'Invisible overtime' needs to be regulated

A Beijing court's ruling in an "invisible overtime" case has sparked heated discussions on the internet. The court has ruled that the time employees spend working beyond a company's working hours and outside the workplace using WeChat and/or other social media platforms qualifies as "invisible overtime", and the employer is obliged to pay for such extra hours of work.

An employer can ask its staff to work on computers and smartphones without going to the office due to the rapid development of information and communications technology. This has blurred the boundary between working hours and nonworking hours, posing a challenge to employees, and making it difficult for them to protect their labor rights and for labor officers to regulate overtime.

Employers misuse ICT to encroach upon workers' right to rest, creating three major problems. First, "invisible overtime" breaks the continuity of workers' rest period. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure. That's why labor laws have fixed working hours and provisions for periodic holidays with pay. Employees in China have a standard working week of 40 hours (eight hours a day), so except for statutory or agreed-upon circumstances, they have full control over their non-working hours. But the encroachment upon workers' right to rest fragments their free hours and forces them to be on call beyond working hours.