Tired Chinese workers launch ‘worker lives matter’ campaign over grueling work hours
China has introduced a ‘996 work culture’, according to which people have to work six days a week from 9 am to 9 pm. The culture is now facing the backlash of the local people in the country. To protest the grueling work hours, afflicted Chinese office workers have launched a ‘worker life matters’ campaign, asking everyone to share their work schedules on an open-access spreadsheet called being broadcast on the Internet.
As of an update on Thursday, the sheet had entries from more than 4,000 people working at tech giants including Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance.
This 996 culture was publicly praised by the founders of China’s Tech Unicorns, including Jack Ma, who once reportedly said, “It’s a great pleasure to be able to do 996 work.”
But the Chinese population, especially the youth who emphasize healthy living and balanced work instincts, with phrases such as “laying flat” and “feeling fishy” are being used to refer to sluggishness among exhausted workers, now are opposing it, Taiwan News reported.
In addition, Chinese tech companies are also striving to bring productivity-enhancing tools into everyday office life, squeezing more value out of employees using software-driven monitoring management and monitoring into their professional lives. Is.
Despite such aggressive practices and sharp criticism over employee complaints, they have had little impact on investor sentiment, according to a Nikkei Asia report.
Companies are working even more brutally – ByteDance allows its employees only one full weekend off every other week, while Pinduoduo’s new units require employees to work at least 300 hours a month.
(with inputs from ANI)
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