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You enter to work at 9 in the morning and leave at 9 at night. So Monday to Saturday, with a single rest day. 72 hours per week. It may seem crazy, but it is known as Day 996 They have followed many Chinese companies in the technological sector for years. The Chinese government ended up taking letters in the matter Upon realizing that the endless days were not only bad for workers, they were also bad for the country.
Culture 996. A few years ago, working 12 hours a day was common in Chinese technological. Richard Liu, founder of JD.com He described these “blessing” and Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, said that “if you don’t work from nine in the morning at nine o’clock at night when you are young, when are you going to do it?”.
The term 996 was coined in 2019 following a protest against this work model to which they baptized 996-Icua word game that referred to that day would take workers to the ICU. This movement unleashed a wave of criticism at the national level and it is believed that it was the seed that The Government prohibited it.
The change. In 2021, with the marathon days at the point of view of the government, there were many companies that turned back and brought back the weekend of two days. There were also companies like Tencent that cut the daily work hours from 10 to 6 in the afternoon, from 996 to 1065. Why this change?
Fed up workers. Day 996 has been gasoline for the growth of the Chinese technological sector and its end responds to several reasons. The most obvious is that the workers were fed up in these exploitation conditions in which there were even cases of deaths due to exhaustion. The government said in its ruling that “workers are entitled to rest and take a vacation”, but we must not forget that it is the same government known for go against unions and imprison activists.
National consumption. Inhuman working hours were a shot in the foot for the Government’s development objectives. In 2021, Xi Jinping promoted the idea of the “Common prosperity”an initiative that intended to grow the economy both outside and within its borders. However, promoting internal consumption was not compatible with 12 -hour working days. Technological workers charged more than in other sectors, but if they spent all their awake weather inside the office, they had no chance to spend it.
Birth. Birth problems in China come from afar, but before the problem was that There were too muchnow it is Just the opposite And schedule 996 did not play in his favor. They counted in This articlethat in Chinese companies there is an entrenched idea that they call “ascend or out.” This is the belief that if a worker does not rise to a high position before having children, he runs the risk of replacing him with someone younger. In addition, men who have children and work with these schedules cannot take care of them or home, which in many cases expels women in the labor market. This makes many workers delay the time of having children, some even completely renounce.
All happy? Ending 996 benefits workers, but also plays in favor of these objectives. The labor market expands because there is no age roof so low, birth rate and domestic consumption rises. All perfect, or almost. The end of 996 has not left many workers for free, when Bytedance announced that its employees would not work on weekends, He did it together with a 20%salary cut. In addition, for many workers the nightmare is not over. Last year, the head of Baidu media published a series of videos in which he denounced that he was forced to be available 24 hours a day. Culture 996 is still rooted above all in citiesmaking many young people choose to go to smaller nuclei where life is calmer.
Image | Amparo Babyloni, Xataka
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