A Chinese company is being accused of tricking hundreds of employees into conducting illegal activities so it could then fire them without severance pay.

Wuhan CITIC Design Institute, a company based in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, recently found itself at the center of a huge scandal, after several prominent news outlets reported that it had allegedly fired around 200 senior employees after accusing them of crimes one of its managers had lured them into committing. Apparently, the company had been looking for ways of getting rid of senior employees with high salaries without having to offer any financial compensation packages, so it had one of the senior managers lure such employees to various bars and clubs under the pretext of “after-work relaxation” where they were tricked into engaging in illegal activities.

Photo: Mohammed Hassan/Pixabay

According to some of the tricked employees, the manager set them up with sex workers and encouraged them to interact with them, while others claim that they engaged in gambling and even intentionally lost some money to their superior to maintain a good relationship with him, only to later realize that they had been lured into a trap.

After gathering dirty evidence on the employees, the manager would report everything to the company, and their contracts would be terminated without any compensation. Some Chinese sources claim that as many as 200 employees lost their jobs this way.

The company’s tactic was fiercely criticized online, with some social media users pointing out that the terminated employees would have a very difficult time trying to find other jobs because of their record of illegal activities. So not only did the employer fire its senior employees without severance pay, but it also compromised their chances of getting a job someplace else.

Although this level of trickery is rare among Chinese employers, finding ways to fire employees without financial compensation is definitely not! Companies are known to dig through their staff’s criminal records hoping to find any illegalities committed in the last five or ten years to use as an excuse to fire them. Some go as far as faking tempting job offers from other companies to trick ‘problematic’ employees into quitting.

Chinese prosecutors recently filed lawsuits against at least 16 companies accused of requiring female jobseekers to undergo pregnancy testing.

Chinese law explicitly prohibits employers from carrying out pregnancy tests as part of pre-employment examinations, but some companies are so worried about the costs of maternity leave and benefits that they prefer to make sure the women they hire are not pregnant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in the Tongzhou district of Nantong, China’s Jiangsu Province, announced that it had sued 16 companies for illegally testing female job applicants for pregnancy without even formally informing them about it. Their investigation revealed that companies violated women’s right to equal employment opportunities, as at least one candidate was rejected after it was revealed that she was pregnant.

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A French woman is taking telecom giant Orange to court for “moral harassment and discrimination at work,” accusing the company of paying her for 20 years without giving her any tasks.

Laurence Van Wassenhove was recruited as a civil servant by France Telecom in 1993 before the company was taken over by Orange. Her original employer knew that she was hemiplegic – partial paralysis of the face and limbs – from birth and suffered from epilepsy, and offered her a position adapted to her medical conditions. She worked as a secretary and in the HR department until 2002 when she asked to be transferred to another region of France. Her request was approved, but her new workplace was not adapted to her needs, and an occupational medicine report confirmed that the position was not suited for her. Despite this, Orange allegedly failed to make any adjustments to her job, preferring to pay her full salary for the next 20 years, without giving her anything to do.

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A couple of enterprising students from Thailand have come up with an innovative business strategy – sleeping in problematic houses and apartments to certify that they are free of ghosts and paranormal phenomena.

21-year-old Wifei Cheng, a Thai-Taiwanese student at Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna in Chiang Mai province, knew about the problems realtors had selling properties where deaths had been reported in the past, and decided that there was a market for ghost-free home certifiers. And who better for the job that himself and his colleague and associate, 22-year-old Sretthawut Boonprakhong? The pair recently started advertising their services on social media, offering to sleep in problematic houses and apartments and then issue ghost-free certificates to put buyers’ and renters’ minds at ease.

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A Chinese advertising agency is being accused by former employees of moving its offices from the city to a remote mountain area to force them to quit and avoid paying them compensation.

In what has been described as one of the most extreme tactics to convince employees to resign, an advertising company based in downtown Xi’an City, China’s Shanxi Province, allegedly moved its offices to a rural mountain area with very limited transport options. The accusations were made by a former employee who claimed to be part of a large part of the staff to leave the company due to the new working conditions. The man, known only as Chang, said that the company notified them that they would have to travel to a new location in the Qinling Mountains, which required a two-hour commute (one way), with very limited options for those without a personal car.

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As part of its ongoing efforts to integrate robotics into its gigantic warehouse operations, Amazon recently began experimenting with a bipedal robot called Digit that should be able the most repetitive tasks.

Amazon warehouse employees have long gotten used to working alongside robots, but staff at the company’s BFI1 experimental facility in Sumner are now getting familiarized with Digit, a new type of humanoid robot developed by Agility Robotics, a startup based in Corvallis, Oregon. Standing 5ft 9in (175cm) tall and weighing 143lb (65kg), Digit can walk forwards, backward, and sideways, and can also crouch if it needs to. Amazon’s new robot worker has two arms, two legs, a blue chest, and two square lights for eyes, and is currently tasked only with recycling the iconic yellow boxes once they have been emptied of inventory.

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A Chinese woman has been charged with fraud after it was revealed that she was employed by 16 different companies at the same time, but she never really showed up for work at any of them.

The woman, identified as Guan Yue (pseudonym) by Chinese media, had reportedly been juggling over a dozen employers and collecting paychecks for at least three years, without actually getting any work done for any of them. She and her husband, who is also a suspect in this case, allegedly kept a very tight record of employers, her exact role at each company, the date she had started working for each of them, and the bank account details provided for the woman’s monthly salary. Guan Yue would constantly be looking for new employers, and when going to new job interviews, she would take photos and send them to current employers as proof that she was meeting with clients. Believe it or not, the fraud worked flawlessly for years, allowing Guan Yue to buy an expensive apartment in Shanghai.

