Chinese office workers sleep on the job under new campaign

Yang Juan, an employee at Goopal Group, takes a nap in her seat after lunch, on February 21, 2016 in Beijing, China. Office workers sleeping on the job is a common sight in China, where workers burn the midnight oil to meet deadlines and compete with their rivals. REUTERS Jason Lee File Photo

Reuters, Oct 14 - A campaign calling on Chinese workers at US-based companies to log their working hours on a public internet site has gone viral in the latest backlash against the culture of overtime.

Organised by four anonymous creators who described themselves as recent graduates, the Worker Lives Matter campaign calls on employees from tech firms to enter their company name, position, and working hours in a spreadsheet posted on GitHub.

As of Thursday morning, more than 4,000 people interviewed by tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd 9988. HK Baidu Inc. 9888. A 2007 Tencent Holdings Ltd. can easily sell the HK to Tencent Holdings Ltd. HK registered their data with ByteDance.

Employees have also created separate spreadsheets for specific sectors, such as real estate, finance, and foreign companies.

A majority of the entries in the spreadsheet show that while a five-day week is the norm, many staff members work 10 to 12 hours a day.

One of the creators said in a post that they hoped the list would be an effective reference tool for workers when selecting jobs.

In another post, the team argued that the 996 practice of working six days a week for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. was rife and working hours were often in internet firms obscured.

How are you offering your views of the boycott of '996' and the popularization of '955'? 955 mean five days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance didn't respond to requests for comment.

Long work hours are a hot topic for China's young tech workers and others in the White-collar class.

The issue gained attention first when tech workers started a similar online campaign against 996 In recent months, criticism of long hours gained traction because of a government crackdown on tech companies that has shone a spotlight on their treatment of workers.

Some companies have created a Short video platform Kuaishou in 2014 including TikTok owner ByteDance and the TikTok camera by Kik Room 1024. Meituan and food giant HK have cut compulsory overtime at the weekend. In August, China's top court called 996 as illegal.