An uproar among Chinese office workers over the country’s long, grueling work hours prompted the ‘worker lives matter’ campaign. A campaign is underway against the country’s ‘996 work culture’. People in Taiwan work from 9 am to 9 pm for six days a week, according to Taiwan News. In the campaign, employees are asked to share their work schedules on a spreadsheet that is circulated over the internet.
According to the updates on Thursday, the sheet had entries from over 4,000 people working at tech giants like Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance. According to Taiwan News, China has experienced a huge backlash against the dreaded work schedule in recent years. The 996 culture has also been praised by the founders of China’s tech unicorns, including Jack Ma, who once said that ‘to work 996 is a huge bliss’.
However, the Chinese population, particularly their youth, is emphasizing a healthy lifestyle and a balanced work life pattern , with phrases such as ‘laying flat’ and ‘feeling fish’ being used for slacking off among exhausted workers, Taiwan News reported. As part of the Chinese tech industry’s attempts to provide workers with productivity-enhancing tools, software-driven surveillance management and monitoring has been applied to squeeze more value from their employment.
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Nikkei Asia reported that despite fierce criticism over these aggressive practices and complaints from employees, they have had little impact on the investor sentiment. Compared to ByteDance, Pinduoduo requires its employees to work 300 hours a month at its newer units, allowing a full weekend every other week.
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