"Blue-collar workers don't have it easier. Food delivery riders are reportedly trapped by an algorithm that automatically works out the optimal delivery time for app users, never mind if the workers have to risk getting into road accidents to catch up."
"The bar keeps raising, it seems, the harder people work. Fears about an increasingly cutthroat job market deepened on recent news of master's and doctoral degree holders from China's top universities vying for a neighborhood committee job. Meanwhile, applicants for a position at a major bank are tested not for their knowledge of finance but a wide range of subjects from astrophysics to modernist poetry during the Tang Dynasty"
:yikes:
no no, you are missing the Chinese characteristics of this type of socialism
The Chinese characteristics here are where the state dept outlets bring more attn to the issue without trying to justify it's existence. "Hey, workers are being exploited." Vs "here's why we need to keep exploiting workers."
Why are education systems all over the world so broken?
Not only is it barbaric to put kids and young adults through all that shit but it seems like, ironically, it's highly inefficient. Asking bankers about astrophysics, come on. Nobody needs to know that much information by heart.
There are plenty of issues with the traditional university model of education (and a lot of those, to be fair, crop up because education on a mass scale is really difficult to do), but what you're highlighting is pretty squarely a problem with the employer.
The rat race is definitely at least partly the fault of the education system.
I know in my case the most stress (so far, I'm only 30) I've ever felt was during high school and college. You're only a few failed exams away (or in the case when transitioning from high school to college only one failed exam away) to prove you're worth some shit to society, that shit takes a toll on a young mind.
And I'm one of the lucky ones since I work in IT where jobs are abundant, the stress just fucking continues for most people.
I think a big part of the problem is that people don't view education as a form of labor, so there has never been a wide spectrum push for a "forty hour school week" or something like that. Every year the expectations get higher, there's a new standardized test to study for, and in SE Asia there's another hour of night school you have to attend.
But no matter what age a person is or what they're doing there's only a certain amount of useful work you're going to get out of them every day, and demanding that much is also inhumane because that ensures that every moment of free time the person has is spent exhausted.
Nobody needs to know that much information by heart
soulless bitcoin vampires are literally draining away the small amount of energy that has remained in our universe since the big bang
modernist poetry during the Tang Dynasty
Super irrelevant nitpick but how the fuck is poetry written during the Tang Dynasty (which ended in around 900) "modernist"?!
Yeah but modernism is a very specific movement from the 19th century. Fair point though, and the Tang dynasty is when the modern idea of "Chinese-ness" in terms of cultural forms like poetry gets codified, so I get it.
This is the left equivalent of Libs calling objectively true things “conspiracy theories” just cuz they sound spooky.
996 is illegal as fuck by chinese employment laws but enforcement of this can be slow unfortunately. No government is going to be completely without gaps and slow movement, especially when these companies skirt around the rules and say "Oh it's not compulsory, we're not actually making it a rule" although to anyone with half a brain it's obvious that the workers aren't provided a choice otherwise.
It takes time to get reported, it takes time to do a deeper investigation of the business, it takes time to patch up the laws if it's being exploited around, etc.
it takes time to patch up the laws if it’s being exploited around
technocratic incremental neoilberalism with Chinese characteristics
i thought regulations were better in blue collar labor industries because there are actual consequences if you don't let people (who mostly live together in dormitories) rest
as opposed to white collar work where you have alienated people just keeling over after like two consecutive weeks of insufficient sleep
I thought the benefit of a one party system was you didn’t have to futsch around jerking off technocrats to get shit done and just be like “do this or I gulag you”?
At the end of the day you generally want to avoid just gulaging people if they aren't breaking any written laws unless it's an extreme example regardless of how much control you have. Having your citizens constantly live in fear of being punished even when they aren't breaking any rules isn't a good country.
I mean if this practice is outlawed and companies are still doing it they’re breaking the law so to the gulag it is.
Like I said they often skirt around it because it's not technically compulsory. They avoid violating the actual rule.
I thought the benefit of a one party system was you didn’t have to futsch around
That’s the benefit of a dictatorship
Of the proletariat?
Bs aside I do think they could get away with being more proactive against this. I mean they’ve already gotten away with executing several billionaires what’s a few more to the list?
Hope they outlaw the optional loophole then. Have any workers gone on strike over it?
There have been protests such as this https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html obviously don't take NYT fully at their word but you can get the gist
Yikes. My heart goes out to our comrades in China. Can anyone more knowledgeable about this topic speak on what worker movements there are in the country or within the party?
yeah i saw the lie flat stuff in the news and wanted to use a state media article about the topic to avoid it being called radio free asia propaganda or something lol
Here's the article for those who want to read it and not have to look it up themselves.
A lot of us who actually pay attention or work closely with mainland companies already know that, but among the English speaking left I understand the hesitation,
hated reading that tbh. Is there a feeling in China that this work culture is tied into the sacrifices made by previous generations? Is there a vision of a more relaxed culture when a position of safety from the global hegemon is achieved?
this kind of work culture preys on peoples' need to put food on the table and residual chinese societal pressures of being able to afford a house and a family
people generally do not care about the bigger picture, they aren't in a position to do so since their immediate livelihoods are already at stake
Yeah, point taken. I had the impression, based on whatever a western leftist can understand from this position, that there was a widespread pride in state achievements and an appreciation of China's newly elevated geopolitcal status. It doesn't put food on the table tho.
Is this a natural conclusion of the late stage of capitalist production? A lot of effort wasted trying to be the ideal candidate for a smaller and smaller pool of work, reducing constantly due to increases in industrial efficiency? UBI is probably a nice stop gap but maybe this is a sign to begin moving away from commodity production in a more explicit way?
This seems to be China's version of "crunch". It's primarily a tech sector thing as China's legal working day is 955 (same as most of the world). If there's an organized resistance to crunch in China and it succeeds, I think it could put a lot of pressure on Western workers to do the same. Would be weird realizing that you're working harder than "cheap Chinese workers" for less pay.
Yeah I'm definitely not on the "China needs to immediately abolish all remnants of capitalism" train. What they're doing is working but 996 is definitely far too excessive to allow any reminients of. I doubt Mao would have stood by that
Hell no. It's good that the workers seen to be standing up for themselves at least. Tech work tends to be scabbier than most other professions, probably because the pay is so much higher.
I hope cracking down on illegal scheduling practices like this is on the party's to do list.
Yeah a lot of it is work culture too which is why I think another, better handled, cultural revolution would be dope.
Give the workers a chance to have some fun struggle sessions with their bosses who promote those bourgeoisie work ethics
The official repo is interesting. They seem to be pushing for an open source license that includes a provision for labor rights which is interesting...
It's definitely not a revolutionary socialist movement, but it's still a net positive. Encouraging working abroad is odd though. Especially because crunch and "freeform" scheduling is basically the standard in tech everywhere. Hell in California you basically live in your office.
