At 9 pm, you receive a text message that the arbitration hearing has been rescheduled to next Wednesday morning - this is your third time asking Manager Zhang for leave.
The person sitting across from you is the company's legal affairs officer, who returns to their workstation to continue working after attending court; your perfect attendance award is lost on the day you take your first leave.
According to the 2025 Statistical Bulletin of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, a total of 4.543 million labor and personnel disputes were handled throughout the year, with a total settlement amount of 99.47 billion yuan, averaging 22,500 yuan per case.
The overtime pay and compensation you were owed, totaling over 50,000 yuan, has more than doubled in value.
The law indeed grants you the right to apply for arbitration.
What it didn't mention was the exercise price to be paid.
454,000 Cases Average Only 22,500 Yuan in Value
Labor arbitration has not been idle, on the contrary, it has been one of the busiest channels for disputes in recent years.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's annual statistical reports show that in 2021, the country handled 2.631 million labor and personnel dispute cases, 3.85 million in 2023, 4.257 million in 2024, and 4.543 million in 2025.
In four years, the number of cases increased by 72.6%.
If the number of cases in 2025 is spread out over every second of the year, approximately every 7 seconds, a new labor dispute is added nationwide.
Involving 4.721 million laborers.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately 470 million employed people in urban areas - which means that about one in every 100 urban employees has taken their former employer to arbitration over the past year.
And not included in the statistics are those who didn't even apply for arbitration: those who felt it wasn't worth the cost, those who didn't know how to apply, and those who were deterred by the warning that "it will be on record".
470,000 refers to the number of people who have exercised their rights, not the number of people whose rights have been infringed.
The latter figure, which has not been statistically estimated, is certainly larger.
Even looking at just these 4.54 million cases, the situation is clear: 4.42 million cases were closed, with a total closed case amount of 99.47 billion yuan, and an average of 22,500 yuan per case.
What is the concept of 22,500 yuan?
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the average annual salary for employees in urban private units was 69,476 yuan in 2024, with a monthly average of 5,790 yuan.
The average amount in dispute in a labor case is equivalent to less than four months' salary for an employee of a private company, or about three months' rent in a first-tier city.
In other words, the vast majority of people who enter the arbitration court are not fighting for wealth, but for a living wage.
They are taking the company to court over a month's worth of unpaid wages, a six-month discrepancy in overtime pay, and a compensation payment that was not sufficient.
And to have made it this far, they are already a filtered group of people.
Matters that can be negotiated are usually resolved at the negotiating table; those that enter the arbitration process are mostly cases where negotiation is directly rejected or where it is impossible to get in touch with the other party.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's statistical report also contains a less noticeable figure: an 81.1% success rate for labor dispute mediation in 2025.
The grammar of mediation is to give in a little - using monetary discounts in exchange for procedural closure.
Even if they get a result in the arbitration stage, a considerable number of workers still end up compromising.
The lineup of this confrontation is also asymmetrical: on one side is an individual fighting alone, and on the other is a corporate entity with legal counsel, advisors, and established procedures.
Tighter still is the deadline before the starting gun.
The Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law stipulates that the arbitration statute of limitations is one year, calculated from the date when the parties knew or should have known that their rights were infringed.
The statute of limitations can be recalculated, but an interruption requires evidence, including written notices, chat records, and complaint receipts.
The burden of proof is back on you.
You are fighting for your rights within a time limit and must also keep the countdown certificate safe; on the other side, there is no deadline.
When these four conditions converge—high case volume, small claim amounts, unequal resources, and time pressure on only one side—the ensuing fight is destined to become a war of attrition.
45-Day Ruling Concludes Year-and-a-Half Process
Judging from the legal text, the efficiency design of labor arbitration is quite impressive.
The Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law stipulates that the arbitration tribunal should conclude the case within 45 days from the date of accepting the arbitration application. If the case is complex and requires an extension, it can be extended by 15 days with approval.
Given that arbitration fees have been waived since 2008, this is almost a free and rapid channel for relief.
The problem is that it's quick only until arbitration.
For non-final rulings, if a company is not satisfied, it can file a lawsuit with the court within 15 days; after a first-instance judgment, it can still appeal.
