A Study On The "Seniority Buyout" Of Third-Tier Enterprises In The New Stage Of State-Owned Enterprise Reform

A buyout is a way to "buy out" a worker’s entire relationship with a state-owned enterprise by paying him or her a lump sum of cash as compensation according to the length of his or her service.It is a way of diverting different labor resources in the reform of state-owned enterprises,so as to improve the efficiency of enterprise human resources,improve management level and efficiency.This approach has been used in the reform of state-owned enterprises since the 1990 s.At present,in the new stage of state-owned enterprise reform,the method of "buyout seniority" is still widely used.However,unlike in the 1990 s,when the "buyout" in the early stage of state-owned enterprise reform triggered relatively fierce collective protests by workers,the "buyout" in the new stage of state-owned enterprise reform in the last decade seems to be carried out more quietly and quietly.This paper focuses on the "buyout age" event of a third-tier state-owned enterprise S factory in a southwestern province from the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016.Using the methods of in-depth interview and participatory observation,this paper tries to analyze and answer the question: in the new stage of state-owned enterprise reform,whether the resistance and resistance of state-owned enterprise workers to the reform represented by "buyout age" are more moderate than in the past.Why? At the same time,this paper adopts the "structure-process" analysis paradigm and the concept of social capital to analyze the social structure and process of the "buyout age" event of S Factory,and discusses the role of social capital,a key structural element,for the workers of third-tier state-owned enterprises facing "buyout age".It is found that in the new stage of state-owned enterprise reform,the workers’ protests represented by "buyout age" are indeed more moderate.The reasons are as follows: firstly,the accumulation of individual social capital of workers in the transition period increases the space for negotiation and negotiation;Second,the policy formulation and implementation accelerated the differentiation of workers;Thus,the possibility of collective struggle is eliminated to a large extent and the confrontation between different actors in the reform is eased.The study also found that social capital plays an important role in the structural relationship and event process behind "buyout seniority".From the perspective of structural relationship,the social capital of workers in third-tier state-owned enterprises is mainly divided into three types: kinship type,geographical type and business relationship type,and presents the common characteristics of small scale,high density and strong homogeneity of the network,and its trust and norms are closely related to the unit society of Sanxian Factory.However,the differences in social relations between provincial immigrants and natives,together with the differences in the education and skills of individual workers,together cause structural differences in their social capital,which also have an impact as the starting and ending points in the course of events.From the perspective of the process of the event,in the cause stage,the structural difference of social capital laid the foundation for the differentiation of the workers.With the completion of the differentiation of the workers,the contradiction between the management and the collective of the workers turned into the contradiction between the workers who mainly bought out the workers.In the development stage,the accumulation of social capital provides more options for workers to buy out,without the worry of unemployment,so that they can better "bargain" in negotiations with management.The increase of negotiation space makes fierce conflicts between the two sides avoided.In the completion stage,the accumulation of social capital also increases the concerns of buyout workers in the game with management.In the situation where there is still a way out,"take the money and leave" has become a common mentality.As long as it does not threaten their survival,buyout workers will not take fierce protests as their action choice.At the same time,although there is no public and confrontational collective action in the "buyout" in the new stage of state-owned enterprise reform,the gentler events in the process does not mean that the contradiction between the workers and the enterprise system has completely disappeared.On the contrary,the game and "bargaining" process of both sides indicate that the confrontation still exists.However,in the new era,this kind of confrontation is more structural and therefore more secretive.