FEW COULD have predicted the fallout last month after Xingyu Automotive Lighting, a big car-parts maker in eastern China, decided it had hired too many people over the summer. The company gave an ultimatum to some 140 fresh graduates who had been employed there for just a few weeks: either resign with half a month’s salary or pick up a screwdriver and take a poorly paid job on the factory floor. More than 100 chose to leave. In China, where worker-protection laws are feeble, sudden lay-offs of this sort are nasty, but hardly unheard of.
… Officials have already ordered state-owned companies to hire more graduates. They will be hoping that Xingyu’s humiliation will prompt private companies also to take note, says Jenny Chan, a sociologist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She says the government wants everyone to “share the national responsibility” and avoid lay-offs if at all possible.
Thanks for Gabriel Crossley’s interview.
