NAKHON RATCHASIMA, Jan 8 (TNA) - After experiencing global economic recession and declining purchase orders from overseas, two major foreign firms producing auto and electronics parts laid off 623 of their employees Thursday with severance pay.

The laid-off workers of Shin-Ei High Tech Co., Ltd. and Shin-Ei Kataoka Casting (Thailand) Co., Ltd. packed their personal effects and left the companies' premises after the firms announced their decision to cut production.

All the newly-jobless workers had been employed by the companies less than two years. They were told that their severance pay will be transferred to their bank accounts on Friday.

Labour officials in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima said that in November and December the firms had already terminated some 200 staff.

Another company, Seagate (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a major electronics producer, in Sung Noen district of Nakhon Ratchasima also on Thursday laid off about 70 employees in its plan to terminate more than 400 workers' employment.

More than 3,000 employees in Nakhon Ratchasima province have been laid off by their employers since 2008.

Meanwhile, more than 800 subcontract workers of Single Point Parts (Thailand) Pcl. in Ayutthaya, near Bangkok, who were laid off by the company, gathered at the factory entrance again on Thursday demanding that their employers give them severance pay.

They said the company paid each of them only Bt500 in dismissing them and said it was unfair, and that they would block the entrance to prevent the company's permanent employees from working if the company refused to help them.

Under Thai labour law, subcontracted workers who are not directly employed by a company are not entitled to severance pay. (TNA)