US hard-disk drive manufacturer Seagate Technology PLC is to lay off more than 2,000 Chinese workers as it shutters a factory in eastern China, reports said on Saturday, prompting anger among employees.
The factory, one of two operated by Seagate in China, is based in Suzhou City in eastern Jiangsu Province, and was established in 2004. Factory workers received notice of its impending closure on Jan. 7 and were told they would lose their jobs in just over one week’s time, state-funded digital news outlet The Paper cited employees as saying.
“At the very least, the company should hold a meeting with us workers. They should make clear to us how compensation will be dealt with, at what point wages will be cut off and whether the company is being relocated or shut down,” one laid-off worker told The Paper.
The decision to close the factory was made in order to “decrease the scale of Seagate’s global production so as to better adapt to current and future market demands,” The Paper cited an internal company memo as saying.
It cited workers as saying that large-scale layoffs in Suzhou had been occurring since February last year, with a number of those incensed by the cuts staging a small strike last month.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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