The Beijing Municipal Bureau of human resources and social security recently announced two typical cases in which companies were punished for illegally extending workers' working hours. In addition to Beijing, Sichuan, Shandong, Anhui, Henan and other provinces have also begun to focus on the investigation and rectification of overtime "Every day is either working overtime or working." Yu Hongfa, who works in a top accounting firm, has a circle of friends. The picture is the subway station near the company. Even when she gets home, many matters on mobile office tools make her feel like "I seem to be off duty, but also I don't seem to be off duty".
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of human resources and social security recently announced two typical cases in which companies were punished for illegally extending workers' working hours. In addition to Beijing, Sichuan, Shandong, Anhui, Henan and other provinces have also begun to focus on the investigation and rectification of overtime.
Respond to the voice of the people, but there are follow-up problems
In the announcement of the first batch of major labor security violations in 2022 recently released by the Beijing human resources and Social Security Bureau, two companies were punished for illegally extending workers' working hours.
Previously, the bureau also issued a notice that from March 15 to May 15, it organized the maintenance of working hours, rest and vacation rights and interests in the city, focused on key industry enterprises, and focused on the problem of overtime.
With the development of social economy and the improvement of the construction of the rule of law, all sectors of society have strengthened their understanding of the harm of overtime. Professor range, vice president of the school of labor economics of Capital University of economics and trade, believes that the voice for punishing serious overtime and illegal overtime is becoming stronger and stronger. This centralized rectification is a response to the voice of the people.
Huang Ruiqian, a human resources worker who has been engaged in relevant work for 10 years, believes that the centralized rectification of overtime has safeguarded the legitimate rights and interests of workers, and also played an alarm role in some other serious overtime enterprises, allowing enterprises to self-examine and reduce the phenomenon of serious overtime.
According to Article 25 of the labor and social security regulations of Beijing, only 14 workers who have been ordered to make corrections in violation of the labor and social security regulations will be fined 17600 yuan. According to the labor and social security regulations of Beijing, only 14 workers who have been warned to extend their working hours will be given a fine of 17600 yuan, And a fine may be calculated according to the standard of more than 100 yuan and less than 500 yuan per infringed worker. Therefore, the standard of a fine of 500 yuan per person is already the top punishment, but in Huang Ruiqian's view, it is still "the illegal cost is too low" and will discount the deterrent effect of enterprises.
According to Wang Xiao, a teacher of the school of labor relations and human resources of China Institute of labor relations, the regulation of overtime has a certain exemplary effect. However, for enterprises, fierce market competition is the driving force for them to find ways to make workers work overtime; For workers, the great pressure of employment, medical treatment and education is the external reason that forces them to accept overtime.
Therefore, the punishment of enterprises does not touch the essence of overtime work, which will bring follow-up problems of poor implementation.
How to define overtime as a pain point
It was more than 10 p.m. when Yu Hong came home from work, but she couldn't rest. Instead, she opened the office software and held a meeting with the members of the project team to discuss the final audit matters of the audit project.
Not only Yu Hong, many respondents said that "I seem to be off work, but also I don't seem to be off work" and "my life is endless, and my mobile phone doesn't stop". With the development of various mobile office products, employees are coerced into a standby environment "anytime, anywhere". In such an environment, how to define overtime has become a "pain point".
China has clear regulations on daily working hours. For example, the State implements a working hour system in which workers work no more than 8 hours a day and no more than 40 hours a week on average; The employing unit shall ensure that workers have at least one day off every week.
However, the definition of working hours itself in legislation is relatively vague. If the company does not specify that employees need to work overtime, employees who continue to work after work belong to voluntary overtime, and the resulting overtime is often not counted as overtime. On the other hand, the existence of bad corporate culture makes overtime normal. So how to define the time of overtime?
In this regard, Professor range believes that overtime is usually the time that workers extend their work to complete work tasks outside normal working hours at the request of employers. In practice, there is indeed uncertainty about the identification of overtime. However, objectively speaking, overtime is related to work tasks. The reason why overtime, even long-term overtime, is related to the unreasonable distribution of work tasks, which involves the issue of labor quota.
Wang Xiao also believes that the reason why overtime work is difficult to supervise is that employees' income and rank are linked to performance. Employees are willing to compromise with the management in order to keep their work and income, but simply extending working hours is not conducive to high-quality development in essence.
How to eliminate overtime
According to Huang Ruiqian, in actual work, if enterprises that implement standard working hours want to confirm that employees' overtime needs approval, it involves the management with approval authority to control the number of approved leave in order to reduce labor costs, which also inhibits employees' application for overtime, thus forming the phenomenon of "voluntary" overtime.
Yu Hong, who had a teleconference at home, looked at the time. It was 11:30 at night. After taking antihypertensive drugs, she could finally rest. The long-term staying up late and high-intensity work make her body light up red in her early 30s. The doctor ordered more rest to stabilize her blood pressure, but Yu Hong can't stop. The whole project needs to be completed in cooperation. "If you rest, the upstream and downstream colleagues can't work, and the project will stop because of you."
The harm of overtime work is multifaceted. The scope professor believes that the first is to infringe on workers' right to rest and health. Serious overtime work endangers employees' health and may lead to sudden death from overwork. Second, it destroys the fair competition order of the market. If there is no working time limit, enterprises will reduce costs by continuously extending the working hours of workers, which is unfair to enterprises that abide by the working hours.
So how should overtime be prohibited? According to Huang Ruiqian, "the most important thing is to protect the legitimate rights and interests of employees, be fair and transparent, such as paying overtime or more wages in full and on time, and follow the principle of voluntariness." The scope also believes that the labor quota standard should be standardized and the awareness and system of legal employment should be established; At the same time, we will strengthen labor supervision and law enforcement and increase the cost of illegal enterprises.
"In fact, a lot of overtime is waiting for the handover of relevant links of the project team." Yu Hong said that enterprises can use more efficient organization and management capabilities to avoid ineffective overtime and improve the efficiency of employees within reasonable and legal office hours as much as possible.