China Petrochemical Corp (Sinopec) over the weekend denied on its Weibo account media reports that the company will launch a massive layoff.
The company is undertaking a reform as part of planned reforms in China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs) but " there would not be massive layoffs in 2015," Sinopec spokesperson Lü Dapeng told the Global Times Sunday.
Sinopec may have personnel retrenchment, but will offer a better settlement for employees who are about to leave their positions, said Lü, noting that the company has a total of 920,000 employees.
A report by Beijing-based weekly newspaper Economic Observer on Saturday said that the oil giant will lay off 2 million employees, citing no specific sources.
A Sinopec employee, who has been working in a Sinopec subsidiary in Central China's Hubei Province since 1997 and prefers not to be named, told the Global Times Sunday that she did not hear anything about the reported massive layoff.
However, she said some employees have been transferred to different positions after the company initiated business restructuring by introducing private and mixed capital plans in 2014.
During this year's annual session of the National People's Congress, Premier Li Keqiang highlighted energy reform such as deepening the reform of SOEs by encouraging and regulating equity investment made by non-State capital in SOE projects.
"Sinopec intends to offer training to enhance workers' skills, or transfer some employees to different positions" to push forward human resources reforms, which are considered a significant part of SOE reform schemes, Lü said.
The human resources reform will help Sinopec improve its profitability, Bai Ming, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times Sunday.
"Sinopec needs to transfer more qualified employees to highly technical positions, as part of its human resources reform," Bai noted.
The oil giant's revenue was 2.8 trillion yuan ($451 billion) in 2014, down 1.9 percent from 2013, according to Sinopec's annual report published on its website in March.
