BYD's layoffs continue to ferment and adopt silent processing

BYD's layoffs continue to ferment.

After Wang Chuanfu’s large-scale layoff of his auto workers, another source said that BYD’s layoffs will spread to a wider area and the number of layoffs will reach 7,000. However, BYD denied it. What is the truth of the matter is already confusing? This is normal in China. However, Wang Chuanfu and BYD did not say "I can say responsibly that media reports are irresponsible."

At the beginning of the layoff of the automotive business, BYD Automotive denied this. However, with more and more personnel leaving and BYD’s internal adjustment of business units, there have been two versions of layoffs, one for media and one for BYD. Before deciding which one is true, the employees who left the company and the employees who planned to safeguard their rights gave the answer.

In a normal and mature market, similar incidents such as layoffs occur, and both the employer and the employee will give clear answers. Take the recent negotiations between the American Automobile Workers Association and the three major vehicle manufacturers in Detroit as an example. Both the GM that has reached an agreement and the still-negotiated Chrysler and Ford can all speak openly. China often boasts of car sales that exceed the United States, but behind this figure, China and the cars it produces are far from the United States.

In fact, this matter can be traced back further. When entering the automobile business, Wang Chuanfu chose to use his people to build up his automobile empire. This determines that BYD must recruit a large number of employees. The reason is that employing people can reduce costs. Because all systems have great flexibility. In other words, BYD and Wang Chuanfu already realized that they had no need to pay high costs when they retired their workers. Therefore, after the occurrence of layoff incidents, it is inevitable that there will be such a result.

Since the incident to date, no organization has been able and willing to communicate with BYD's downsized employees to safeguard their rights and interests. This is a terrible sign. Some of the employees cut by BYD began to unite, but the current atmosphere has made it difficult to ensure that they can get their due compensation through normal channels. Or, BYD and its regulators are waiting for the opportunity.

This is not without law. When labor disputes occurred at the Honda Automobile Nanhai Parts Factory, the worker's organizers were forced to leave the factory under the influence of various forces. In the eyes of the management of the capital and government, it is only safe to let such people leave them. And this is also the premise that they can engage in dialogue with workers. Before such rules of the game, the interests of workers are not the most important issue. What employers and regulators are pursuing is a comprehensive benefit, which includes both the interests of the company and the political and economic interests of government officials. In terms of the reality of the Chinese auto industry, it is fundamentally judged that the interests of companies and their regulatory agencies are the same. Therefore, they are bound to weaken the power of workers through various forces. This situation often occurs in countries such as India.

Therefore, Wang Chuanfu and BYD do not have to worry about this matter. The government departments that supervise the matter will also try their best to keep silence because the final decision is in their hands. In other words, it is this very few silences that have made BYD.

Since BYD Auto not only has a strong price in the Chinese market, but it also has a certain influence in the field of new energy vehicles, its attitude in handling this matter is representative. The labor relations in the Chinese auto industry are likely to regard BYD’s attitude as a benchmark. But so far, there is no other possibility than suppressing workers’ demands.

Canadian scholar Joel Bakken said in the book “Corporate”: “To truly make meaningful changes to a company, we must change its mission. Companies should be reconstructed to serve, promote, and be able to work in a broader society. The field is not merely the entity that they themselves and the stockholders serve." In Bakin's view, such companies have begun to emerge.

Unfortunately, in the Chinese auto industry, this is only a dream. In the case of BYD Auto, it is impossible to abandon the path already chosen, and it is even less likely to change its essential attributes. There are too many actual and invisible shareholders in BYD Auto.

In the "Low Price China" survey, the author Alexander Hani has been tracking the cost of labor in China for a long time. She called the excessive pursuit of labor and costs by Chinese companies a "tempting trap." Although this investigation stated that it was around 2004, it will not be on BYD today.

Looking at the world's auto market, there is no such company: it cannot correctly handle the relationship with the workers, it only pursues the interests of the shareholders, and it can build a brand that has won worldwide recognition. A brand that cannot be recognized by the local market can gain recognition from the world market? For BYD, entering the U.S. market in this way, it is unlikely to gain much market acceptance. Or, this method works only in China.

Similarly, as measured by this matter, what China lacks in the automotive sector is not more systems. What it lacks is the effective implementation of existing policies. The inaction of government policy makers actually supports BYD’s failure to follow the rules of the game.

For BYD's auto workers, silence is a kind of evil.