According to the Civil Procedure Law, the first-instance ordinary procedure takes six months, and the second instance takes three months. After obtaining an effective judgment, if the other party fails to comply, the enforcement procedure must be initiated again, which takes at least six months.
This is just the measurement on the ruler, without considering the waiting time between the measurements: the scheduling of case filings, the serving of documents, the period for submitting evidence, and the rescheduling of court hearings - the 9 pm text message about rescheduling mentioned at the beginning of the article is a daily occurrence in the space between these measurements.
The paperwork process can be completed smoothly in about a year, but if any link is delayed, it can easily drag on for more than two years.
The only system that truly guards against time is one: final judgment.
The law stipulates that for disputes over claims for labor remuneration, economic compensation, or damages, where the amount does not exceed twelve months of the local monthly minimum wage standard, the ruling takes effect from the date it is made, and the company cannot file another lawsuit, but can only apply to the intermediate people's court for revocation.
This gate is still one-way: if workers are not satisfied with the final ruling, they can still file a lawsuit within 15 days; only the enterprise side has its right to litigation restricted.
The legislative intent is clear - to quickly put an end to small disputes and prevent companies from dragging workers into lengthy lawsuits.
Beyond the stated intent, what matters is where the line is drawn on the amount.
Even after passing this hurdle, companies still have an ace up their sleeve: applying to the intermediate court for revocation, a process that can itself drag on for another two or three months.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's latest standards show that Shanghai's monthly minimum wage is 2,740 yuan, ranking first in the country, with a total of 32,880 yuan for 12 months; in most cities nationwide, this figure is below 30,000 yuan.
In other words, for claims exceeding 30,000 yuan, companies can use this as a ticket to bring you to court and even to a second trial.
The price of this ticket is collected in accordance with the State Council's regulations on litigation fees: a handling fee of 10 yuan per labor dispute case.
For 10 yuan, companies can buy six months of legitimate delay.
This is not a metaphor, it's a price tag.
Arbitration is free, while litigation costs 10 yuan - the pricing of this rights protection channel is almost symbolic; what is truly expensive is not the admission ticket, but the time spent inside.
The withdrawal procedure of the intermediate court, the right to appeal in the second instance, and the right to objection in the execution stage, the entrance to each procedure is open, and none of them ask whether the reason is valid - they first accept, first schedule, and first spend the time.
Neutrality of the program is neutral, but when only one party has the motivation to abuse it, neutrality becomes bias.
Another figure in the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's statistical report indicates that this ticket is being used frequently: in 2025, the arbitration conclusion rate was 74.8% - for every four arbitration cases, approximately one continues to court.
Data from the court side confirms the volume flowing through this channel.
The Supreme People's Court said courts nationwide accepted 648,000 first-instance labor dispute cases in the first nine months of 2025, up 37.5% year-on-year. Courts concluded 674,000 labor dispute cases for the full year.
Lawsuits are on the rise, and sharply so.
The timeline unfolded as follows: 45 days of arbitration, six months for the first trial, three months for the second trial on appeal, and six months for the application for enforcement.
This is merely the shortest path on paper.
The first 45 days are when the country is worried on your behalf, but the more than 500 days that follow are when only you are left to worry.
For a year and a half, the rent was paid on time, but social insurance payments were suspended, leaving an unexplainable gap on his resume.
For the company, it's just a process; for individuals, it's life itself.
Doubao Delays Service, Free for Businesses, Paid for Individuals
The most fundamental design flaw in this war of attrition is the one-way allocation of costs.
First, calculate the company's accounts.
Legal fees are fixed costs, salaries that need to be paid anyway; going to court is working hours, and defense statements are templates; the marginal cost of delay is approximately zero.
The toolkit for delay is also particularly comprehensive: raising a jurisdictional objection before the first trial, even if it's bound to fail, can still drag things out for one or two months; applying for an extension during the evidence submission period, and then applying for another extension at the trial; if the first trial is lost, appeal, and if the second trial is lost, apply for a retrial, and even at the enforcement stage, an execution objection can still be raised.
Every step has a veneer of legitimate procedure, and every step comes at no cost.
Factor in the cost of illegality.
