Why do contemporary migrant workers work longer and longer

Do you feel that the working hours of contemporary migrant workers are getting longer and longer?

Recently, the staff of Tucao tea make complaints about 3000 yuan monthly salary. The monthly salary is 3000 yuan, but the working hours are up to 300 hours, which is equivalent to working 10 hours a day without rest for the whole month. In this way, the hourly salary is only 9-16 yuan, while the minimum wage in Changsha is 17 yuan per hour.

The extra long working hours diluted the already low salary and suddenly ignited the anger of netizens. Looking back on 2021, more serious labor disputes abound. In January, a 23-year-old female employee of pinduoduo died suddenly on the way to work at 1 a.m; In July, the outsourcing staff of Sanqi mutual entertainment died suddenly due to overtime; In November, BYD employees died suddenly in a rental house. They worked 12 hours a day for a month

Ten or twenty years ago, our parents were still working from nine to five. Today’s migrant workers seem to have even slept for eight hours. Keynes, the grandfather of macroeconomics, once predicted that people’s life will become very rich in the 21st century, and working 15 hours a week is enough.

Now the 21st century has arrived, and people’s lives are indeed rich. The agreed 15 hours have not come. Why are there more and more? This issue of “I don’t understand” takes you to understand why the working hours are getting longer and longer.

Data display

According to the Weibo survey of sina finance, nearly 8 adults think they have more working hours than their parents. In 2012, xinhuanet reported that workers worked an average of 8.66 hours a day. In 2019, this figure became 9.2 hours. By 2021, according to the latest data of the Bureau of statistics, the average working hours of enterprise employees across the country were 48.6 hours a week, which reached 9.72 hours a day based on five days of work.

Did the Internet programmers known as 996 increase their working hours? A report in 2019 shows that the overtime intensity of the Internet industry is not only lower than the top five, but even lower than the average level of the whole industry. Ahead of the Internet are real estate, automobiles, transportation, energy and business services.

Real estate ranks first with 7.74 hours of overtime per week. Some real estate developers said: “where is overtime? Real estate people’s life is only work and sleep.” Even civil servants who have always been considered idle have to work more than five hours a week on average. Considering that the Internet despises the high salary in all industries except finance, and the overtime allowance in many industries is about 0, it turned out that entering big factory 996 is really a blessing, master, I understand.

Why

Why is the whole society working overtime?

The direct reason is that the implementation of labor law is not enough. In 1994, the State Council stipulated that “the State implements a working system in which employees work 8 hours a day and an average of 40 hours a week”. However, whether ten years ago or now, the average working hours have not been reduced to less than 8 hours. The 996 system is openly illegal, but the illegal cost of enterprises is low.

Last November, Inspur Group was exposed to posting various slogans encouraging overtime in its office. An employee revealed to reporters that he added more than 600 hours of classes a year, and the ranking is still the bottom. Jinan labor supervision department went to Langchao for investigation the next day and has not been punished so far. In fact, this is not the first time Inspur violated the labor law. As early as 2016, Inspur was exposed to implement the 6x12 hour working system, requiring employees to be on call during the Spring Festival and national day, and there was no punishment.

If it’s outrageous that Inspur hasn’t been punished, then pinduoduo, BYD and Panax notoginseng can be called outrageous. It’s outrageous. After pinduoduo and BYD were exposed to the sudden death of their employees, the labor inspection departments in both places conducted an investigation. Facing the loss of life, they made the same choice as their counterparts in Jinan - only investigation without punishment. As for the sudden death of Sanqi mutual entertainment employees, it did not even attract the attention of the local labor inspection department.

So in the case of breaking the law, enterprises are squid into the oil pan - rolled up. With the rapid development of enterprises that work too much overtime, enterprises that do not work overtime will be squeezed. In order not to be squeezed, enterprises that do not work overtime will also work overtime. But as long as the bosses are not psychopaths, they won’t hire a bunch of people idle just to see them stare at the company at night. In fact, most busy enterprises are really busy.

Therefore, there are some objective reasons why we work overtime.

In 2012, Bob, an American programmer of American Telecom Company Weixun, outsourced his work to a Shenyang programmer with one-fifth of his annual salary of 250000 US dollars, that is, 50000 US dollars. His daily “work” was to brush forums, watch videos and lie down to earn 200000 US dollars. Finally, the company was exposed because the company found that a Chinese IP frequently logged in the background. Until he was caught, Bob was considered to be the best coder in the whole building.

In fact, when you think about it carefully, no one has suffered any loss in this matter. The company didn’t delay its business because of Bob fishing, and even had a leading programming bull in the whole building, but the bull was not in the building; Bob made $200000; The annual salary of $50000 is not low in Shenyang today.

The problem is that the Shenyang programmer can earn $250000 in the United States and only $50000 in China.

This is the so-called “late disadvantage”. The first developed country can seize the high-quality track first and prevent the latecomers from surpassing. The operating systems and chips monopolized by western countries were also poorly made at the beginning, but this one has no semicolon, “can use” is enough. What else do you want? As a result, Western giants gradually monopolized the market by relying on the first mover advantage. The product performance of later developing countries is poor and the cost is high. As soon as others cut prices, they will finish it by themselves.

Therefore, the first mover countries can basically occupy several easy to make big money pits, such as the operating system of the United States, the lithography machine of the Netherlands, the nuclear power plant of France, etc. The first countries eat meat and drink soup, and the second countries can only lick the bowl and smell the smell. That’s all. How many countries want to lick it. There are few developed countries and many underdeveloped countries. If we want to undertake the underdevelopment of developed countries