Man wins lawsuit against ex-boss who refused to pay him for attending online meetings outside work hours
A man scored a legal victory against his former boss who refused to pay him overtime compensation for attending online meetings beyond his shift.
According to a report by the South China Morning Post, the man, identified as Wang, was hired by an engineering firm in July 2020 and was fired in June 2023.
He filed an arbitration application as he sought more than 80,000 yuan (P638,987) of unpaid overtime fees from the company, reasoning that he had been required to apply for online training sessions that took place after his working hours.
According to him, he was asked to make a “voluntary donation” of 200 yuan (P1,597) if he opted not to attend the virtual sessions.
The company refused to acknowledge that the online trainings were part of overtime work as any overtime arrangements needed to be approved by the management first.
They also argued that the employees were only tasked to log on to the online sessions without being mandated to speak, listen, or participate. Because of this, they claimed that there was no proof that the employees were actually working as they attended the conferences.
Moreover, the donation policy was claimed to be unrelated from the training activities.
After Wang's arbitration application was rejected, he subsequently took the matter to court, which ruled that the evidence he provided was sufficient to prove that the company made him attend the training sessions beyond his regular working hours.
On the firm's argument that employees were not mandated to do any actual work other than to log on, the court still ruled that the sessions encroached on the worker’s personal time.
They also noted that the existence of a donation policy meant that the sessions were indeed a requirement.
“These activities occurred after working hours, with the employee lacking the option to decline participation. Therefore, they should be classified as overtime,” the court stated.
With these, they ordered the company to give Wang a total of 19,000 yuan (P151,861) as overtime pay.
