Two companies in Guangdong Province have forced their employees to quit and rejoin the workforce, weeks after Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. caused a stir for trying to bypass the new Labor Contract Law by doing the same thing.

Huawei agreed early this month to suspend its controversial "voluntary resignation" scheme after talks with trade unions, media reports said.

However, a report in yesterday's Southern Metropolis Daily said that two companies had carried out what Huawei had been prevented from doing.

One of the companies, Huili Commodity Co. Ltd. in Huizhou, started to ask its 1,000 employees to sign new contracts Nov. 14. The employees were also required to sign an agreement terminating the old contracts before they signed the new ones. More than 130 people who had worked at the company for more than 10 years, were fired after they refused to obey the company's order.

"We were told to sign our names without reading the content of the contract," said a worker who was not named. "They told us reading the contract would take too much time and those queuing outside would have to wait longer than necessary."

All the new contracts will take effect Jan. 1, 2008.

The other company, Guangzhou-based Global Hats Products Co. Ltd., also forced more than 400 of its employees to be re-employed. All the workers who signed the new contracts become short-term employees of a human resources company in Guangzhou. "I've never heard of the (human resource service) company before, how come I suddenly became a temporary worker of this compnay?" said an angry worker called Ah Ju.

Yang Peiqi, a vice manager with Global Hats Products said the company had turned its employees into temporary workers just to reduce operating costs. "It would make it easier for us to lay off some workers during slack seasons," Yang said. However, he insisted the majority of the workers signed the new contracts voluntarily.

Under the new Labor Contract Law adopted by China's top legislature in June, employees who have worked for an employer for more than 10 consecutive years are entitled to sign an open-ended labor contract, if agreed to by both parties.

The new law means these long-term workers will become "permanent" employees, except in circumstances of willful resignation or retirement. The same applies to those who renew their labor contracts after working for two fixed terms consecutively.

Chang Kai, an official with the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council, said earlier this month that the national and local legislatures, the State Council and government agencies would issue guidelines to stop employers from trying to dodge the new law..