{"id":208383,"date":"2026-05-04T03:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/ai-cost-cutting-not-a-legal-excuse-to-fire-workers-chinese-court-says\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T04:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T08:10:16","slug":"ai-cost-cutting-not-a-legal-excuse-to-fire-workers-chinese-court-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/ai-cost-cutting-not-a-legal-excuse-to-fire-workers-chinese-court-says\/","title":{"rendered":"AI cost-cutting not a legal excuse to fire workers, Chinese court says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/tech-trends\/article\/3352327\/ai-cost-cutting-not-legal-excuse-fire-workers-chinese-court-says\">AI cost-cutting not a legal excuse to fire workers, Chinese court says<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/tech-trends\/article\/3352327\/ai-cost-cutting-not-legal-excuse-fire-workers-chinese-court-says\">https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/tech-trends\/article\/3352327\/ai-cost-cutting-not-legal-excuse-fire-workers-chinese-court-says<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-04 03:42:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.scmp.com\">www.scmp.com<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Chinese court has ruled it illegal for a company to terminate an employee based on the argument that it is cheaper to replace them with artificial intelligence (AI).<\/li>\n<li>The case involved a 35-year-old worker surnamed Zhou who was fired from a fintech firm in Hangzhou after he refused a demotion and pay cut, being told his AI-generated responses job could be replaced by AI.<\/li>\n<li>The Hangzhou Intermediate People\u2019s Court found that the company\u2019s decision to terminate Zhou\u2019s contract was illegal and ordered the firm to pay him over 260,000 yuan (approximately US$38,000) in compensation.<\/li>\n<li>Judge Shi Guoqiang stated that AI has not yet reached a level where it can substantially replace human workers.<\/li>\n<li>The court ruled that AI replacement did not constitute a \u201cmaterial change in objective circumstances\u201d that could justify contract termination, adhering to legal standards usually applied in situations like mergers and acquisitions.<\/li>\n<li>This ruling echoed a similar 2024 decision by the Guangzhou Intermediate People\u2019s Court, which also found that an AI replacement did not qualify as a change in \u201cobjective circumstances.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI cost-cutting not a legal excuse to fire workers, Chinese court says https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/tech-trends\/article\/3352327\/ai-cost-cutting-not-legal-excuse-fire-workers-chinese-court-says Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":208384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.i-scmp.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/og_image_scmp_generic\/public\/d8\/images\/canvas\/2026\/05\/04\/7c26400d-5b97-4c6e-a205-1ebc1fe098cc_6dcb75d2.jpg?itok=fqFOZOJr&v=1777874116","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-208383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208385,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208383\/revisions\/208385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}