THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As one business owner found to his dismay in the People's Republic of China. When Chip Starnes laid off part of the workforce of his outsourced medical supply company, the rest of the workers wanted reassurance that he would not do the same to the rest of the company. After all he does have a history of doing that.

The dispute, which has drawn a throng of police officers, Chinese reporters and American diplomats to the factory in Huairou, began when the company, which is based in Coral Springs, Fla., and manufactures medical goods like lancets and insulin syringes, closed its injection molding division and gave roughly 30 employees what Mr. Starnes described in a telephone interview on Tuesday night as a generous severance package. But rumors soon spread that Mr. Starnes was planning to close the entire plant and flee without paying the rest of the work force, which happens often in China.

Although he explained that the remaining workers were not being laid off, the remaining 100 employees barricaded the exits on Friday and stopped him from leaving until he agreed to give them compensation identical to that given to the laid-off employees, a sum he contends would bankrupt the company...

In the interview, Mr. Starnes bemoaned his fate, saying local officials were pressing him to provide lavish compensation to workers who were not scheduled to be laid off. "The union just wants to do anything that will calm the people,” he said. “They are asking me to commit business suicide.”

Workers paint a starkly different picture of a company that has not paid its employees in weeks as news spread that Specialty Medical was relocating some operations to India. “We have been given an i.o.u. for two months and all assembly lines have stopped,” said one manager, who would only give his surname, Wang. “We went without work. What were we going to do?”

The boss against the union, how can we ever decide who is right?