Amazon supervisor refused to take pay cut and was transferred to warehouse

In the past two years, competition on Amazon has become increasingly fierce. In order to go further and longer, some sellers have begun to transform their businesses. If they succeed, they celebrate; if they fail, they feel overwhelmed. Shrinking the scale, cutting salaries and reducing staff are all routine operations.

In August, a Shenzhen-based cross-border company offered a salary cut to an Amazon operations manager in disguise. After the manager refused, the two sides could not reach an agreement on severance pay. The manager was then transferred to work in a warehouse, and the company asked for back the mobile phone he had given her as a gift. This caused heated discussions in the industry.

Amazon executives were given a pay cut in disguise and became "partners" before being fired

There is a contempt chain among Amazon sellers: boutique > boutique > general merchandise. The general merchandise model is simple and crude, while the boutique model is more sustainable. Therefore, many sellers have started to transform from general merchandise to boutique or boutique. Shenzhen Bao ** Company is one of them.

Bao ** previously focused on boutique stores. In mid-2020, the company established a boutique department with two operating teams. Wang Nan joined the company in February last year and became the operations manager of one of the boutique groups.

Wang Nan said that from the time she joined the boutique department until around June this year, the entire department was losing money. "The project failed, and then we switched to boutique stores. After a while, the boss wanted to cut salaries in disguise."

In early August, the administration department approached Wang Nan and asked him to sign a salary adjustment agreement. According to the agreement, 3,000 yuan of Wang Nan's 15,000 yuan salary would be allocated as performance bonuses, and if the performance reached the target, it would be paid out in the form of bonuses, which would be officially implemented on July 1. The company pays the previous month's salary on the 15th of each month, and the signing date was required to be set in early August.

Wang Nan immediately refused to sign, saying she could not accept it: "A normal company would start implementing it from next quarter or early next month, and the worst ones would start from this month. I have never seen a company start from last month." She said the company could go directly through the dismissal process, but her boss asked her to apply for resignation directly.

The two sides could not agree on compensation because the company said she was not defined as an employee.

When Wang Nan joined the company, she negotiated with the boss that the company would provide funds and office space, and she would be responsible for the rest of the construction. She was responsible for the entire team from 0 to 1, including team building, operation planning, etc., and her salary was 15,000 yuan in basic salary + 20% of the team's profit dividends . In her opinion, this was a technical stock dividend. Out of trust, Wang Nan brought her own brand new store into the company, but after joining, the company only signed a labor contract with her, and there has been no other cooperation or dividend agreement so far.

There is normal compensation for dismissed employees, but not for partners. Now the company boss suggested to Wang Nan that compensation is fine , or just a token of appreciation. "When you came, we didn't treat you as an employee, but a partner, with a profit split of 2:8. Your team lost nearly 2 million, and you must bear the main responsibility. Also, don't take money too seriously, adjust your mentality, and leave a good reputation in the future. Otherwise, it will be ugly if it gets out, and it will be bad for you and the company."

Wang Nan did not refute the loss of the project, but believed that the actual loss was not so much, and the company did not list a detailed financial list, which made it a confusing account. But she denied the "partner" statement.

"You keep saying that I am a partner and have dividends, but why didn't you sign a dividend agreement with me? And you didn't sign it with me alone. All other teams in the company that have the right to dividends have signed dividend agreements. We only signed a labor contract, so I am definitely just an employee."

The two sides argued over compensation, and the ownership of the store also became an issue. The company boss once said that the company could buy out the account or clear out the stock in a few months. Wang Nan immediately said that if the company could compensate according to the normal compensation for dismissed employees, the store could be left to the company, and he would cooperate with the company to modify the legal person in the future, but the boss's subsequent actions put the matter into a deadlock again.

The company took back the donated mobile phone and the supervisor was transferred to the warehouse

When the Apple iPhone 14 was launched, the company boss bought a mobile phone for Wang Nan. When negotiating compensation, the other party mentioned that the company had given her a mobile phone, and said: "You came to the company and gave me a mobile phone. You can't just think about yourself. This project lost so much money, and you didn't bear it."

Previously, the boss had clearly stated several times that the phone was a gift to an individual, but after he mentioned it several times, Wang Nan said she could buy a phone with comparable configuration as a gift to the other party. She thought the matter was over, but with the coordination of another company leader, the two sides reached an agreement on compensation for a short time. Afterwards, the boss said that since the compensation had been agreed upon, the phone could either be replaced with a new one or deducted at the market price.

Due to dissatisfaction with the salary change, the company asked her to resign, and the normal dismissal compensation was changed to half compensation and half loan. She returned the gifted mobile phone out of common sense, but then she was told that she had to return it herself ... Wang Nan was annoyed, and she returned the phone to her boss the next day, but the other party did not respond positively to the store's handling of the issue.

Soon after, Wang Nan received a job transfer notice from the company. Starting from September 1, his job position was adjusted to the warehouse office, and his salary and benefits remained unchanged. The notice required Wang Nan to report to the new position on September 1. If he reported after the deadline, it would be considered as absenteeism; if he was absent from work for more than 3 days, the company would handle it according to the relevant regulations on automatic resignation.

"They give me a notification every day. Now they just say I will be transferred to the warehouse without telling me what position I will be in. The warehouse is different from the company's current location and is quite remote. There is no subway. They just want to force me out in this way."

Wang Nan consulted a lawyer, who analyzed that the position signed in her labor contract was operations supervisor, and the warehouse position was not related to her current position, so it was unreasonable and she could refuse it. At present, Wang Nan has refused the transfer request, but she does not know what will happen next.

In most partnerships, employees are the losers.

In the cross-border e-commerce industry, there are many cases where workers have become partners. A few years ago, the story of "operation boy" spread throughout the industry. Now, employees often ask: I am doing well and was invited by the company to upgrade to partner. How should I avoid pitfalls in this situation?

Li Mingzhi, a senior seller , gave some suggestions: first, you must sign a contract. All verbal promises are invalid. Matters must be clearly stipulated in the contract to protect your own rights and interests. Secondly, finances must be transparent. If it is a partnership but the company's finances are not transparent, they are not partners but senior employees.

A standard partnership agreement should include the following contents: an introduction to the partnership project, division of partnership responsibilities, distribution of equity interests, salary and financial agreements, principles for voting on disagreements, a mechanism for entry and exit, a project recommendation plan, project protection principles, project termination principles, and other supplementary notes.

In fact, Li Mingzhi believes that most companies’ partnerships with employees are a trick to cheat employees. Unless the contract is very complete, employees will always be the ones who suffer losses.

The most typical situation is that employees only have the right to dividends but no shares, so they have no decision-making power. If the company delays the dividends, there is no money to be made. This situation cannot even be called cooperation, and the employees are just working for the company. Real cooperation means that employees also have equity, which can be different shares, but they cannot have the right to dividends but no equity. It is meaningless to only give the right to dividends.

With equity, changes in company assets, etc. require shareholder signatures and confirmation, so that "partners" can truly protect themselves. But when it comes to dividing shares, not many bosses are willing to talk about partnerships, after all, the management of the company will be very complicated after the shares are dispersed.

In general, cooperation should be based on mutual trust between the two parties. Otherwise, disagreements and disputes are inevitable, and the situation will end in a mess.