‘Fears for their safety’: Congressman hears complaints about Chinese-run factory in America

By Bob Unruh

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)

A member of Congress has convened a round table that featured testimony about the threats to workers’ lives from a Chinese business operation in Ohio.

The plant, by a Chinese glass company called Fuyao Glass America, already has refused to cooperate with congressional inquiries, according to a report posted online by Fox News.

It is Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who set up the time for former workers at the plant to talk about what they “described a series of hazardous work conditions and fears for their safety.”

Khanna is ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and confirmed he had reached out to Fuyao Glass America and its Chinese parent company Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co., Ltd. in July, seeking information on the company’s business and labor practices.

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The company had been studied in a 2019 Netflix show called “American Factory.”

“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,” Fox reported.

Khanna later complained to the company about its refusal to “dialogue.” He charged the company’s single letter response “answers virtually none of the Committee’s questions in a material way and fails to include any document submissions.”

At the roundtable, problems at the plant were described.

“The heat in there is unbearable. They don’t care,” Tiffany Moore, who worked at Fuyao for three years, told the group.

“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.

Moore now works elsewhere.

Another worker, Demetria Hodges, who also fled Fuyao, described how a Chinese forklift driver, who she believed to be unlicensed, struck her with the machine and faced no accountability.

“It was on camera, they have cameras in there, and they acted like they didn’t know who the forklift driver was,” she told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “So when I tried to pursue a lawsuit and my workman’s comp, they pretended like they didn’t know who the person was.”

Chinese workers faced even worse conditions, Moore said. “They were treated horrible. They weren’t allowed to take anything from us. They weren’t really allowed to communicate with us. They weren’t allowed to mix with us.”

“Darrell Jones, another former Fuyao employee, told Khanna he felt the workers needed a union backing them, a point which quickly drew heated commentary from the group,” the report said.

OSHA, in fact, fined Fuyao $7,000 for the conditions that led to the death of Patterson, who was crushed by a load of glass.

“There’s a guy used to work there, he passed away, he used to tell me all the time, he said he told you guys that ‘you ought to be able to expect deaths in that plant,'” Sam Sanders, the president of IUE-CWA’s local Dayton chapter told the group.

Khanna told the network foreign investment can be welcome in America, but “They have to do things, not like they do in foreign countries, but like they do in America.”

Khanna himself has been a lightning rod for scandal in recent weeks and months:

Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is currently a news editor for the WND News Center, and also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.


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