福布斯杂志 大裁员？在繁荣的中国？

看到中国本土公司和跨国公司最新一轮的大裁员，你无从得知该国正处于前所未有的经济繁荣期。

　　中国最大的电信设备制造商华为已经提出解雇5000多名员工。上月，沃尔玛在上海的全球采购中心炒掉了110名工作人员。同时，全国各地都有官员大规模裁员的报道：从北京一所幼儿园愤怒的工人到深圳最近被解雇的数百教师以及当地私人企业的更多类似事件。

　　该国最大的电视台中央电视台则更早采取行动，在8月解雇了1800名临时雇员（人数占总人手的20%），韩国LG电子在7月裁掉11%的中国员工。

　　发生什么事了？在早些时候，这样的裁员声明听起来像是个别事件。当星星之火成燎原之势，中国媒体和分析家开始寻找这些大裁员的共同点，指出高危人群：某些临时工人，他们的雇主如今必须签署更大的成本，而且长期服务的员工很快就可以拿到几乎是铁定的雇用期。这些都多亏了将于2008年1月1日生效的新国家劳动法。

　　新法可能提高许多公司在中国营运的成本架构。世界第四大数码相机制造商日本奥林巴斯本周决定巴新的生产厂设在越南，而不是在中国现有的两家厂的基础上再增加。人们认为这个决定也是受新法影响。

　　新法的支持者，包括中国总理温家宝，旨在给该国长期处于不利地位的低收入工人提供更好的保护，而企业和企业主则更关注未来减少规模举措的困难和成本增加。

　　新法在历经三年的起草阶段后，于6月通过。新法规定雇主要给连续服务十年的员工提供永久雇用，以免员工在被裁掉（除了法律规定的某些极端情况）。华为和LG都瞄准了那些工龄接近10年的员工。

　　新法的另一个大受益人是长期临时工，他们目前还没有正式合同。如果他们和公司签署临时合同两次以上，或者他们在公司当了十年以上的临时工，他们就应该被聘用为正式员工。受中央电视台和深圳学校最近的裁员波及的工人就属于这种情况。

　　新法还引入入强制雇主为合同员工购买保险、提供与通货膨胀挂钩的裁员补偿金、以及提供新的强制性有薪假期等福利。

　　全国的雇主如今密切关注其他竞争者怎样回应新法，以此作为保护底线空间的指引，而警惕的员工则拭目以待自己是否就是下一个要离开的人。

　　这样，国有和半国有公司的雇员对国家强大伞形劳工组织（全国总工会）的干涉感到高兴。华为的成长得到中国人民解放军的支持。官方新华社10日发文表示华文必须搁置目前的裁员行动，寻求公司工会的批准，公司要和全国工会达成妥协。

　　沃尔玛和LG之前解雇的雇员就没有这么幸运了。尽管沃尔玛去年采取了空前的措施，允许它的中国零售业务设立工会，但它在中国拥有1000名员工的全球采购中心（独立运作）还没有被工会化。但是，LG的前雇员一直在寻求当地政府劳动局的仲裁补救。（作者 Shu-Ching Jean Chen）


Mass Layoffs? In Booming China?

Shu-Ching Jean Chen

HONG KONG - Looking at the latest wave of mass layoffs made by China’s locally owned and multinational corporations alike, you wouldn’t know the country is in the midst of an unprecedented economic boom.

China’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, Huawei Technologies, has proposed dismissing more than 5,000 employees. Last month, Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) laid off 110 staff in its global procurement center in Shanghai. At the same time, mass layoffs were reported from across the country, from angry workers at a kindergarten in Beijing to hundreds of teachers recently dismissed in Shenzhen and many more at local private enterprises. That follows earlier actions taken in August by the nation’s largest television station, China Central Television, which sent home 1,800 of its temporary employees, making up 20% of its workforce, and in July by South Korea’s LG Electronics (other-otc: LGEAF - news - people ), which after a 14-year presence in the country retrenched, lopping off 11% of its China head count.

What’s going on? Earlier, such layoff announcements looked like isolated incidents. As trickles turned into tidal waves, China’s media and analysts started to find a common denominator in these mass layoffs, pinpointing the high-risk groups: certain temporary workers, whom employers now must sign on at a greater cost, and staff that have served long tenures, who will soon receive almost ironclad terms of employment, all thanks to a new national labor law, effective January 1, 2008.

The new law, which threatens to raise the cost structure of many companies operating in China, is also blamed for the decision this week by the world’s fourth-largest digital camera maker, Japan’s Olympus (other-otc: OCPNY - news - people ), to locate a new production plant in Vietnam rather than adding to its existing two in China.

Proponents of the new law, including China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, point to the better protection it offers to the country’s long-disadvantaged low-income workers, whereas corporations and business owners are concentrating on the increased difficulty and higher cost of any future downsizing initiatives.

The new labor law, passed in June after it spent three years in the drafting stage, dictates that employers provide employees that have worked ten consecutive years with the company a contract of permanent employment that would protect them from redundancies except under certain extreme circumstances spelled out in the legislation. Huawei and LG Electronics, not coincidentally, targeted for job cuts staff members who were approaching the ten-year limit.

Another big beneficiary of the new law will be long-term temporary workers, who currently are not covered by formal contracts. They should be hired as formal staff if they have signed temporary contracts with a company more than twice or if the duration of their temporary status exceeds ten years. Recent layoffs at CCTV and the Shenzhen schools involved workers falling under this heading.

The new law also introduces benefits such as mandatory employer-paid insurance for contracted employees, layoff compensation payouts to be pegged to inflation and new compulsory paid holidays to be given to Chinese laborers.

Corporate employers across the country are watching closely how other competitors respond to the new law as a guide as to what wiggle room they might have to protect their bottom lines, while wary employees are waiting to see whether they might be the next to go.

Hence, employees at state-owned or quasi-state companies are particularly pleased by the intervention by the nation’s powerful umbrella labor organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, in the situation at Huawei, a company growing in good part from the support of the People’s Liberation Army. In a dispatch issued on Saturday, the official Xinhua News Agency said Huawei must shelve its current layoff action and to seek approval from its company labor union as part of a compromise reached between the company and the nationwide union federation.

Employees previously dismissed by Wal-Mart and LG Electronics won’t be so lucky. Even though Wal-Mart last year took the unprecedented step of allowing labor unions to function within its China retail operations, its 1,000-member global procurement center in China, which operates as a separate unit, has not been unionized and thus would not be shielded from job dismissals. Former LG workers, though, have been seeking remedy in the form of arbitration from their local government labor bureau.