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In a rare development, the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) People's Court will hold a second hearing of a discrimination lawsuit next Thursday, according to the Legal Daily.

The first hearing took place on April 26, when the Tianjin subsidiary of John Deere, an American-based Fortune 500 maker of farming and agricultural equipment, was sued for verbal abuse by three employees of Maige, a Beijing interior decoration firm contracted by the American firm to work on a project in the northern city last autumn.

The plaintiffs demanded a written apology and compensation of 10,000-16,000 yuan ($300-490).

Alan H. Fyfe, a manager with John Deere Tianjin, was accused of frequently using vulgar and derogatory terms to publicly humiliate Chinese workers.

"The workers couldn't understand what they were saying, but we could they addressed our workers as 'farm workers' simply because they thought that they were of an inferior quality," Zhang Dayong, one of the plaintiffs and a designer with Maige, told Legal Daily.

Employees of John Deere and those of the New Zealand-based TRA, the company's contracted project inspector, "were extremely picky and always very aggressive with our workers," former Maige staff member Gao Lihua said.

The 53-year-old claimed to have been manhandled by Frye, who suspected him of urinating on a project premises. Frye and Stuart Jeffery, a TRA inspector, found no evidence that such an act had taken place, but neither apologized.

Maige project manager Liao Zhonglin said he had warned the two transnational corporations about their "crude attitude towards the workers," but to little effect.

Liao said he had "never seen such a situation" during more than two decades of work in Singapore and years of experience in China.

Meanwhile, a senior representative of John Deere indicated to China Daily last night that the lawsuit was in response to a lawsuit the company had filed days earlier against Maige for its poor work.

"We were among the earliest transnational companies to enter the Chinese market and have always attached great importance to China," the representative said, while stressing that the company was not yet in a position to communicate any further details to the press.

An official John Deere statement said: "We believe John Deere has a longstanding record of integrity around the world. We believe we have shown that Deere values its employees and has deep respect for its business partners.

"Any claim that is contrary to how we do business is taken seriously and investigated."

Guo Jun, head of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions' democratic administration department, said Chinese employees of transnational companies are often verbally or physically insulted.

Managers of some foreign companies lack a basic sense of respect for these employees, and have even gone as far as ordering body searches, locking female employees in cages, making workers kneel and so on, he said.

He added that whatever the outcome, the John Deere lawsuit is significant because it shows that when fundamental life conditions are secured, workers naturally begin to request "decency".

Headquartered in Moline, Illinois, and with a history of 170 years, John Deere works on agricultural machinery, construction and consumer equipment manufacturing and operates in more than 160 countries worldwide.

(China Daily 07/12/2007 page5)