Not obtaining a business license does not affect workers' rights

This article is reprinted from: Digest Newspaper

In March 2023, Zhu was employed as a home customer service representative at an online store, with an oral agreement with the store owner, Han, to a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan, along with online check-ins and management responsibilities. At that time, Han and her husband, Meng, jointly operated the online store which had not yet obtained a business license. In August of the same year, Meng registered a sole proprietorship called “Home Furniture Store.” Since then, Zhu’s job duties, management style, and monthly salary remained unchanged, but the payers varied between Han and Meng.

In March 2025, Zhu was dismissed and subsequently filed for labor arbitration. The Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration Committee of Midong District, Urumqi City, Xinjiang, ruled that Zhu had an employment relationship with the store from August 2023 to March 2025. Meng was dissatisfied and filed a lawsuit.

Meng argued that initially, Zhu was hired personally by his wife, Han, and the parties had an employer-employee relationship. Even after he registered the business license for the online store, Zhu was only considered “half” an employee of the registered store because she also worked for other unregistered online stores. Therefore, compensation should be calculated based on a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan.

Zhu stated that upon employment, both parties agreed that her work involved managing multiple online stores simultaneously, and there was no specific salary allocation for each store. Additionally, during her employment, she was always managed within the same work group.

After a trial and an appeal, the court held that although the business license for the online store involved in this case was registered after the employment began, Meng and Han, as a married couple, jointly managed Zhu for a long period with stable attendance and salary payments. This substantive, continuous employment management constituted a factual labor relationship. The nature of the legal relationship naturally shifts with the clarity of the employment主体, and cannot be affected by the timing of the business registration. The agreed monthly salary of 4,000 yuan was an indivisible total compensation.

Ultimately, the Intermediate People’s Court of Urumqi ruled in the second instance that Meng and Han jointly pay Zhu 44,000 yuan in double wages for not signing a written employment contract, and 7,300 yuan in economic compensation for terminating the employment relationship.

(Workers’ Daily, February 5, Wu Duosi, Ma Anni)