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A Hungarian man temporarily became a rich man, after the company he worked for accidentally paid him 367 times more than he had actually earned. And when the employer asked for the money back, he refused to pay.

The unnamed man, who hails from Hungary’s Somogy County, briefly worked for a company in Kaposvár but his employment was terminated during the trial period. For his short stint at the company, he stood to earn 92,549 forints, which amounted to 238 euros ($260), but in a feat of incredible generosity, his employer wired him 367 times that amount. Actually, it was just a huge mistake caused by the fact that the man had provided an Austrian bank account, so the salary had to be paid in the local currency, euros. Only instead of converting the forints to euros, they sent the lucky man 92,549 euros instead…

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A Chinese manufacturing company has come under fire for allegedly firing employees who can’t finish a 5 km (3 miles) race in 30 minutes, because ‘they lack hard-working spirit’.

Mr. Liu, a man living in Suzhou City, China’s Jiangsu Province, filed a lawsuit against his former employer for wrongful termination after allegedly being fired for not being able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Liu apparently applied for a job at a mechanical parts factory and, after passing a series of practical tests that involved electric welding and gas cutting, he was announced that he had gotten the job. After paying for a medical examination out of his own pocket, Mr. Liu started working at the company in a maintenance position. Little did he know that he still had one more big test to pass…

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A Chinese man was fired by his employer for spending too much time in the toilet during work hours. The man reportedly took bathroom breaks of between 47 minutes and 6 hours.

Chinese news media recently reported the bizarre case of an employee surnamed Wang who sued his employer for wrongful termination after being fired for spending too much time in the toilet during work hours. After undergoing surgery for an anorectal issue, the man continued experiencing pain and discomfort, so he started spending three to six hours in the toilet every day. Wang’s former employer claims that during a period of 10 days, he took a total of 22 bathroom breaks, which lasted between 47 minutes and 6 hours. Citing provisions in the staff handbook relating to tardiness, leaving work early, and authorized absences, the unnamed company from Tianjin terminated Wang’s employment.

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An Indian IT company recently sparked outrage online after it was reported that one of its managers ordered the exit of the office building padlocked to prevent employees from leaving without his permission.

A video of a security worker using heavy chains and large padlocks to seal off the exit of the Coding Ninjas office building in Gurugram, India, recently went viral on Twitter. In it, the guard claims that he had been directed by one ‘Anurag sir’, later identified as a manager with the company, to lock the exit to ensure no one can leave without his express permission. The video sparked outrage and once again brought issues like employee exploitation and a degrading working environment into the spotlight. As for the company, it recently issued a statement acknowledging the incident, describing it as an ‘anomaly’ rectified ‘within minutes’ of its occurrence.

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A 40-year-old woman’s decision to quit her job and become a ‘full-time daughter’ in the employment of her own parents has sparked controversy in China.

Last year, after 15 years of working for a news agency, 40-year-old Nianan quit her job. She had to be on-call virtually 24 hours a day and was constantly under tremendous stress. Luckily, her parents came up with a better employment offer if she just quit the job that made her so miserable. “Why don’t you just quit your job? We’ll take care of you financially,” the woman’s parents said, promising to pay her 4,000 yuan ($570) per month if she just came and lived with them. That obviously meant no more housing costs, and saving massively on food and various household items, as the parents would take care of such expenses. So Nianan quit her job and became a ‘full-time daughter’.

After a year in her parents’ employment, Nianan describes her profession as one “filled with love”. She spends her days accompanying her mother and father when they go grocery shopping, she cooks dinner with them every evening, drives them around when they need to, and even has an hour to dance with them every day.

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A 29-year-old man who has been living in a tent in an abandoned parking lot for 200 days has become the newest symbol of China’s increasingly popular ‘lying down’ culture.

At the end of 2018, Li Shu quit his job in Sichuan Province and began spending most of his time chilling in his rented apartment. The 29-year-old quickly realized that, with no income whatsoever, he would quickly go through all his savings, so he cut his daily expenses to just 10 yuan ($1.5) per day. Even so, after years of having to pay rent, it became painfully obvious that he would either have to find a way to make money or move out. Since the first option wasn’t even considered, he sold most of his belongings, bought a 400 yuan ($57), and decided to continue his relaxed lifestyle in the great outdoors, among the debris of an abandoned parking lot. He has been living there for 200 days, and has no plans of joining the rat race of life anytime soon.

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An IT specialist who has been on sick leave with no obligation to work since 2008 recently tried to sue their employer for not giving them a pay raise.

Ian Clifford, a ‘medically retired’ IT specialist who has been paid a £54,000 ($67,500) yearly salary as part of his disability plan with his employer, tech giant IBM, recently tried to sue the American company for ‘disability discrimination’, claiming that his salary was not ‘generous enough’ to keep up with inflation. Mr. Clifford has not done any work for the company in the last 15 years but will continue to receive his yearly salary until retirement or death, as per IBM’s disability plan. Despite this, the IT worker feels that he has been treated unfairly by his employer, and he is attempting to take the company to court for a pay raise.

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A Spanish court ruled that an electrical company was wrong to fire one of its electricians for allegedly drinking more than three liters of beer on the job because it couldn’t prove he was drunk.

Drinking alcohol during work hours is usually frowned upon and can constitute grounds for dismissal, but according to a high court in Murcia, Spain, that is only true when the employer can prove without a shadow of a doubt that the accused was inebriated to the point where he could no longer fulfill his duty safely. The court recently ordered an electrical company to either reinstate the sacked worker or pay them 47,000 euros ($52,000) for failing to show that their drinking on the job left them inebriated, intoxicated or drunk”, or unable to do their job. The controversial ruling also mentioned that the company failed to consider the hot Murcian summer, which apparently justified beer consumption.

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