China’s High Court Warns Employers’ ‘996’ Schedule Illegal
WASHINGTON - China’s labor laws have long stated that a workday is eight hours long and overtime must be paid to any worker putting in more than 44 hours a week.
For many of China’s workers today that describes an idyllic daily grind given the common practice of companies demanding that employees follow a ‘996’ schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — to keep their jobs as employers have devised ways around loosely enforced laws.
Entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma, who founded the online retail giant Alibaba, and Richard Liu, chief of e-commerce platform JD.com, praised 996 as their internationally lauded enterprises made them billionaires. They have since walked back their praise, however, as the Chinese government has cracked down its wealthiest citizens.
After the deaths of two workers earlier this year at the online agricultural marketplace app Pinduoduo, long-simmering dissatisfaction in tech and other globally competitive sectors boiled over into public outcry.
Following a ruling last week by China’s highest court, employers are on notice: 996 is illegal.
“The overtime issues at some industries and companies have come to the public’s attention,” the Supreme People's Court said in its decision. “Legally, workers have the right to corresponding compensation and rest times or holidays. Obeying the national regime for working hours is the obligation of employers. Overtime can easily lead to labor disputes, impact the worker-employer relationship and social stability.”
Workers win
Last week’s ruling comes as the Xi administration moves to boost the birthrate, even as Chinese couples point to grueling demands of work, child and elder care, and many young Chinese, fed up with a culture of overwork, are "lying flat" to express their frustration.
China’s courts and ministries will now develop guidelines to resolve future labor disputes, according to the Aug. 26 ruling, which cited numerous cases focused on required overtime — most but not all of which involved tech companies.
In one case, a courier delivery company employee identified as Zhang was required to work a 996 schedule in 2020. He refused citing China’s labor laws.
The company fired him, saying he had failed to fulfill his duties.
Zhang filed a lawsuit against his former employer for wrongful termination.
The high court ruled in favor of Zhang, citing Chinese Labor Law Article 41, saying overtime is capped at 36 hours per month. “The firm’s required working hours violated the Labor Law, thus it is deemed illegal,” the high court said in its order to pay Zhang 8,000 RMB or about $1,230 dollars for illegal termination.
Another case involved the labor rights violation of a man identified only as “Li” who died of overwork in December 2018. That year, Li had less than three days off in August, September and November, during which he worked 319, 293 and 322.5 hours respectively. His survivors sued the company shortly after his death.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security recognized the death as a work injury, according to the court, which ordered the company to pay 766,911 RMB or about $119,000 dollars to Li’s family in compensation, saying his “right to rest was severely violated.”
Important signal
In May 1995, China implemented a 40-hour, five-day workweek — standard in the U.S. and many other developed countries.
Since then, many big tech firms and private companies, driven to maximize profits, trim labor costs and compete in a global marketplace, have adopted the 996 model. In 2019, Ma famously said on China’s Twitter-like social media platform Weibo that “It’s a blessing to be able to do 996.”
"If you are not doing 996 when you are young, when can you do it? If we are doing things we love, 996 is not a problem at all," he wrote. The post was soon deleted after vocal criticism from Chinese netizens.
Li Qiang, founder and executive director of the New York-based China Labor Watch, told VOA Mandarin that the 10 cases, all found in favor of the workers, are an important signal that the 996 practice may be coming to an end.
“China has many laws restricting overtime and forced work, but there were no legal precedents to follow,” he told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview. “These 10 cases send a signal that China’s existing laws could be implemented.”
Li also pointed out that the move might have certain political goals, as Chinese regulators have begun cracking down on the country's tech companies in a bid to promote so-called social justice. But it’s possible, he added, that companies will develop certain “countermeasures.”
“We still need to wait and see if the 996 culture [will] actually disappear,” he said.
Overlapping interests
Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer who is a visiting professor at the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago, told VOA Mandarin that while the court’s warning is a step in the right direction, he worries about enforcement.
"In many places in China, businessmen and government officials have overlapping interests, so the protection of labor rights is very difficult,” he told VOA Mandarin by phone.
Liang Xiaojun, a lawyer at Beijing’s Daoheng Law Firm, said the warning also has something to do with China’s recent push for the three-child policy and its crackdown on private tutoring to reduce the costs of raising kids — all part of a bid to boost population growth.
“They aim at reducing working hours, so young people have time to fall in love, get married, and have kids,” he told VOA.
