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Content reviewers at work at the offices Inke, one of the top live-streaming apps in China, in Changsha, Hunan province. Photo: Lea Li
Opinion
The View
by Mimi Zou
The View
by Mimi Zou

China’s ‘996’ work culture should not turn into Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

  • While it is true, as Alibaba founder Jack Ma has argued, that extended working hours are not a problem for those passionate about their jobs, a top-down inflexible approach to how long employees work is not the way for Industry 4.0 to go
As a university researcher, I often work “997” – 9am to 9pm, seven days a week. Ten years ago, I left another 997 job as a junior lawyer and decided to embark on a PhD at Oxford. I rarely question my motivation to work 997 these days, even on a paycheck that is one-third of what I received in my former corporate jobs. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, which owns the Post, is right when he said: “If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist; if you’re not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is torture.”

The idea that “work does not feel like work when you love your job” may be a cliché. Yet, there are many people in the tech sector who care deeply about their work and clients. Money is often not the main motivator.

The professional and personal dignity gained from work, and the sense of purpose and the belonging to a community that drives momentous changes in society are more important. Their jobs may involve drudgery at times, but work is an important source of professional satisfaction, self-esteem and personal identity.

In the current debate on the “996” work culture in China, many have argued that companies should reduce working hours, particularly on grounds of health and safety and work-life balance. A more nuanced argument would take into account the different interests of employers and workers, and the diversity of workers’ needs and preferences.
Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, speaks at a conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in October 2017. Photo: Reuters

The problem with 996 is not the long hours, but the lack of autonomy that workers have over the organisation of their time. My concern is with the employers’ unilateral imposition of work schedules. When I teach labour law, I show my millennial students clips from Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 satirical film Modern Times. The opening title “a story of industry, of individual enterprise – humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness” is inscribed over the face of a giant clock. The next scene juxtaposes a herd of sheep with a mass of workers entering a factory gate.

Chaplin’s character, a nameless “factory worker”, tightens bolts on an accelerating assembly line. In a key scene, unable to keep up with the ruthless pace of the belt, Chaplin is pulled into the belly of the factory’s colossal machine. Once the machine spits him out, he continues to tighten imaginary bolts as he leaves the factory. He is chased by a policeman after trying to tighten a woman’s dress buttons. He rushes back into the factory and creates chaos, before he is arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital.

A theme from Modern Times is the potentially dehumanising effects of industrialisation. If we want to prevent the dehumanisation of Industry 4.0, we must have more control over the organisation of our time.

This is particularly important for those of us engaged in “knowledge work” that requires expertise, experience and creativity. For knowledge workers, long working hours may be the trade-off for the discretion they have in determining the organisation of work tasks, content and processes.

This is not to say every worker in tech enjoys the professional autonomy that comes with knowledge work. Some tech jobs may indeed be so monotonous that they can be aptly described as “digital assembly line work”. It is likely though that such jobs are increasingly being automated.

A century ago, the “eight hours a day and 48 hours a week” norm was introduced by the International Labour Organisation’s Convention No 1. This norm, later changed to 40 hours a week, was premised on a “standard employment relationship” of permanent, full-time waged work. But today, there are diversified forms of work relations in our labour markets.
Yet, in many countries including China, the regulation of working time is still based on the standard employment relationship. Overtime work regulation focuses on numerical limits on (maximum) working hours and overtime premium. However, this approach does not effectively address the problems of unpredictability and variability in working schedules commonly associated with overtime practices, which undermine workers’ control over their time.
Meitu, one of the world’s most popular beauty apps, is based in Xiamen, in China’s southern Fujian province. Most of the workers at the tech giant are in their early 20s. Photo: The Washington Post
In my research on Hong Kong’s working hours regime, I have argued that stakeholders in the debate on regulating standard working hours should embrace the advancement of workers’ temporal autonomy as a key policy goal. A growing number of jurisdictions have adopted measures that give workers the right to request the adjustment of their working schedules.

Such measures include rights for parents and carers to request part-time work or other variations to working time arrangements. In Germany and the Netherlands, all workers enjoy the right to request the adjustment of their working time, schedule and place of work. The employer can refuse the request if there are compelling business interests to do so, as specified in legislation, but must inform the employee of the reasons in writing.

It is hard for any decent employer to defend a workplace culture that compels workers to work excessive overtime. We should commend the tech workers behind the anti-996 campaign for drawing public awareness to the widespread labour law violations in this “golden child” sector of the Chinese economy. The real issue is not about long working hours, but a plea for greater control over what we do with our time.

Dr Mimi Zou is the inaugural Fangda Fellow in Chinese Commercial Law at the University of Oxford. She is a leading expert on Chinese and Hong Kong employment law, with over 50 publications in the field

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Chaplin and 996 China
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