Meaning:

“反向” means “reversed,” and “讨薪” means “demand payment,” or “ask for late salary.” As it more common to come across scenarios where employees ask for late salaries, this Chinese term that recently made headlines in the media addresses the issue of when an employer wants to “recover overpaid salaries” from employees. Information released from the annual reports of multiple banks revealed that in the past year, nearly 40 Chinese banks recovered quite a large sum of overpaid salary from their employees. China Merchants Bank, for example, recovered 58.24 million yuan (US$8.46m) in overpaid salary from 2,876 of its 113,000 employees last year.

Example:

A: 你姐在银行工作，被反向讨薪了吗？

Nǐjiě zài yínháng gōngzuò，bèi fǎnxiàng tǎoxīn le ma？

Your elder sister works for a bank. Did her employer ask her to repay overpaid salary?

B: 不知道，即使退回去一点肯定也还是比我的工资高。

Bù zhīdào，jíshǐ tuìhuíqù yīdiǎn kěndìng yě háishì bǐ wǒ de gōngzī gāo。

I don’t know. Even if she had to return some, I’m sure she still had a higher salary than mine.