In China, workers can hold their bosses hostage until they pay up.

Workers detained Chip Starnes, a co-owner of Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, at his factory near Beijing for about a week. He eventually coughed up an undisclosed settlement that he described as "unjust," but said he was relieved to be released on Thursday.

Mr. Starnes's company makes supplies for diabetics—an industry that is burgeoning along with global body fat—yet he decided to move his plastics division from China to take advantage of leaner labor costs in India. This is like getting upset about the prices at Wal-Mart and running off to the Dollar Store, but it's how some people operate in the global economy.

When employees saw him shipping away his equipment, they locked arms in a circle around him. China stole jobs from America. Now, India steals jobs from China. Globalism giveth and globalism taketh. Unless, of course, you bar the doors.

During his captivity, Mr. Starnes gave media interviews through the security bars on his window, resulting in photographs that looked like prison mugs. "I feel like a trapped animal," he told the Associated Press, and described his treatment as "inhumane." You hear that kind of talk from employees all the time, but rarely from the boss.

Mr. Starnes said laid-off workers received severance packages. Retained workers worried the rest of the company would soon be moved to India, so they demanded severance packages, too. Some complained they hadn't been paid in weeks—a charge Mr. Starnes denied.

In America, taking the boss hostage mostly just happens in the movies. Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin took their greedy and sexist boss hostage in the 1980 comedy "9 to 5." Ms. Parton sang a theme song that lamented: "It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it; And you spend your life, puttin' money in his wallet."

The Chinese have seen too many plant closings by foreign owners who skip out on the pay they owe workers. It happens often enough that Chinese authorities don't interfere when employees detain their bosses. What we call felony kidnapping, they call dispute resolution.

The process is even used to settle disputes over bathroom breaks. This happened in January, when about 1,000 workers at Shanghai Shinmei Electric locked up 18 bosses. It's astonishing that any manager who knows that executive hostage-taking is tolerated would try to enforce a two-minute limit on the toilet. Nobody can possibly enforce this kind of rule at home, so why try it at work?

Taking the boss hostage is far more efficient than a class-action lawsuit or filing a complaint before some government regulator. When a boss is free to roam about, dispute resolution can take years.

We saw this at bankrupt Hostess—where union employees blamed incompetent managers, management blamed fat union contracts and others blamed changing tastes toward food. The fight resulted in a protracted bankruptcy case, the loss of 15,000 jobs and the disappearance of an iconic golden sponge cake from store shelves.

A new owner bought what was left of the company out of bankruptcy court and hopes to finally have Twinkies back in stock by July 15. But all of this might have been avoided if someone had just shoved the Hostess bosses in a box.

We could have been eating Twinkies all along. And that's just good business for a company that makes diabetic supplies in China or India or wherever Mr. Starnes goes next.

—Al Lewisis a columnist for Dow Jones Newswires in Denver. He blogs at; his email address is