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Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

bbc.com

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Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#211

Post by mywittyname »

Sangermaine wrote: post #48
1_800_UNICORN wrote: post #33

Very interesting article, but I was disappointed that the article stated that the millenial only-children of China are "outspoken", "pampered", or "self-centered". I don't believe that any of those terms apply to people who are fighting against working 72 hours per week for low pay. This is a case of basic human rights. The words that come to mind to describe the folks who are fighting this fight are "proud", "resili…

It's nice to see that however much America and China might be at odds, they can apparently agree on attacking their young people as lazy and entitled.

China and the USA share a many values. I think in many ways, China in the USA are more closely aligned vis-a-vis values than the USA and Western Europe are.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#212

Post by ams6110 »

arca_vorago wrote: post #175
gehwartzen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OVER-time. As in additional time over what was agreed in the original employee-employer relationship. There is nothing selfish here except maybe on the part of the companies that expect overtime out of their employees.

Even better, those who expect ot but have labelled an employee "key" to say they are ot-exempt... I later found out it has a legal definition. Key employee, in the ot law, means you have some profit sharing or stake in the company. Doesn't matter how "key" you are to the operations. FYI. I bet lots of people are getting shafted by this.

Exempt means you don't report hours. My first professional job after college was with one of the big consulting firms. I reported hours, and I got paid overtime after 40. I was expected to log at least 40 hours a week on something -- could be internal/self-training or client billable.

In all the other jobs I've had I did not report hours. I am hired to get a job done. If that sometimes takes me 30 hours a week and sometimes takes me 55 that is what I'm expected to do.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#213

Post by mywittyname »

bjourne wrote: post #148
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a case of basic human rights. There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

That's a myth. For most of human history, "working" 10-12 hours/week used to be the norm. There are still isolated tribes living as hunter gatherers and they are far from miserable!

Not only that, but "work" was often fun back then. These people were basically doing for work what people today do for fun: hunting, crafting, cooking, exercising, etc.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#214

Post by kccqzy »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #180
marsrover wrote: post #8

> Li said that initially he felt he couldn’t be too be picky: he had majored in English, not in one of the sought-after science or technology fields, and he had attended a low-ranked university. Many of his friends are unemployed. To me, this was the most interesting part of the article. It all sounds so familiar.

A credential in "English" isn't the exemplar of self-indulgence that it would be in the US, where everybody already knows English and "English" as a school subject just means literature. Knowing English in China has real, immediate financial benefits. For any given job (programmer / secretary / waitress / anything), a role that involves having to communicate with English speakers is more prestigious and offers higher…

Every college student already knows English. It's a required subject in high schools. Anecdotally I do know of a Chinese student majoring in English in college telling me the best part of her college life is reading Dickens all day.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#215

Post by jpatokal »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #181
vkou wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An understanding of history and ethics and psychology is also a valuable skill, but if that's your only skill, you'll be making lattes.

It's perfectly possible as a Chinese person in China to enjoy a solid middle-class lifestyle based only on your ability to speak English.

Problem is, majoring in English doesn't necessarily mean they actually have the ability to really speak English.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#216

Post by xvf22 »

cdelsolar wrote: post #155
ekianjo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah and they had nothing to eat at all some years if the harvest was bad, and no medical care and most people died in their 30s. So, which scenario do you prefer?

most people didn't die in their 30s, if you could make it through childhood you'd usually live to your 60s/70s.

Care to provide a citation or clarify the period you're referring to?

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#217

Post by Thlom »

arca_vorago wrote: post #175
gehwartzen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OVER-time. As in additional time over what was agreed in the original employee-employer relationship. There is nothing selfish here except maybe on the part of the companies that expect overtime out of their employees.

Even better, those who expect ot but have labelled an employee "key" to say they are ot-exempt... I later found out it has a legal definition. Key employee, in the ot law, means you have some profit sharing or stake in the company. Doesn't matter how "key" you are to the operations. FYI. I bet lots of people are getting shafted by this.

Sounds like there's laws on this in many countries. In Norway you are exempt from overtime regulations if you have an independent position, which is pretty well defined in law and practice. It basically means that you control your own work day and what you work with. Typically C-level. It is of course abused by employers.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#218

Post by watwut »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #146
Joeri wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s more like 60 to 80 hours per week of “work”, both personal and professional. A society set up for 60 hours a week would have you outsource pretty much all housework, shopping and assorted chores in order not to burn out. I believe it when people routinely do 70 hour weeks, but only if they don’t have a personal life of their own that they sink effort into.

Back before the 40 hour work week a lot of those tasks were outsourced to wives.

In middle and upper class. Poor people had to work all the time and that often included small children.

Fun fact I gathered:30% of Victorian workforce were women, because social situation was that. (There were also high levels of prostitution).

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#219

Post by throw2016 »

ben509 wrote: post #106
ionised wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wonderfully ideological. I'm surprised people still believe this stuff. Free markets are successful because people are self-centred? The last 40 years or more should have been enough time to see that humans are not just machine-like self-interested information processors that respond to the market, they do behave altruistically and will co-operate when the purpose is worth it. It's this naive insistence that…

> This is wonderfully ideological. I'm surprised people still believe this stuff. Since I tend to skew this way, I'd like to see you lay out what some of the ideological assumptions are. Free market views are pretty well backed by economics, and plenty of nations have tried to implement alternative ideas and crashed pretty hard. > The last 40 years or more should have been enough time to see that humans are not just…

Markets have existed for thousands of years, no 'social structures' were built from the bottom up. It did not lead to any civilization then. On the contrary unchecked capitalism directly led to genocide, plunder, slavery, exploitation, segregation and worse.

What we today understand as civilized society, democracy and rule of law took centuries of work by progressives and government.

Decades of propaganda by libertarians has set up an artificial divide between government and people. See 'Democracy in Chains' by Nancy Maclean.

The government is you in a democracy, it's there to protect your and everyone else's interests, that what democracy and rule of law means. It's what guarantees a somewhat civilized society. It is not this simplistic 'majority can do what they want' illiteracy spread by market fundamentalists.

It appears some people become rich and increasingly alienated from people, society and government and begin to believe they don't need government. This is the kind of hubris that leads to tyranny and quasi feudalism, which is of course what they want.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#220

Post by s73v3r_ »

adventured wrote: post #135
s73v3r_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is a reason that the US has laws about the minimum that people can get paid on a salary." There is no federal law in the US about that. California has such a law, but it requires being reported to be enforced, and as such, is not very often enforced.

There is in fact a Federal law that covers that. The Fair Labor Standards Act. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0bd0fa78-f456... Someone else here can speak to whether the exemption rate minimum was officially raised from the old $455 per week (the DOL was attempting to increase it). You legally must be paid at least the minimum wage unless you're exempt, and then the minimum weekly pay is in force. The…

You are right; Federal law does actually outline a minimum amount for being salaried. I misspoke.

However, from what I understand, the amount outlined in that law has not changed from when it originally was written. So it is laughably low, to the point where it doesn't really help. I guess it's more than the hourly minimum wage, though?

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