China: Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau Releases Ten Typical Labour Arbitration Cases
Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau released ten typical labour arbitration cases in early November. These cases were selected from more than 110 thousand labour arbitration cases heard last year in Beijing and were published to reduce and prevent labour disputes. The judicial rules reflected in these cases include:
(1) overtime pay cannot be exempted by stipulation in employer’s rules or policies;
(2) it shall be cautious to determine employment relation with live streamers or others engaged under new forms of employment;
(3) it is inadvisable to register employees as individual businesses to avoid application of employment laws;
(4) high-level managerial staff shall not abuse their power to damage the rights and interests of the employer;
(5) rules and policies of employer’s associated companies are not necessarily applicable to the employer;
(6) employee shall compensate for employer’s losses caused by the employee’s gross negligence;
(7) female employees who have taken maternity leave shall still be entitled to annual leaves of the current year;
(8) employer may legally terminate the employee who has wrongfully checked private information of others;
(9) provision of confidentiality fee shall not be deemed as having paid the non-competition compensation; and
(10) public institutions that have wrongfully terminated employment shall pay the liquidated damages.
Key Action Points for Human Resources and In-house Counsel
This was the seventh time that the Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau has released these ‘typical labour arbitration cases’. Although China is not a country that adheres to a case law system, typical cases released by human resources and social security departments, and by people’s courts at different levels, are a valuable reference for employers in China to understand the developing judicial attitudes toward both traditional and new types of labour disputes.
