 response, Khanna wrote in his Oct. 1 letter to the company, "answers virtually none of the Committee’s questions in a material way and fails to include any document submissions." CHINA’S INFLUENCE MACHINE: FEDERAL RECORDS EXPOSE BEIJING’S PUSH TO SWAY AMERICA Despite Fuyao’s silence, Khanna made the journey to Western Ohio, an area of the country decimated by a loss of manufacturing jobs in recent decades. Khanna convened a roundtable discussion on Tuesday involving former Fuyao employees and current union leaders at the Industrial Division of the Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. DAVID MARCUS: IN DAYTON, OHIO, BOTH PARTIES FACE BITTER POLITICAL DESPONDENCY During the discussion, former Fuyao workers described unbearable heat, an inability to communicate with their Chinese supervisors, and apparent labor violations involving their Chinese counterparts, among other grievances.
"The heat in there is unbearable. They don't care," Tiffany Moore, who worked at Fuyao for three years, told the group. AMERICA’S BROKEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION SYSTEM IS REPLACING US WORKERS BY DESIGN "There's the language barrier.
They can't communicate with you. When you try to communicate with them, they'll send someone else to you. Maybe one of them speaks English," Moore continued.
Like many of the former Fuyao employees at the table, Moore now works at Duramax, a General Motors-owned engine manufacturer, where she says she is much happier. But to even apply for the position she had to employ clandestine measures to avoid retaliation from her Fuyao bosses. I'M THE ACTING SECRETARY OF LABOR AND I'M HERE TO SAY THANK YOU TO THE AMERICAN WORKER "You can't put your two weeks in because if you put your two weeks, they'll get rid of you before your two weeks come up for any reason.
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