Human Events by: Vanessa Battaglia
Somewhere in the suburban sprawl of greater Dayton, Ohio, men bathe with a garden hose in a residential backyard. Inside the house, they’re packed in five to a room. The neighbors can see the crudely fashioned bunkbeds through the un-curtained windows. The peculiar housemates are ferried out each day in a white van – to Fuyao Glass America.
It is what you think it is – and the feds agree. The Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating Chinese-owned Fuyao Glass America for “potential human smuggling” as well as labor and financial crimes.
In 2016, Fuyao Glass America, already operational in Illinois, Michigan, and South Carolina, opened the world’s largest automobile glass production factory in Moraine, Ohio. Fuyao spent $600M refurbishing a former GM factory – that had been shuttered due to the overall effects of outsourcing to China – but also received taxpayer-funded and privately-funded “new business” incentives from various Ohio state agencies including “millions” from JobsOhio.
A chorus of pro-CCP and other self-serving stakeholder voices proclaimed this development “special” and a formula for “the future.” U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, noted that he had worked “to require bidders on the property to demonstrate a clear benefit to Moraine” to ensure the ultimate match would be proper. Fuyao had been looking for a site, and the City of Moraine had been looking for a business-tenant; with Rep. Turner’s blessing, the state of Ohio paid for the wedding and the down-payment on the house.
In 2019 Netflix released American Factory, a documentary about Fuyao that was purchased by the Obamas post-production for their Higher Ground Productions project. The documentary reveals abusive labor practices, anti-union (and illegal) employee terminations, and translated derogatory statements made by the Chinese management – in a private, Chinese-only training meeting – regarding the American employees. All against the backdrop of Fuyao management’s complaints of difficulty achieving profitability at this site – as if this justifies communist-style corporate management. Somehow the film, a disorienting mixture of feel-good schmaltz alongside nauseating communist corruption, seems like a limited hangout designed to resign the audience to the bad news.
The only negative outcome from the rather damning expose was an investigation and $120k fine from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for Fuyao’s wrongful termination of three employees over attempted union formation. JobsOhio retracted a previous statement celebrating Fuyao’s victory over union formation. Ohio Governor Mike Dewine floated the idea of withdrawing Fuyao’s tax incentives based on NLRB’s findings, but this did not come to pass.
Fuyao Glass America and its parent company, Fuyao Glass Industry Group, went on to release various statements in August 2020 that, together, suggest that 400 employees had been laid off from Fuyao’s 2,300-employee Moraine factory over the prior year. Ohio requires layoffs of this magnitude to be officially reported, but Fuyao evidently failed to do this. The yard baths cometh.
Beginning in 2022, an individual in a Moraine-adjacent town reported seeing 25 men living in the house next door. Since then, multiple people across several towns have come forward with many such observations. One set of housemates appeared wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, carrying belongings in shopping bags, followed by “running suits” after a trip in the van, followed by Fuyao outfits after another week.
Altogether, 27 residential properties were raided by DHS this summer, as part of the Fuyao investigation. Quick math using the 1-2 dozen Fuyao-uniform-clad inhabitants observed in the respective homes suggests that this is an imported workforce that replaced the 400 laid-off employees.
The properties themselves are owned by a connected network of people and LLCs, all related to Fuyao and to the FBI investigation. These include Hanbing Yu, who owns three of the raided homes; and HELI Real Estate Trading Company, incorporated by Guo Qiang Lin, who lives on the same street as the address of HELI Real Estate. The latter owns 10 properties in the area, while Guo Qiang Lin personally owns another property that was raided by the FBI. Yet other properties the FBI raided are owned by companies that are in turn owned by HELI Real Estate or Guo Qiang Lin…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (humanevents.com)
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