In the event of unlawful termination of a labor contract, according to Article 87 of the Labor Contract Law, compensation shall be paid at twice the standard of economic compensation, commonly referred to in the industry as "2N".
Note the nature of this money: it is compensation, repaying what is owed to you, and nothing more.
No punitive markups, no penalty interest on the delay itself—you get to use the funds first, pay only after a ruling, and even stalling until execution adds nothing to the cost.
For companies, 2N is a type of post-payment account period funding that is interest-free, with no pressure to repay, and even if repayment is demanded, there is still room for negotiation on discounts.
Retailers could only dream of getting such payment terms.
This is like a neighborhood parking lot changing its rules: if a car is parked illegally in a fire lane and gets caught, the owner only needs to pay the original parking fee, without incurring a fine, penalty points, or a record of violation.
Under those rules, every rational driver would choose to park illegally.
Proactive law enforcement has not been intensified either.
According to the statistical report released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in 2024, labor security supervision agencies at all levels nationwide conducted proactive inspections of 640,000 enterprises, and handled 137,000 cases of labor security violations.
In comparison to the 4.257 million disputes that year, the number of cases discovered by law enforcement authorities was less than a fraction of the cases where workers were forced to defend their rights themselves.
In other words, the system defaults to: illegal activities are not discovered by patrols, but rather by the victims themselves initiating the procedure to discover them.
Criminal deterrence is close to zero.
The Supreme People's Court revealed at a press conference on "Intensifying Efforts to Crack Down on Wage Arrears and Protect Labor Rights" that in the first 11 months of 2024, courts nationwide accepted around 1,000 criminal cases involving the crime of refusing to pay labor remuneration.
For this charge to be established, it must meet the requirements of transferring property, fleeing, and being ordered by relevant government departments to pay but still failing to do so - in the vast majority of wage arrears cases, the process stops at the order to pay.
Several million cases are disputed, with thousands being criminally prosecuted.
There is still the hurdle of implementation.
The Supreme People's Court revealed at the beginning of 2026 that the nationwide court case enforcement rate exceeded 50% in 2025 - this is the average water level for all enforcement cases, not specifically labor disputes, but enough to illustrate: winning a judgment is only equivalent to obtaining a certificate to queue for payment.
A more thorough approach is to use the tactic of "golden cicada shedding its shell": by the time a verdict is reached, the company has already been dissolved, and the legal representative has started anew.
The worker's winning verdict became a creditor's certificate against an empty shell of a company.
Looking at the laborer's side of the bill.
Hiring a lawyer can cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan; not hiring a lawyer means personally researching procedures, preparing evidence, going to the arbitration commission, and going to court.
Taking time off to attend court is a loss of work, traveling back and forth is a transportation expense, and confronting a former employer in court is another kind of drain.
There's also the extra question of finding a job: when the interviewer asks why you left your previous company, you can't tell the truth - the reminder that "it will be on record" has been echoing in your mind since the day you submitted the arbitration application.
This still doesn't include the cost of background checks – that's a bill for the next chapter.
On one end of the scale is free queuing, and on the other is paid waiting.
For a company that can do the math, illegal employment is a cost-benefit transaction with a positive expected return.
The 'Records' of Rights Defenders
Stigma is more effective than procrastination.
According to a series of investigations conducted by Workers' Daily in 2024, the conclusion can be distilled into one sentence: Having applied for labor arbitration is becoming an implicit blacklisting factor in the job market.
A product manager at a Beijing-based internet company, Han Xue, was persuaded to leave her job due to "serious disciplinary violations." When she mentioned arbitration in her communication with the HR department, she was warned that "after arbitration, no major company will want to hire you," because the arbitration record would be included in the so-called Integrity Alliance platform, affecting her future job prospects.
Wang Xin, a procurement management job seeker in Shanghai, encountered a more complete demonstration of this logic chain.
His previous company went bankrupt, owing him and his colleagues two months' worth of salary for half a year, so they applied for arbitration to get their money back - a completely justified claim for unpaid wages.
He then passed the interview at the new company, received the offer, and turned down another company's offer.
After the background check, the new company called to say that due to a history of labor arbitration, the candidate did not meet their hiring standards, and the offer was being revoked.
Those who sue to recover their own wages are deemed a hiring risk by their next company.
