The 996 working hour system (Chinese: 996工作制), used by some companies in the People’s Republic of China, is a work schedule. It gets its name from the fact that employees must work from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. six days a week, for a total of 72 hours per week. This arrangement has been implemented as the official work schedule of a number of mainland Chinese internet enterprises. Critics believe that the 996-hour workweek is illegal in China and have labelled it “modern slavery.”
An “anti-996” protest was organized on GitHub in March 2019. For the first time in 2021, a Chinese academic study acknowledged the existence of “excessive-work societies like ‘996’.”
On August 27, 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Court ruled that 996 was illegal.
Backstory
In Chinese IT businesses, where the focus is often on speed and cost reduction, overtime work has a long history. To incentivize overtime work, companies use a variety of strategies, such as reimbursing taxi charges for employees who stay late at the office.
It could have resulted in bedtime procrastination as a form of retaliation.
According to a report published in 2020, “Chinese enterprises are more likely than American businesses to follow long work hours.”
Another research published in 2020 compared 996 cultures to “modern slavery,” describing it as “unrestricted global capitalism combined with a Confucian culture of authority and obedience.”
For the first time in 2021, a Chinese study acknowledged the presence of “excessive-work cultures like 996,” to the point where, if not addressed, the benefits of China’s dual circulation policy could be diluted.
Companies that are involved
Companies that officially declared 996 working hour system comprises following list:
Youzan, JD.com, Pinduoduo, 58.com and At least 40 other firms have implemented the 996 schedule or a more intensive equivalent, including Huawei, Pinduoduo, and Alibaba Group.
Youzan
In January 2019, a Youzan employee claimed on the social media network Maimai that their boss had imposed the 996 schedule on them. “It would be a good thing to look back on a few years later,” Bai Ya, the CEO of Youzan, replied. This schedule has been challenged by some media publications. Later that month, the Xihu District Labor Supervision Group in Hangzhou announced that the company was being investigated.
JD.com
Following the public disclosure of 58.com’s 996 schedules, an internal email from JD.com’s vice-president Gang He (Chinese: 何剛) was released online, containing a call for JD.com’s management team to apply the 996 working hour scheme “on a flexible basis.”
On March 15, 2019, a JD.com employee claimed that certain departments have started implementing the 995 schedules (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 5 days a week), while others have already completed it. Following the publication of the study, JD.com’s public relations staff stated that overtime work was not required.
People that grumble about their work schedule are referred to as “slackers” by the company’s founder, Richard Liu.
Pinduoduo
Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform, was accused in early January 2021 of pushing its employees to work very long overtime shifts, which allegedly resulted in the karoshi death of a 22-year-old employee. Later, Pinduoduo’s official account on Zhihu posted (but quickly deleted) an answer, saying, “Those at the bottom of society earn their income at the risk of losing their lives.”
Another employee committed suicide by jumping just a few days after the disaster. Pinduoduo sacked an employee on January 10 after he uploaded photographs of his colleague being transported into an ambulance, according to news reports.
58.com
Employees and social critics were outraged when the classified marketing website 58.com announced its adoption of the 996 working hour regime in September 2016, the corporation answered that using the 996 system would be recommended rather than mandatory.
Others:
At least 40 additional companies, including Huawei, Pinduoduo, and Alibaba Group, have embraced the 996 schedule or a more intensive variant so far.