Nanjing Teaching Assistant Challenges Dismissal After Day-Off Message Dispute

A teaching assistant in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, has sought labor arbitration after she was dismissed following a dispute over failing to answer a parent's messages for five hours while hiking on her day off, Yangtze Evening News reported.

The woman, surnamed Lu, said she went hiking on October 17 and left her work phone behind because mobile reception in the mountains was unreliable. Managers called her that evening and criticized her in work groups, saying the parent was an important client.

Lu worked for Nanjing Biyan Haoqingsong Education Technology Co Ltd, helping university students plan for postgraduate admission. Her contract specified a five-day week of no more than 40 working hours, with approved overtime compensated through time off or overtime pay.

Company guidance already required staff to check work accounts three times on days off. After the parent complained about Lu’s delayed response on October 17, her team leader announced a stricter requirement in the department’s work group that evening: employees should try to check their phones every three hours on days off and deal with work promptly, Lu said.

Lu filed an internal complaint that night over the demands to remain available during her time off and the criticism she had received in work groups. After discussions with human resources, the company concluded that there had been no compulsory unpaid overtime or public criticism, according to Lu. It told her she could pursue legal action if she disagreed. On October 23, she was removed from several work groups, and her access to office accounts was disabled.

Without written dismissal notice, she returned to work on October 25 and called police to help resolve her employment status. Mediation failed, and the company issued a termination notice that afternoon. It accused her of disrupting the workplace, prolonging personal disputes in work groups and posting false information online that harmed the company.

Lu said she had collected more than 900 screenshots documenting work outside regular hours.

A former colleague told the newspaper she had quit two months earlier because she could not accept being constantly on call on days off. During her interview, she had been told that checking and answering messages every six hours would suffice. But when she once went roughly three hours without replying to a client on a day off, a salesperson complained to her supervisor, and managers called her one after another, she said.

Lu disputes the dismissal. On October 28, she applied for arbitration seeking compensation for unlawful termination and unpaid overtime.

Chen Kai, a partner at the Nanjing office of Beijing Gaopeng Law Firm, told the newspaper that requiring employees to check their phones every three hours and remain on call on days off amounted to unlawful overtime in disguise. He said answering parents’ questions involved substantive work, including research and coordination, and was tied to performance assessments and pay. Requiring such work without recognizing it as overtime or providing compensation unlawfully encroached on employees’ statutory rest time, he said.

Company representatives declined to address the dispute when contacted by the newspaper.