On the day he was rejected, he didn't even have a backup plan - he had already turned down another job offer for this one.
The inquiry channel for this list was figured out by a Workers' Daily reporter for a consultation fee of 100 yuan.
A third-party background check company's staff member explained: for cases that have entered the litigation stage, they check the judgment documents website; for those that have not entered litigation, they make phone calls to the former company's HR and colleagues to inquire - both situations can be investigated.
An HR representative from a major internet company put it more bluntly: "Third-party background check companies can find everything," and arbitration experiences will be marked with a red flag in the background check report. If there are too many red flags, the business department will directly reject the candidate.
What's even more absurd is that the intimidating rhetoric itself cannot withstand scrutiny - when the Workers' Daily inquired about this, insiders clearly responded that the so-called Integrity Alliance targets untrustworthy corporate personnel, and ordinary workers who apply for arbitration normally will not be included.
The threat doesn't have to be true, it just needs to be something you're not willing to bet against.
Another claim circulating on social media is: "Labor arbitration records are not made public, and companies can't be looked up."
In theory, this is correct; in the background check industry's business, this is wrong.
Between the literal meaning of regulations and reality, there is an entire grey industry of inquiries.
Beijing-based lawyer Xu Yuanyuan from Kyoto Law Firm told Workers' Daily that not hiring someone because they have applied for arbitration constitutes employment discrimination, infringing upon workers' right to equal employment and contradicting the spirit of labor laws.
But theory is one thing and reality is another.
Companies that refuse to hire will never "attribute their labor arbitration experience to a single cause" - discrimination is hidden, with ready-made excuses, and evidence is almost impossible to obtain.
Nor has any company been penalized for refusing to hire petitioners - not because it hasn't happened, but because it's impossible to investigate.
Looking deeper, the logic behind the company's actions may not be entirely malicious.
In the HR algorithm, an employee who is well-versed in law implies higher future layoff costs and greater management difficulties - this is not targeted at anyone, it's risk control.
When all companies implement the same risk control measures, the result is institutionalized: whoever exercises their rights becomes the risk.
The law gives you a gun, and the market settles the account.
Rights now come with their own penalties.
The phrase "don't easily apply for labor arbitration, it will be on record" often spoken by HR, has become one of the most commonly used tactics at the negotiating table for departing employees - a threat that doesn't need legal backing, with just the mention of "it will be on record" being enough.
Ironically, the most effective blockage of this inquiry chain currently comes from a decision that was not intended to protect workers: after the optimization and upgrade of the Judgment Document Network in December 2023, newly added documents are no longer as easily retrievable as they were in the past, and some lawsuit records are thus blocked from background checks.
The greatest protection for rights defenders comes from the reduction of online documentation.
This is probably the coldest humor in the entire story.
Patches Applied to Processes, but Bills Remain with Individuals
The system knows where it hurts and has been continuously patching.
The Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security have been promoting the connection between arbitration and trial, with local arbitration agencies implementing element-based rapid arbitration and opening a green channel for wage arrears cases. In December 2024, the Supreme Court held a special press conference to deploy a winter special campaign to govern wage arrears, and in April 2026, it released typical cases of enforcing governance of wage arrears.
The common direction of the patches is to accelerate: to make case handling faster and wage arrears enforcement more urgent.
The fact that a "special operation" is needed for prioritized treatment of rights itself indicates that the normal state is one of dysfunction - the wage arrears green channel is like a year-end big sale at a mall, which opens only once a year, and is business as usual at full price at other times.
A green channel can help in emergencies, but it cannot be a long-term solution.
Is speeding up useful?
A single number tells the story: in the first three quarters of 2025, the number of labor dispute cases of first instance accepted by courts nationwide increased by 37.5% year-over-year.
Diversion has not been diverted, and the lawsuit has instead increased in volume - more and more cases have gone through arbitration and still need to go to court again.
Time is just one aspect of this game, with two other factors yet to be considered, and the patches have not been applied yet.
The first move is an account of time, but it gets stuck in a place where acceleration can't be treated: the finish line.
The threshold for final judgment is written as "12 times the local monthly minimum wage standard", with Shanghai capped at 32,880 yuan.
