China: Shandong government released measures on stabilization of employment and regulation of employers’ layoffs

Shandong Provincial People’s Government released the Several Opinions on Further Stabilizing and Expanding Employment (the “Opinions”). The Opinions stipulates that, the current policy that employers and employees’ total contribution proportion of unemployment insurance will continue to be reduced from 3% to 1% in 2019.  It is also specified in the Opinions that in areas where the balance of the unemployment insurance fund in the previous year is able to cover unemployment insurance benefits for more than two years, the companies may get the refund of their unemployment insurance contribution of last year with a refund ratio of 50%, if such companies have participated in and contributed to the unemployment insurance fund in accordance with laws and have not conducted layoffs or only conducted small-scale layoffs. The Opinions also provides that, for the purpose of regulating layoffs, if the number of employees to be laid off is more than 20 or such number is less than 20 but accounts for more than 10% of the total staff in the company, the redundancy plan shall be submitted to the employee representative congress of the company for deliberation and approval.