I got to know the antiwork community through an article from China. This surprised me because I have always been yearning for the working environment and labor laws in Europe and America. But after I browse some posts. I gradually realized that for capitalists, the size of your capital determines how much you can use labor law as toilet paper to wipe their ass.
I would like to briefly introduce the situation of working in China and let you know what the working environment in developing countries is.
My wife is doing an audit at PWC and is currently doing an annual audit. The workload of the annual review is huge. Her overtime work is basically the norm, and she often works until after nine o'clock to get off work. This caused her to suffer from moderate anxiety. She has spoken to me too many times lately about quitting. And from time to time she would cry with me on the phone because of the huge pressure (I am currently abroad, and she considered resigning after the annual review and working abroad because of the huge work pressure).
And what about overtime pay? Foreign companies like PWC will respect China's labor laws to a certain extent, and overtime wages will be paid during the annual review. However, outside the annual review, overtime wages will not be paid at all. And there is culture has formed within the company: For example, if you work overtime for three hours, then you will work overtime for one hour. If you work overtime for one hour, then don't write overtime.
Moreover, during the annual review process, he was also able to see the wages of workers in China's labor-intensive industries. The workers are all boarded and lodged in the factory. After deducting the cost of board and lodging, the average wages of workers are 3,000 to 4,000 yuan ( 500-600 USD). In China, it allows you to engage in some basic consumption activities (may go to dinner several times a week, go to karaoke with friends, spend some money to play games, etc.) But they generally don't do this, because most of the workers come from the countryside. The labor force in China's rural areas has basically all left the countryside, and in the absence of labor force, the villages are basically unable to make a living by farming and other methods. (lack of manpower, mechanization, and extremely low profits). So they will send some of the money home to support the elderly who are left in the countryside.
It is hardly news that the working environment in China is very bad. In China's high-income industries (such as the cs industry), news of the sudden death of employees is reported from time to time. For example, last year, a Chinese company called “Pinduoduo” had an employee who died suddenly due to high-intensity overtime; A few days ago, I also saw the news that the Chinese video-sharing platform “Bilibili” also had an employee die suddenly during the Lunar New Year after working overtime. Not to mention other common industries in China.
In China, you don't even need to be a capitalist to ignore labor laws because there are too many people and too few jobs in China. The government has also largely acquiesced to violations of labor laws. Not paying overtime seems to be common sense. At the same time, the company will also provide you with another overtime strategy, which is to assign you too many tasks that you have to work overtime to complete tasks on time. Failure to complete tasks may result in a pay cut or dismissal. Moreover, many companies are still promoting a wolf-like corporate culture. The competition within the company is fierce, and employees are required to dedicate themselves to the company (meaning high-intensity unpaid overtime). Last year and the year before, some people in the computer industry began to collectively resist the 996-style working conditions (from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week), and now this voice has become lesser. A friend in the computer industry said that there is no hope for improvement, and not long ago he left a high-income and high-intensity position to start to make an independent game.
A serious problem in developing countries like China is that a lot of manpower exists in the market. The people who sell their labor in the market have absolutely no right to bargain with big companies, and these countries generally prohibit the existence of “real unions”. And based on political realism, European and American countries do not care about the situation of workers as long as they can bring benefits to their own countries. The lower-income level leads to a more serious problem, most people have no time to consider the harsh reality of their own exploitation because they have done their best just to survive. Most workers don't even have a chance to sit down and think about their situation, let alone fight it. In this environment of the jungle, if you do not have a good family condition, becoming a “scab” is almost an inevitable choice.
To be clear, China today has nothing to do with communism, China is the most powerful authoritarian capitalist country in the world, and many people in this country are being chauvinized by propaganda. Never misunderstand the meaning of some concepts of communism just because China claims to be a so-called communist and socialist country.