Hundreds gather outside the reception center of China's State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing, Tuesday. Photo: Yang Jing/GT

Hundreds of ex-employees of four State-owned banks gathered in front of the reception center of China's State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing Tuesday, demanding reinstatement to their former positions, which they have been demanding for several years. 

The petitioners claimed that they were misled or forced to accept severance pay and terminate labor contracts with the banks about 10 years ago during reforms of State-owned commercial banks as part of wide-ranging reforms of the financial system. 

The petitioners are mostly from second- and third-tier cities and the majority of them were laid off around 2003 during massive downsizing of the "Big Four" State-owned banks, which are Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) and Bank of China (BOC). 

Their employment with the banks was terminated after they signed an "application for voluntary self job-hunting" and got "buyout compensation."

In August last year, in response to a similar rally at the bank's headquarters in Beijing, ICBC told Global Times that the protesters were ex-employees who terminated their labor contracts through agreements with ICBC's branches. Media reports last July cited CCB as saying that it had terminated the labor contracts with its ex-employees legally.

Wu Lijuan, a 47-year-old former employee of ICBC's branch in Qianjiang, Central China's Hubei Province, told the Global Times Tuesday that she was forced to give up her job in 2004 after she refused to sign the buyout agreement. 

Many petitioners have appealed many times in the past ten years to different departments, including the banks' headquarters, China Banking Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, as well as the State Bureau for Letters and Calls. 

But they did not receive any help as the departments "pass the buck to each other," petitioners told the Global Times Tuesday.

Media reports said the four big State-owned banks laid off a total of 250,000 employees from 1998 to 2003 as part of reforms and it is difficult for these people who lost their jobs and are middle-aged to find new jobs.

Disputes then arose between banks and ex-employees over whether the latter left voluntarily and whether the buyout agreements were legal. 

Huang Leping, a lawyer from Beijing Yilian Legal Aid and Research Center of Labor, told the Global Times in a previous interview that the buyout agreement is a complicated issue. There is no law directly related to it, but it was widely used by State-owned enterprises, Huang noted.