China firm confines worker to ‘small dark room’ for 4 days with no power, computer or phone
- Employee suddenly locked out of company computer system and premises, told he needs to undergo ‘training’
A bitter labour dispute in China has seen a company confine an employee to a “small dark room” for four days in a draconian bid to make him resign.
In an unusual twist, the incident came to light not via the employee but the company, Guangzhou Duoyi Network Co. Ltd, after they challenged a court ruling on the case.
The firm published the full court document on its official Weibo account, openly disagreeing with a ruling made in May by a district-level court in Sichuan province, southwestern China.
The court decided that Guangzhou Duoyi Network’s subsidiary in Sichuan should pay the employee, Liu Linzhu, 380,000 yuan (US$52,200) in compensation for their actions.
However, the company responded by saying: “We believe that there are many problems with the labour laws which severely hinder economic development and are arbitrarily enforced by judges who distort the facts.”
The court’s official website has not yet made records of the trial public.
