Global Times | By Song Shengxia
The Beijing office of Motorola Mobility said Friday that the company will provide higher-than-required compensation to laid-off employees at their Beijing office and help them find jobs after some employees in the Beijing office held an half-hour protest at noon the same day to protest the layoffs.
“We understand these changes are very hard on the employees affected and have provide compensation higher than required by law,” Motorola said in a statement sent to the Global Times Friday.
Motorola will do all it can to help these employees survive this hard time and provide them with compensation and re-employment services to help them find new jobs, the statement said.
About 100 employees of Motorola Beijing attended the protest on Friday morning, holding posters which said “oppose violent layoffs and demand equal consultation,” the news website ifeng.com reported Friday.
The employees stated that they were protesting because Motorola’s trade union signed the layoff agreements without giving notice to affected employees and they were unaware of the existence of the trade union, the report said.
Protesters were not satisfied because Motorola’s compensation plan does not include compensation for unused annual leave and reimbursement of housing subsidy, Tencent online reported.
Protesters also said that around 600 or 700 employees at Motorola Beijing will be laid off and another 500 will be dismissed at Motorola’s R&D center in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province, the report said.
A staff member at the property management office in Motorola Beijing’s office building told the Global Times Friday that some of Motorola’s employees received the layoff notice Tuesday and could not reach an agreement with the company regarding the layoff arrangement.
The staff members said protesters dissipated in the afternoon but are unaware if they have reached agreements with the company on the layoffs.
A former senior manager at Motorola Beijing who had worked for Motorola for nine years and wished to remain anonymous told the Global Times that he left Motorola in April because he anticipated some changes would occur after Google Inc purchased Motorola Mobility.
“The latest layoff is the company’s largest in almost eight years worldwide, and the R&D center in Nanjing will be totally shut down,” he said.
According to the former manager, Motorola’s compensation plan is that laid-off employees will receive a salary till September 20, and the compensation will equal three times the average monthly salary multiplied by the number of years each individual employee has served at Motorola, plus two months salary.
“When more than 20 employees or 10 percent of a company’s total workforce are laid off, the company must compensate employees with three times the employee’s average monthly salary multiplied by the number of years each individual employee has served at the company, according to the labor law,” Dong Baohua, a Shanghai-based labor lawyer, told the Global Times.