Fears of being laid off and losing their benefits have nearly 5,000 Chinese tire workers up in arms in Shandong province over a US-based company's takeover by an Indian firm, a Chinese labor expert said on Thursday.

Cooper Tire and Rubber said last month it would be taken over by Apollo Tyres of India for $2.5 billion to create the seventh-largest tire company in the world. Chinese workers at Cooper Chengshan, a joint venture between Cooper and the Chengshan Group, protested the move on July 12, saying it would put their jobs at risk. The strike is ongoing.

Feng Xiliang, deputy dean of the school of labor economics at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, said the workers' demands and complaints are symptomatic of today's labor environment as the global economy develops.