Comebuy evading overtime rules: workers

By Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter





The Comebuy teashop chain has systematically sought to evade overtime regulations, workers and labor advocates said yesterday.

Several employees of the chain and members of the Labor Vanguard Association held a news conference in Taipei, claiming that the firm has since January sought to transfer all overtime hours to a separate company, Weigu Corp, and required employees to sign an official notice.

“The notice clearly showed that the company was not willing to give us any overtime pay,” said a woman, surnamed Juan (阮), who said she had been employed by a Comebuy franchise next to National Chengchi University until the end of last month.

Former employees of the Comebuy tea shop chain yesterday take part in a Taipei news conference organized by the Labor Vanguard Association to expose alleged violations of the Labor Standards Act by the company. Photo: CNA

Shifting extra hours to a separate firm meant Comebuy would not be subject to overtime rates, she said.

“Our salary was still provided by Comebuy — or at least there was still only one deposit being made into our accounts,” she said.

“The reality is that we do not have any relationship with Weigu, even though we were counted as working for them during holiday hours,” said a man, surnamed Wang (王), who used to work at Comebuy’s flagship storefront near Taipei 101.

Wang alleged the firm had also used other mechanisms to deny workers overtime pay.

While officially designating employees as having fixed monthly salaries and are ineligible for overtime, the company still docks their pay if they failed to complete required overtime hours, he said.

“The shifts were determined by our manager and if you did not have enough hours to meet the required overtime target, they would deduct your salary for each hour missed — so even though we were not hourly employees, we still were not given a guaranteed salary,” he said.

He also accused the firm of avoiding paying double overtime over the Lunar New Year holiday by temporarily linking employees’ pay directly to store sales.

“If you worked on those days, you would get a portion of the 35 percent of revenues they split among workers, but the firm only did this because it knew there would not be many customers,” Labor Vanguard Association spokesman Wu Zhou-ju (吳昭儒) said, demanding that Wang be reinstated to his position and workers be given back-pay for any overtime owed.

Wang, who was laid off shortly after requesting mediation from the Taipei Department of Labor, estimated that the company owed him at least NT$10,000 for overtime work over the several months he was employed.

“Since employees do not have formal contracts with Weigu and still work in their original location, Comebuy is engaging in fake outsourcing,” National Chiao Tung University School of Law professor Chiu Yu-fan (邱羽凡) said. “If Weigu did not send people to supervise [the work] and take responsibility for safety and [working] hours, it is basically a non-existent employer.”

Comebuy denied the accusations, saying it did not fully understand the new labor rules, which took effect in January, but that it has since boosted efforts to educate store managers.

Additional reporting by CNA