China’s ‘two sessions’ 2024: focus on work-life balance urged to stop workers being trapped by ‘invisible overtime’
- Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference delegate Lyu Guoquan says the idea of ‘offline rest’ should be added to China’s labour laws
- Notoriously gruelling work schedules, especially among Chinese tech firms, is one of the challenges compounding China’s faltering employment environment
China should improve protection for workers from “invisible overtime”, according to policy advisers and lawmakers at the ongoing “two sessions” in Beijing, with the world’s second-largest economy particularly struggling against high youth unemployment.
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference delegate Lyu Guoquan, who is the director of the general office of China’s trade union federation, has proposed including the right of “offline rest” into labour laws, while also raising the legal penalties for companies involved in “invisible overtime practices”.
“Digital information technology in the internet era … has blurred the ‘boundaries’ between work and life, making invisible overtime increasingly normalised as ‘unpaid overtime’,” Lyu said, according to the state-owned Workers’ Daily newspaper on Tuesday.
“The state of being ‘always online’ has left workers ‘trapped in the work system’, adversely affecting their physical and mental well-being.”
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He suggested revising standard working hours to clearly define online overtime and compensation, alongside setting limits on hours for positions that rely on online platforms with fluctuating schedules and high workloads.
The government should also step up supervision and penalties for employers with “invisible overtime”, and improve the mechanism for workers to protect their rights against unreasonable and unpaid overtime, Lyu added.