Li from China Labor Watch argued that the ultimate protection of workers’ rights lies in the formation of an independent union that will represent employee interests and rights.
The All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the only labor union in China, says in its charter that the union is “a mass organization of the working class led by the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Without independent labor unions, workers’ rights can’t be properly protected,” Li warned. “The Chinese Communist Party could potentially have a regulation to protect workers’ rights today, and another regulation to protect the companies’ interests tomorrow.
“In the end, no one is really protected.”
Left-Wing Labor Rights Researcher Detained For 'Subversion' in China's Guangxi
Police in the southwestern Chinese region of Guangxi have detained a left-wing sociology researcher from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on suspicion of "subversion."
Fang Ran, a HKU doctoral student who studies labor movements, was detained by state security police in Guangxi's Nanning city on Aug. 26, 2021 on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power." according to an unconfirmed social media post.
The message, apparently from Fang's father, said he was "shocked" at his son's detention, saying Fang Ran is a loyal member of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
"To my mind, Fang Ran is the kind of ambitious young person who can aid the party's cause, definitely not a criminal seeking to harm it," the post said.
Fang is currently being held incommunicado under "residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL)" under the guard of Nanning state security police, meaning that he will be denied visits from lawyers or family on grounds that the case involves matters of national security.
According to his profile page on the HKU sociology department website, Fang Ran is a full-time PhD student who received his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Tsinghua University, and who has worked as an intern at a non-government organization and social media focusing on labor issues in China.
His research interests include labor relations, and labor organization as well as labor movements, the profile page said.
"His current research focuses on the analysis and comparison of various approaches of labor empowerment in mainland China," it said.
Classic Marxist analyses
While at Tsinghua, Fang was among the founding members of a group called the Modern Capitalism Research Association, which tended to favor classic Marxist analyses of labor issues.
Fang had also interviewed pneumoconiosis sufferers from the central province of Hunan after hundreds of former workers petitioned the authorities in Shenzhen over workplace-related diseases.
An employee who answered the phone at HKU on Sept. 1 said the university is aware of Fang's detention.
"[We are] in the process of finding out more about the situation," the employee said. "The university will provide assistance to Fang and his family when necessary."
While many commentators have noted an apparent shift towards political practises and ideological tropes that echo the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under late supreme leader Mao Zedong in recent years, it appears that CCP leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to allow actual Maoists free rein under his rule.
Leftists, including dozens of young labor activists who tried to set up an independent labor union at the Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen in 2018, have been detained, placed under house arrest, and silenced as part of the CCP's "stability maintenance" regime.
A human rights lawyer who gave only the pseudonym Chen said any form of organized labor is intolerable to the CCP.
"Organized action is the thing they fear the most," Chen said. "Once the workers get organized, they will be much stronger, and a threat to CCP rule."
"In the 1920s, the CCP itself was involved in organizing workers and peasants against the [then ruling] Kuomintang and to fight for their rights," he said. "So they fear that someone else will use the same methods against them."
Tough on labor activism
Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia agreed.
"Even if you are a student still in school or a fresh graduate, they will consider you to be anti-government if you get involved in labor movements or use your knowledge to help people," Hu said. "[It means you are] challenging the existing system."
A Hong Kong-based graduate student who gave only the pseudonym Mary said she had been checked by Chinese police when she crossed the border into mainland China to do fieldwork.
"We all know that there is a red line, but we don't know exactly where it is," Mary said. "This means that we are fearful of going to mainland China at all, whether it's for academic research or for some other reason."
"That doesn't mean we won't keep doing it, though," she said. "Of course, there will always be students or scholars who set their own red lines [in the hope of staying safe]."
Fang's detention comes after authorities in the eastern province of Shandong detained large numbers of Maoist activists around the country, ahead of the CCP centenary celebrations on July 1.
Police in Shandong's Jining city ran a nationwide operation targeting leftwingers in a bid to "maintain stability" ahead of the politically sensitive anniversary, Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) quoted sources as saying at the time.
The operation, which began on May 12, was largely carried out in secret, with no information given to detainees' families after going incommunicado.
Among them was Maoist dissident Ma Houzhi, 77, who was released from a 10-year jail term in 2019 for defying a ban on the registration of new political parties under the CCP.
The report came after the CCP canceled a conference of prominent Maoist ideologists slated for May 16, the anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
