Short answer. No. The Labor Code makes it unlawful for an employer to refuse to pay or reduce your wages and benefits because you filed a complaint or testified in a labor proceeding. A pay cut timed to your complaint is retaliation, not a legitimate business decision, and the law names it directly.
What the law says
It shall be unlawful for an employer to refuse to pay or reduce the wages and benefits, discharge or in any manner discriminate against any employee who has filed any complaint or instituted any proceeding under this Title or has testified or is about to testify in such proceedings.
Labor Code, Article 118 — Retaliation Prohibited. Read the full provision →
What the article actually forbids
Article 118 is written for exactly this situation. It bars an employer from refusing to pay wages, reducing wages and benefits, discharging an employee, or discriminating against an employee in any manner, where the reason is that the employee filed a complaint, started a proceeding, or is testifying or about to testify in one. A cut to your pay that lands after you complain is not treated as an ordinary management decision — the article calls it out as its own category of unlawful conduct, separate from the underlying wage dispute itself.
It covers more than dismissal
Retaliation cases often focus on firing, but Article 118 is broader than that. It expressly reaches a reduction of wages and benefits as its own violation, alongside discharge and "any manner" of discrimination. That means an employer does not have to terminate you to fall under this article — quietly cutting your pay, reducing your hours in a way that cuts your earnings, or stripping benefits after you file or testify can each be the retaliatory act the provision is aimed at.
What the complaint has to be about
The protection attaches when the complaint or proceeding falls "under this Title" of the Labor Code, or when you have testified or are about to testify in such a proceeding. In practice this covers complaints and testimony concerning wages, hours, and the other labor standards subjects the Title addresses. The article protects the act of complaining or testifying itself — it does not require that your underlying wage claim already be proven correct before the retaliation protection applies.
Documenting what happened to you
Because retaliation is proven by timing and pattern as much as by any single document, keep a clear record: the date you filed or raised your complaint, the date the pay cut or benefit change took effect, and any payslips showing the before-and-after difference. Keep copies of the complaint itself and any acknowledgment of it. If the cut followed closely after you complained or testified, that sequence is the core of what Article 118 asks a decision-maker to look at.