Chinese Supreme Court has ruled that 996 work culture is illegal. ‘996’ work culture is a practice where people work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week.
According to China’s labor laws, a standard workday is eight hours with a maximum of 44 hours a week. The monthly overtime totals are essentially limited to 36 hours.
Many cases where workers fainted and died because of overwork became the main reason for the Supreme Court to issue the decision. One of the most shocking is two workers at an e-commerce platform Pinduoduo died only weeks apart– one of them collapsed on the way home while another died by suicide.
Resistance to the 996 schedule sparked online protest in 2019, when workers with each other and exchanged information on GitHub project called 996ICU.
