About 200 workers of a smelting factory gathered and blocked a highway for about two hours in a south China city for labor contract dispute early Monday morning.

The employees with Shaoguan Smelting Factory in Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province, gathered at the factory's gate at around 8:30 a.m. to protest that the factory refused to continue to sign the labor contracts as they expected. Their current labor contracts will terminate at the end of this year.

They said their interests would be much hurt if the factory refused to continue to sign the new contracts in the same way as the current ones. Most of the workers had been working in the plant for more than ten years.

The gathering blocked national highway 106 and halted traffic for two hours. They evacuated after the factory agreed to sign the new contracts in the way they expected.

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2008)