A Beijing court recently ordered an employer to pay 30,000 yuan to one of its employees after it identified a long-term pattern of working on WeChat as a form of overtime.
The employee signed a contract from April 2019 to March 2022 with a technology company, under which she was required to be responsible for product operation and contacting clients to expand business.
In addition to frequently working late at the company, the employee said that she was also required to keep working on WeChat during holidays and weekends without overtime pay.
The employer did not view replying to clients' messages and answering their questions online as overtime. Instead, they viewed it as part of the plaintiff's job, simple communication, which had no bearing on the non-fixed work-hour system previously agreed by both sides in the contract.
The two sides were unable to compromise, so the employee sued the employer, and offered her WeChat records as evidence. She claimed that she had worked more than 500 hours of overtime on days off and demanded overtime pay from the company.
After the trial, the Beijing No 3 Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, noting that her use of social media during off-hours and rest days went beyond simple communication.
Based on the chat records provided by the plaintiff and considering her salary, efficiency, duration and content of her work during rest periods, the court decided on a figure of 30,000 yuan.
