That number (996) means 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, and is shorthand for the punishing schedule Chinese workers are expected to maintain. A 72-hour workweek with little time for anything else: No family time. No time to meet friends. No hobbies. Not even time to cook proper meals. Once you account for sleeping and commuting, one might wonder how ambitious tech workers fit in the rest of their lives.
Nobody can doubt that Jack Ma is successful. As a co-founder of Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, Ma has an estimated net worth of around USD40 billion and often makes lists of the world’s most powerful people. However, his recent comments about 996 working culture —have sparked outrage. “Many companies and many people don’t have the opportunity to work 996,” Ma said. “If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996? In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected. Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?” Ma isn’t the only notable businessperson advocating for brutally long hours. An email reportedly from JD.com, another Chinese e-commerce company, noted that underperforming employees are those who don’t keep “fighting” to do more work “regardless of performance, position, tenure, personal well-being issues or family reasons.” Youzan, a Hong Kong–listed e-commerce giant, reportedly demanded that employees follow the 996 routine at its end of year gala event. Bai Ya, the company’s CEO, then defended these comments on the grounds that it would expose more people to the company’s culture and help people truly decide whether they want to work there.
The 996.ICU is believed to be created by protesting Chinese tech workers. The name 996.ICU refers to the phrase “work by 996, sick in Intensive Care Unit,” which succinctly describes how the 72-hour-per-week working culture touted by Chinese tech giants is not a recipe for sustainable success, but for burnout and serious health problems.
The website highlights that Chinese labor laws prohibit more than eight hours of work per day and 44 hours per week in a standard contract, and that it’s illegal to not offer overtime compensation to workers who clock more hours than the legal maximum. The website also claims that although it’s a recent phenomenon that notable companies have made public statements about the existence of 996 culture, 996 has long been practiced in many Chinese companies.
The greatest waste of 996 culture is that it’s symbolic overwork that is detrimental to employees’ mental and physical well-being. It does not guarantee that those employees are producing better work than their peers who work saner schedules. It deprives people of their free time and makes families and relationships suffer—for no extra pay and no extra output. It is akin to cultural imprisonment, where workers are either pretending to look busy until it is acceptable to leave the office or literally working themselves to death.
Overwork culture is not new, and it is not a primarily Chinese problem. Japan has long suffered from this issue. Cultural phenomena such as being unable to leave work until one’s boss leaves and regularly clocking more than 80 hours of overtime a month have been reported for decades. In fact, this extreme overwork has caused death in seemingly otherwise healthy individuals. It even has a name: karōshi, which translates to “overwork death.” The first case is attributed to a 29-year-old male in 1969, with the term becoming more widely known in 1978, when multiple individuals died from overwork-related strokes or heart attacks.
The Japanese bubble economy of the 1980s, which brought frantic economic activity, elevated karōshi to national attention with reports of several notable business executives suddenly dying without any previous signs of illness. Given the current Chinese technology boom, it’s no wonder that working 996 can result in a trip to the ICU.
Some young Chinese workers, however, are refusing to conform to the harmful cultural norm. Instead of suffering in silence, they are beginning to speak up or show their disagreement by finding work elsewhere. Li Zhepeng, a e-commerce worker, decided to switch to a different job and be up-front about his working conditions. He spoke candidly with his manager to set a more manageable workload and to ensure that he could occasionally leave earlier. She agreed. His colleagues noted that he was their idol for having the bravery to speak up, according to the BBC.
Research has shown shorter work weeks are more productive. Sleep deprivation has been linked to cancer, weight gain and memory problems. In Malaysia, we may not have “996” but there are companies who value workers who contribute to long hours at no additional costs. The real question is, “is it worth it?”
Source:https://news.cgtn.com
Reference:
The rebellion against China’s 996 culture, James Stanier, May 2, 2019
(https://onezero.medium.com)
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