Lazada cut hundreds of jobs without consulting Singapore's union — the terms made it worse

On 3 January 2024, Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Lazada retrenched staff across Singapore and other Southeast Asian markets. The company did not specify a total, but affected workers numbered in the hundreds, and the cuts touched regional headquarters functions as well as country operations. It was the second round in months — a smaller retrenchment had followed in October 2023.

The Singapore round immediately became a labour-relations story. The Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU) said it had not been consulted, and NTUC — the national labour movement — said it was 'deeply disappointed' that Lazada had not worked with the union before the exercise. Under Singapore's rules, unionised companies are expected to engage the union on retrenchment, and Lazada's workforce was organised.

The terms compounded the damage. Retrenched workers who wanted to keep vested but unvested shares were reportedly required to sign a 12-month non-compete clause — a condition widely read as punishing departing staff for the company's own restructuring. The episode landed while speculation about a Lazada IPO was circulating, framing the cuts as pre-listing cost-trimming.

Lazada's parent Alibaba had been restructuring across its commerce businesses, and the layoffs were part of that broader efficiency push. But the execution — the skipped consultation, the non-compete condition — turned a routine reduction into a public lesson in how not to retrench in Singapore, and it handed the company's critics a story that outlasted the news cycle.