In China’s Guangdong province, a strike at the Honda Lock Co. plant ended on Monday with a small pay increase, but many of the striking workers were replaced by newly recruited ones.

The striking workers were hoping to win large concessions from their employer—doubling of their monthly salary and free accommodations—similar to concessions won recently by employees at a Honda transmissions plant to the north.

The ones who agreed to return to work accepted a raise of about $30 U.S. dollars a month—much less than the $250–$300 raise they had been hoping for.

But it seems Honda was unwilling to meet those demands for the relatively unskilled jobs at Honda Lock. Instead the company launched a massive local recruiting effort, which attracted many new workers and forced the strikers to return to work or risk being out of a job.

Analysts wonder what kind of precedent this will set for the push and pull between labor and foreign industry in China’s industrial south. Workers have been trying to capitalize on a shrinking labor force to push for improvements, but this would suggest that there are plenty of Chinese laborers willing to jump at a new job with slightly better compensation.