Bosses Held Hostage Over 2-Minute Bathroom Breaks

Hundreds of Chinese factory workers held their Japanese and Chinese managers hostage for a day and a half over ... strictly timed bathroom breaks. About 1,000 workers at Shanghai Shinmei Electric Company kept the 18 managers inside the factory in Shanghai starting Friday morning until just before midnight Saturday. The managers were released uninjured after 300 police officers were called to the factory.

A security guard at the plant explained that the workers "demanded the scrapping of the ridiculously strict requirements stipulating that workers only have two minutes to go to the toilet and workers will be fined [$8] if they are late once and fired if they are late twice." The managers apparently agreed to reconsider the rules. (More China stories.)