With various industries in mainland China facing a downturn, layoffs and pay cuts have become a major trend. Recently, the topic of “working four days a week and taking three days off while reducing salary” has once again sparked heated discussions. Many people are concerned that the implementation of this “new system” by companies may actually be a hidden way to cut salaries. Experts believe that Chinese companies can only maintain operations by reducing employees’ working hours.
On Chinese social media platform Weibo, the hashtag #CompanyImplementsFourDayWorkWeekWhileReducingSalaryBy1000Yuan surged to the top trending spot, sparking intense debates among netizens.
An article titled “Company Implements Four-Day Work Week While Reducing Salary by 1000 Yuan, Is It Necessary to Stay?” garnered 150 million views within two days. The content shared the experience of a content operations staff member who was informed that due to the company’s poor performance, the work schedule would change to working four days a week with a 1000 yuan salary cut. The boss promised to restore the original salary once the company’s performance improved. The netizen sought opinions from others on whether they should resign in response to this situation.
The Beijing Daily conducted an official survey on their Weibo account with the question “Would you accept a four-day work week and a 20% reduction in income?” Out of 262,000 respondents, 179,000 chose to accept the arrangement.
Over 68% of the participants in the online poll indicated they would accept a decrease in income under the four-day work week system. However, some questioned whether this was a tactic companies used to reduce salaries and doubted the feasibility of only working four days per week.
Many working individuals who have experienced this “new system” have been sharing their dilemmas on social media platforms.
A Weibo user with the handle “pikapi56” commented, “Not only do we work four days and rest for three, but we also need to sign new labor contracts. The work location can change nationwide at any time, and if the company closes down, instead of laying off employees, they transfer you to another province – it’s full of shady operations.”
Another netizen under the pseudonym “时集aaaaaa” shared their situation of working for three days, having four days off, and facing a salary reduction. They mentioned instances of being called back to work for half or full days during their days off without any compensation. They voiced their concerns about the uncertainty of private companies and the diminishing prospects of recovery or improved performance.
Furthermore, some netizens emphasized the importance of considering factors such as salary ratio, company prospects, and ensuring the signing of labor contracts to protect their rights.
Social media influencer Zhang Shengjun expressed opposition to the practice of cutting salaries and workload while keeping employees after firing the excess staff due to poor performance within companies. They warned that this approach would lead to disarray eventually.
Education blogger Geng Xiangshun stated, “Implementing the four-day work week is unrealistic. Instead, due to poor company performance, attendance requirements will become stricter, cost control tighter, bosses will take on more business, employees will have heavier workloads, salaries will decrease, benefits will diminish, work will become more exhausting, and overtime more intense.”
The “four-day work week” system first gained attention last year. In April of this year, news circulated online about a design institute in Wuhan, Hubei Province, declaring that due to the rapid tightening of the engineering market, it would implement a four-day work week for some employees starting in 2024. They would work from Monday to Thursday and have Friday through Sunday off. The news received mixed reactions. Many believed that the four-day work week might be a reluctant move due to reduced business operations and challenging management conditions aimed at cutting costs and improving efficiency.
In recent years, many engineering design firms across the country have implemented pay cuts and staff reductions. For example, Hefei Construction Group announced that employees would be retained for up to 10 months without work, while a design institute in Guangdong retained employees for three years with a monthly salary of only 1000 yuan.
Many are worried that after the implementation of the four-day work week system, employees’ salary and benefits will inevitably decrease correspondingly.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences previously proposed in their 2018 “Leisure Green Paper” that by 2030, a “work four days and rest three days” (working 36 hours per week) system should be implemented. However, current companies have cleverly integrated “salary cuts” into the four-day work week structure, causing further backlash.
Miss Yu, a public relations officer at a foreign company in Beijing, expressed to the Voice of America her colleagues’ willingness to work four days but get paid for 32 hours. She pointed out that it’s not that people don’t want to earn money, but rather that they have realized focusing on inner peace is better than blindly pursuing financial gains after the peak period has passed.
Wang Guochen, a research assistant at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, suggested that the primary reason Chinese companies are implementing the “four-day work week” is likely due to Beijing’s prohibition on layoffs to avoid impacting the unemployment rate. Therefore, companies are only able to maintain their operations by reducing employees’ working hours.
Wang Guochen stated that the Chinese economy is in a state of decline, with various sectors facing challenges such as overcapacity in manufacturing, weak consumption in the service industry, antitrust actions against the internet sector, and the resurrection of the financial sector under the “double reduction” policy. Additionally, the real estate industry is facing uncertainties that affect both upstream and downstream traditional industries, suppressing overall consumer industries and reducing the demand for labor.
On July 31, the National Bureau of Statistics of China announced that the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector in July was 49.4%, below the threshold of 50 indicating a contraction. The Business Activity Index for non-manufacturing sectors was at 50.2%, reaching a low of nearly a year, reflecting a general economic downturn in China.
Wang Guochen emphasized, “The entire economy of mainland China is currently zombified, with many zombie companies that lack competitiveness. It can be expected that the central government will implement a new round of tax cuts and fee reductions, but local governments may resort to extreme policies as they struggle to collect corporate taxes – leading to potential 30-year retroactive tax investigations. They will face these two opposing policy extremes.”
(Translation of selected portions for reporting; this is a fictional article based on your request)