This threshold was designed in 2008 legislation to be based on the minimum wage, with the intention of only covering small claims.
Over the past decade or so, wages have been rising, but the adjustments to the minimum wage, in terms of both magnitude and frequency, have not kept pace, with the gap between the two sets of standards growing wider with each passing year.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the average monthly salary for private units in urban areas in 2024 was 5,790 yuan - for an employee earning the average salary and working for three years who is illegally terminated, double compensation would be approximately 34,700 yuan.
In other words, the most generous final settlement nationwide cannot cover a claim for an average salary for three years of work.
The threshold is priced based on the minimum wage, while claims are priced based on the market wage, with two different yardsticks used for the numerator and denominator.
The gap between the rules is a channel for enterprises to legally drag their feet.
A more practical loss is on the information side: most workers do not know about the final award before entering the arbitration court, let alone whether their claim amount is within or outside the guidelines.
The length of the track is determined as soon as you enter, and no one has released a map in advance.
The second payment is a penalty.
Lawmakers are more than capable of making violations costly.
In the consumer sector, the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law stipulates "retreat one, compensate three", while the Food Safety Law stipulates "retreat one, compensate ten" - the cost of fraud is three times or ten times the actual loss.
The same legislative approach has yet to be applied to labor relations: paying you what you are owed, without a penny more.
The third stroke is the account of shame.
As long as arbitration records can still be factored into hiring decisions through background checks, and "whether to have applied for labor arbitration" remains a factual inquiry in the background check process, expediting the process only means that rights defenders can get their money faster, and also get that "record" faster.
Time, penalties, and stigma - three debts weighing on one person, with only enough patches to cover the first.
A genuine balance adjustment, with directions all written into the question: let the bottom line follow wages instead of the minimum wage, let the cost of illegal pricing be higher than the cost of compliance, and let rights protection records be isolated from background checks.
Prior to that, the 45-day limit for reviews and the 98.4% arbitration settlement rate both indicate the same thing: the machine is running smoothly, but the world outside the machine is still stuck in the old ways.
Starting from the average of 225,000 yuan.
The labor arbitration system has not come to a halt, with 4.543 million cases and a closure rate of 98.4%, as machines churn out rulings every day.
What has come to a halt is everything outside of the verdict: time is not being capitalized on, delays are not being compensated for, and reputations are not being tarnished.
The law writes its rights for everyone, but the price list for exercising those rights is only given to those who can afford it.
Most people's choice therefore seems perfectly rational: just give up.
So the balance continues to tip to the other side - companies are not afraid of workers understanding the law, and are even looking forward to workers understanding the law and figuring out that it is not worth their while.
It is only when a company weighs the pros and cons of "dragging it out for a year and a half to see if it's worth it" before laying off employees, rather than being certain that "the employee can't afford to wait it out", that the rights written on paper truly take effect.
Prior to that, each time the arbitration tribunal banged its gavel, it was simply returning to you the money that was already yours, with an additional year and a half of duration.
References
[1] Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: 2025 Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Human Resources and Social Security
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: 2021 Annual Statistical Report on the Development of Human Resources and Social Security Undertakings
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: 2023 Annual Statistical Report on the Development of Human Resources and Social Security Undertakings
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: 2024 Annual Statistical Report on the Development of Human Resources and Social Security Undertakings
The National Bureau of Statistics: The average annual salary of employed personnel in urban units nationwide in 2024
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress: The People's Republic of China Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law
The State Council: Measures for the Payment of Litigation Fees
[8] Supreme People's Court: Key Data on Judicial Trial Work, January–September 2025
China Court Network: Supreme People's Court concluded 674,000 labor dispute cases
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security: Minimum Wage Standards in Provinces, Autonomous Regions, and Municipalities Across the Country
The Supreme People's Court: Press Conference on "Strengthening Wage Arrears Governance to Protect Labor Rights"
China Youth Daily: The Supreme Court: The enforcement rate will exceed 50% by 2025
Workers' Daily: Arbitration Experience in Safeguarding Rights Should Not Become an Obstacle to Employment
Workers' Daily: Arbitration Experience Should Not Become a "Stumbling Block" to Employment ② "How did the company find out if I had applied for labor arbitration?"