Why Chinese ‘rescues’ of western factories can turn sour for workers | Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
For Jill Lamantia, driving a forklift was the easy part of a hard life. Like countless other industrial workers in our hometown of Dayton, Ohio, Lamantia was excited that Fuyao Glass - a major Chinese company - had bought and reopened our abandoned General Motors factory. She had a job again.
In her new role, after clocking off at the end of each shift, Lamantia retreated to a small brick house. Clutching spare keys, she would shut the front door and descend the stairs, squeezing past cleaning products on a mop rack. This Midwestern grandmother and former homeowner was living in her sister's basement. Fuyao is the world's leading automotive glassmaker. Based in China's Fujian province, the company surprised many by exporting Chinese jobs to, of all places, America. In 2014 its billionaire founder, chairman and owner, Cao Dewang, saw the symbolic power in buying the gutted GM factory and rehiring scores of former employees such as Lamantia to make glass for the windscreens of motor vehicles manufactured in the US.
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