Chinese Employee awarded compensation for “invisible overtime.”
A former Chinese employee filed a lawsuit against her employer, alleging unpaid overtime for communications relating to her job that took place after regular business hours.
A Beijing court has decided in favor of an employee who was seeking payment for communications they had with their employer outside of regular working hours. In his speech at the 16th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, Beijing High People’s Court President Kou Fang emphasized the case and the court’s dedication to upholding workers’ rights.
Li, the plaintiff, filed a lawsuit against her former employer for unpaid overtime, noting more than 500 hours of extra labor completed during her one-year employment. Li used WeChat to stay in touch with coworkers and clients on the weekends, after work, and on public holidays. The court decided in favor of the employee, rejecting the employer’s claim that these conversations were required to fulfill customer expectations.
The text exchanges were considered “fixed and periodic” by the court, which meant that they qualified as overtime work that needed to be compensated. As a result, the employer was ordered to pay Li 30,000 yuan (US$4,214). The company was also found to have introduced an unapproved “flexible working hour system,” according to the court’s ruling, which The Sun reported. This was verified by the local labor department.
With this decision, text messaging—regardless of the physical workplace—is now officially recognized as significant labor for the first time in China. Known as “invisible overtime,” this acknowledgment seeks to protect workers’ rights to offline time.
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