China Employee Contract Renewals

China employee contract renewals are sensitive matters and they generate a ton of often last minute problems for employers. I say “last minute” because I am convinced there are only one or two employees in all of China that do not understand the benefit of pushing their employer to the last minute on a contract renewal negotiation. And I swear that half the calls our China employment lawyers get regarding China contract renewals come too late for us to be able to help at all. For example, our last one — just last week — came literally 24 hours before the time when the employee would become a lifetime employee.

It need not be that way. . . .

When our employer clients seek our counsel on new China employee hires, we usually (but not always) advise they use an initial fixed term of three years. We also recommend that before the initial employment term is up, they consider whether to extend the employee’s contract for a second employment term.

Because terminating a China employee is generally so difficult, you as the employer should be sure not to take an employee beyond an initial term unless you are certain you wish to continue employing that person. This means you must be very careful about your China employee contract renewals.

If you choose not to renew an employee for a second term you can terminate the employment but you will have to pay severance based on the employee’s years of service for not renewing the contract. This holds true unless you have a legal/contractual basis for terminating the employee without severance, such as an employee’s serious wrongdoing.

Consider this hypothetical. Employer and Employee enter into an employment contract for an initial fixed term. Both before and shortly after the expiration of the initial term, Employer provides Employee with notices that it wishes to renew the contract and each time Employee fails to sign a new contract. Employee then files a labor arbitration claim, demanding statutory severance for the termination. Will Employee prevail? The short answer is that it depends.

In the real case on which this hypothetical is based, the court (the case went from labor arbitration to the court level) noted that 1) Employer provided convincing evidence, including minutes of conversations between the parties and witness testimony, that showed Employer truly intended to renew Employee’s initial contract and 2) Employee failed to produce any evidence to show Employer’s proposed terms and conditions were worse than the terms and conditions in Employee’s initial contract. The court went on to rule that Employer was not obligated to pay statutory severance upon termination because the applicable law stipulates an employer must pay an employee statutory severance for not renewing a contract, unless the employer has offered the employee the same or better terms and conditions for the renewal and the employee does not agree to renew on such proposed terms.

What are the key takeaways from this? First, you as the employer should start thinking about whether to renew an employee’s contract before that employee’s employment term expires. I cannot tell you how many times our China employment lawyers get called by China employer’s asking us what to do with an employee’s contract that expires tomorrow or expired last week — NOT good.

Next, regardless of whether you wish to renew or end the employment, you must provide the employee with a written notice of such intent before the end of the employee’s contract term. If you do not want to continue employing the employee, pay the employee statutory severance and process the employee separation in a timely manner. Avoid putting the employee on another probation to see if maybe things will work out this time.

If you want the employee to continue working for you but the employee does not wish to renew (assuming the terms and conditions in the proposed new contract are the same or better than the first contract), document that in writing and process the employee separation. In this situation, you don’t have to pay statutory severance since essentially it is the employee terminating the employment.

If the employee is ambiguous as to what he or she wants, do not have the employee work beyond the last date of his or her contract. In other words, you should not have the employee work without a current written contract. This is because China’s employment laws require an employer use a (current) written employment contract with its employees. Even if you signed a first written contract with that employee but since that contract has expired, you likely will be treated as having no contract at all and subject to all the problems and penalties that go with this.

Under China’s written employment laws, an employee is entitled to an open-term contract after two consecutive fixed-terms. However, in practice, in most places in China, once an employee has been renewed at the end of the initial fixed term, that employee has become an open-term employee, which means he or she must be retained as an employee until his or her mandatory retirement age. Therefore, the first renewal should be treated seriously and no employee should be taken beyond the first term unless you want to see the employee on your team long-term. Like forever long term.

Have employees who are approaching the end of their contract terms? NOW is the time to get on it.