Give up your annual leave for a year-end bonus? The unequal status of labor and management makes some enterprises accustomed to hegemony

Source: Yangcheng Evening News

Yangcheng Evening News financial commentator Qi Yaoqi

A few days ago, the media exposed that liaoning Fushun has a company regulation that employees need to meet the conditions of "untaken annual leave" to get a year-end bonus. After the company's employee Mr. Liu complained about this after retirement, the Supervision Bureau asked for rectification, so the company paid Mr. Liu 3172.41 yuan in compensation for his untaken annual leave in 2018, and then the company repeatedly asked him to return the year-end bonus he had received, and he unsuccessfully sued Liu Sheng in court. In the end, the court dismissed the company's claims.

From this case, at least two points can be seen, first, according to the logic of the enterprise, the annual leave and the year-end bonus can only choose one, if there is no annual leave, has been compensated by the enterprise, then the year-end bonus also do not want to have. Second, the company's approach represents the ignorance of a considerable part of the industry, so it dares to sue employees, and if it loses, it will appeal until it loses again.

According to the Regulations on Paid Annual Leave for Employees, the unit shall pay the annual leave wage remuneration according to 300% of the employee's daily wage income for the number of days of untaken leave. In fact, such provisions seem to be implemented only in state-owned units, law-abiding private enterprises or foreign enterprises that strictly abide by the law, and may be difficult to implement in the face of many small and medium-sized private enterprises.

The ostensible reason for the difficulty of implementation is determined by the cost of the enterprise. Because leave represents employee welfare, employee benefits are equivalent to the cost of the enterprise, and it is uncertain whether this cost can be translated into employees' work enthusiasm and production benefits. To control costs, the easiest thing for enterprises is to start on vacation, let employees work more and work more overtime. For employees, especially young people, the loss of leisure time is far less important than the loss of money. Many "996" employees are even used to staying up all night in the company, and once they go home from rest, they feel empty and bored, and may not even have a person to talk to.

Exploring the deep reasons is determined by the unequal status of enterprises and employees. Only before recruiting employees, the company is equal to the status of the worker: two-way choice. Once they are bound to each other, the status is not equal. Since there is no equality, it is natural to imply that employees pay more, please more or even roll in, so that they can get benefits at the equilibrium point; as for the boss, it is impossible to flexibly adjust the bonus range because of seeing an employee who is more diligent, more obedient or stays up late every day. Otherwise, everyone will imitate it, and there will be no standard for salary.

Behind the unequal status is often brought about by the weakness of the employee protection mechanism and the exuberance of the deformed culture of the enterprise. This corporate culture is brought by a leader and may be called wolf nature, such as the abandonment of self-protection and the high praise of unscrupulous means. Since this is the case, defending one's bottom line may become another, taking the initiative to give up annual leave may become a "model", and taking the initiative to work overtime has become a virtue. This has been a case in many cases among the Internet giants that have broken scandals. As long as this culture is questioned, it will be despised and eliminated.

For regulators in some places, they are still stuck in cases where they do not complain and only deal with simple cases with clear evidence. For more complex situations, such as difficulties in operating enterprises and arrears of wages, unfair elements of contracts, and faults of employees and enterprises, their ability to defend is very inefficient or even weak, and victims can only take a long judicial route. This approach is a kind of torture and reputation damage to the outside world, but it is a kind of torture and reputation damage to the outside world. Even if the fact is so clear that the salary is tripled, it is only dare to propose it in retirement or intends to resign, because the parties are ready to be settled by the enterprise. In view of this, the relevant departments still need to do more to protect the rights and interests of workers.