Employees wait for customers Tuesday at a B&Q store in Pudong New Area. Staff of the store’s design and decoration center say they have suffered from changes to the company’s salary policy, which sparked a protest Monday. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

B&Q store employees in Shanghai descended on the UK-based home improvement retailer's Shanghai headquarters in Pudong New Area to protest a new salary policy that they say severely cut down their monthly income, local media reported Tuesday.

The employees went to the headquarters to demand a meeting with company managers to explain the change, which some employees said decimated their monthly paychecks.

Most of the employees who went to the headquarters Monday worked in their store's decoration and design center, according to a report on the news website people.com.cn.

Those employees made a significant portion of their incomes from the contracts they sold to customers looking to do the interiors of their homes.

"Before, the more contracts we signed with the customer, the more we got paid," said an employee surnamed Xu, who worked at the B&Q store on Longyang Road in Pudong New Area.

"However, under the new policy, which took effect on August 22, I found that my paycheck had fallen to just a little more than my basic salary."

Employees typically received their bonuses one or two months after the contracts were signed, the report said.

Store employees were not informed about the new salary policy until about a week ago, when they got their most recent paychecks. Xu told the Global Times.

The paychecks did include the employees' normal bonuses, even though B&Q held several sales promotions over the summer that should've increased them, the report said.

Zhou Qiong, the company's marketing manager for stores in Shanghai, told the People's Daily that the company informed employees about new salary policy via e-mail, though she did not reveal when it was sent out.

Another store employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said his salary had not increased after working for the company for 10 years. He said he suspected that the new policy's purpose was to force employees to quit.

B&Q said it would respond to workers' requests by Friday, the report said. The company could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The staff plans to turn to the local labor arbitration board to mediate the dispute.

B&Q opened its first store in China in 1999 on Hutai Road in Shanghai. In subsequent years, it added nine more stores in the city, but has since closed many stores around the country.