996 working hour system

The Labour Law of the People's Republic of China states:

Chapter 4　Article 36　The State shall practise a working hour system wherein labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on the average.

Article 41　The employer can prolong work hours due to needs of production or businesses after consultation with its trade union and labourers. The work hours to be prolonged, in general, shall be no longer than one hour a day, or no more than three hours a day if such prolonging is called for due to special reasons and under the condition that the physical health of labourers is guaranteed. The work time to be prolonged shall not exceed, however, 36 hours a month.

Article 44　The employer shall pay labourers more wage remunerations than those for normal work according to the following standards in any one of the following cases:

(1) Wage payments to labourers no less than 150 per cent of their wages if the labourers are asked to work longer hours; (2) Wage payments to labourers no less than 200 per cent of their wages if no rest can be arranged afterwards for the labourers asked to work on days of rest; (3) Wage payments to labourers no less than 300 per cent of their wages if the labourers are asked to work on legal holidays.

Chapter 12　Article 90　If the employer prolongs work hours in violation of stipulations in this Law, labour administrative departments can give it a warning, order it to make corrections, and may impose a fine thereon.

Article 91　The employer involved in any one of the following cases that encroach upon the legitimate rights and interests of labourers shall be ordered by labour administrative departments to pay labourers wage remunerations or to make up for economic losses, and may even order it to pay compensation:

(2) Refusal to pay labourers wage remunerations for working longer hours;

In September 2016, the classified advertisement website 58.com officially declared its adoption of the 996 working hour system,[14] attracting criticism from employees and social commentators. The company responded that the 996 system would be an encouraged, not compulsory, practice.[15][16]

In early January, 2021, the world largest e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has been accused of forcing it's employees to do extremely intensive overtimes, which led to the death of a 22 year old worker.[17] Later, the official account of Pinduoduo posted (but deleted short after) an answer on Zhihu, saying "Those who are at the bottom of the society earn their wages at the risk of losing their lives."[18]

Just few days after the accident, another employee committed suicide by jumping.[19][20] On January 10, news report Pinduoduo fired an employee who posted photos showing his colleague carried into an ambulance.[21] [22]

After 58.com's 996 schedule was made known to the public, an internal email from the vice-president Gang He (Chinese: 何剛) of JD.com was leaked online, which contained a demand for the management team of JD.com to implement the 996 working hour system "on a flexible basis."[23]

On 15 March 2019, an employee of JD.com alleged that some departments have begun implementing the 995 schedule (9am-9pm, but 5 days per week), while other departments have already finished doing so. Following the report, the public relations department of JD.com announced that overtime work was not compulsory.[24]

Richard Liu, the founder of the company, referred to people complaining about the work schedule as "slackers".[25]

On 19 January 2019, the social platform Maimai showed an employee from Youzan stating that their supervisor had enforced the 996 schedule.[26] Bai Ya, the CEO of Youzan, replied, "it would be a good thing to look back at a few years later."[13] Some media criticized this schedule.[27] On the afternoon of 30 January 2019, the Labour Supervision Group of Xihu District, Hangzhou announced that the company was under investigation.[28]

At least 40 companies, including Huawei and Alibaba Group, have implemented the 996 schedule or an even more intensive alternative.[29][30][31]

logo of Anti-996 GitHub project

On 26 March 2019, the 996.ICU repository and website were created. The repository states that the name "996.icu" refers to how developers who work under the 996 system (9AM–9PM, 6 days per week) would risk poor health and a possible stay in an intensive care unit. The movement's slogan is "developers' lives matter".[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]

Two days later, on 28 March 2019, the repository had already received 50 thousand stars, and 100 thousand stars on 30 March 2019, which made it the top trending repository on GitHub.[39] The repository reached 120 thousand stars on 31 March 2019, and 200 thousand stars on 9 April 2019, making it the second most starred repository on GitHub. The flurry of activity led to the "issue" page of the repository to be flooded with spam and shut down, which was hotly discussed on Zhihu, Sina Weibo, and WeChat.[1][40]

The original aim of the repository was to list the companies that use the 996 working hour system, but soon developed into a movement - the Anti 996 Licence - to explicitly prohibit companies using the 996 system from using open source code on GitHub.[41][42] (Such a license would not meet most definitions of open source software, such as The Open Source Definition, as the 996 exclusion counts as a limitation on purpose of use.)

External image
Screenshots of 360, Liebao, UC, QQ browsers that block 996.ICU repository on GitHub, and Firefox, Maxthon, and Opera that do not block the repo: Screenshot 1,Screenshot 2[43]

On 2 April 2019, it was widely reported that QQ Browser and WeChat (products of Tencent), UC Browser (product of Alibaba), 360 Browser (product of Qihoo 360) and many of other Chromium-based Chinese browsers blocked the 996.icu repository on GitHub, describing it as "an illegal and fraudulent site."[44][16]

On 18 April 2019, employees at Microsoft and GitHub created a GitHub repository named "support.996.ICU" in support of the 996.ICU campaign, which they believe could be under threat of Chinese government censorship.[45][46][47][48][49][50]

• Jack Ma has stated that workers should consider 996 "a huge blessing" to "achieve the success [one] want[s] without paying extra effort and time."[51][52][53][54][55][16][56]
• Richard Liu, founder of JD.com: "Slackers are not my brothers!"[16][25]
• Jason Calacanis, entrepreneur and angel investor, describes 996 as "the same exact work ethic that built America."[57]

• Xin Shi Ping of Xinhua News Agency: "The 996 working hour system breaks the labour law. It overtaxes the health and the future. It does harm to the hard-working workers and it is the misunderstanding of the hard-working spirit."[58]
• People's Daily: "Advocating 'hard work' does not mean resorting to and enforcing the 996 system."[59][60][61]
• China News Service: "It is unnecessary to exchange the life for money." The article was reprinted by the People's Daily.[62]
• Beijing Daily: "Jack Ma and Richard Liu are just 'boasting' the 996 work schedule, aiming at disguising reduction of salary or lay-off." The article was reprinted in the People's Daily.[63]
• Wang Xinya, writing for Banyuetan, stated that some entrepreneurs disregard the law and associate 996 with hard work, calling it "poisonous" chicken soup. He stated that the 996 system has nothing to do with employee diligence, but has everything to do with company interests.[64]
• Guido van Rossum remarked that the 996 work schedule is "inhumane".[65][41][66][67]