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Not too long ago, Microsoft axed 3,000 employees as a part of the massive 18,000 layoffs the company announced earlier this year. The company didn’t mention which department will suffer the most, but they were believed to be from support staff in human resources, finance, sales, marketing and IT departments from different regions.
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According to a new report surfacing from Chinese shores, Microsoft dismissed the Xbox R&D department in China. It was a sudden announcement, and it seems the company wants to move the R&D department back to the US. What’s more surprising is that employees didn’t even knew about it beforehand, when they should receive a one month’s notice before dismissal as per laws. They were told about the dismissal of the department — which has almost 80 employees — when they arrived for work in the morning and found their cards to be dysfunctional.
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The human resource managers also offered the affected employees a severance package of of about $2,560 plus one month’s salary to sign the dismissal agreement. However, as per the report from the news publication, most of the employees refused to sign it as it was not as per the Chinese labor laws. If they refused to, they will be contacted by Microsoft’s legal department, and “everything will be done in accordance with the Chinese laws.”
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“Many of us [had worked] overtime last night,” said the source. “But the entrance cards were dysfunctional when we came to office this morning. And the agency workers got their cards confiscated in the afternoon.”
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The software giant set up its center in Shenzhen in 2005, and had three departments: Xbox R&D, Surface R&D and Surface production. The report also mentioned several people were laid off in the other two departments this year as well.
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