American technology company Microsoft continues to downsize its global workforce by dismissing more than 80 employees at its Xbox research and development (R&D) department in China, as Shenzhen Business News reported on October 31.

The company convened a quick full-staff meeting in the morning on the day before at its headquarters in Shenzhen, and made the sudden announcement of closing the branch and pulling it back to the US.Tech Pro Research
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According to an anonymous employee who spoke to the newspaper, Microsoft didn't contact anyone beforehand, and its human resource managers started right after the Friday meeting to speak to the workers and offer them a severance package of about $2,560 plus one month's salary, a number that most people refused to accept.

More than 60 percent of the employed are agency labour, and their contracts are signed with a third-party company.

"Many of us did even did 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."

He also said that if the workers refuse to sign the dismissal agreement, Microsoft's legal department will be in touch with them directly and then "everything will be done in accordance with the Chinese laws", the Shenzhen newspaper reported. None of the employees have signed.

However, labour contract laws in China stipulate that if a company fires workers without due process, which includes giving notice to workers one month in advance, it shall pay in compensation the dismissed worker's monthly salary, multiplied by the numbers of years of service times two, as well as an extra two months' salary.

Microsoft set up its hardware centre in Asia in the south China city of Shenzhen in 2005, which has three departments: Xbox R&D, Surface R&D, and Surface production. All departments have been laying off employees since the beginning of 2014.

According to previous report published by state media Xinhua, the company said that it will fire as many as 3,000 workers in October to reach a bigger downsizing goal of cutting 18,000 jobs around the globe.

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-dismisses-all-xbox-r-and-d-staff-in-china-report-7000035314/

Probably to appease some silly Chinese government regulation. 

After the losses from this fire sale of the x1, how many employes will be laid off?

I don't know... if they are doing overtime some job for them exists.

Xbone has some momentum which is odd, even for me :) So usual forum business starts to work.

Btw, I also want to know what this staff was doing in China...

Well i saw a post from a member of VGC who live in China a back then when i am still lurking around, i forgot his name, his a Chinese and had been working quiet some times with Microsoft but then he posted that he had been terminated as an employe of Microsoft because Microsoft is limiting their budget for something he said.

I think every company in the world having this kind of issue, and even Microsoft is not that almighty like everybody think :).

Of course they are almighty, they just choose not to be ;)

I think they earn more than most nation does for pete sakes xD

if this report is acurate then that's pretty ruthless treatment of these employees by MS, good thing that China has laws that regulate compensation in these instances as MS'es offer is a joke

would not shock me if the team was not selling corporate secrets to China. China spends alot of money stealing it, I am sure they would have no issue paying off someone for the info. Dont be suprised if there is a counterfiet XB1s all of china in a few months.