heile Welt

A friend of mine who studies Business once told me that he was shocked when the term ‚human resource‘ was introduced early in his studies. And it wasn‘t so much the term itself but rather the way it is used in business language. Luckily in Europe there are many policies and laws that protect a human worker from becoming a mere ‚tool‘ in the line of many to raise profits for a company. Back then I could understand what he meant but wasn‘t really aware of it (of course I couldn‘t since I hadn‘t even started studying nor had I any knowledge of how the ‚world of work‘ would look like). During my stay in China I get to understand the term much better and realize its extreme existence constantly in the office I work at.

I didn‘t mean to write about it so early already but with the recent policies that have been introduced against the (Chinese) workers I get more and more angry about the situation and keep loosing any respect for our boss. Although I have to admit that most of what I write here doesn‘t count for us Germans. We still ‚enjoy‘ somewhat of a special status but had our moments of conflict as well.
So here is a list of (un-)official laws/policies that seem completely wrong from my point of view.
First of all what also affected us Germans already: vacation. I know that in Germany and France vacation is a big deal and is enforced by state law. In China it is different of course. If you want to have days off you need to get the approval of the boss and even need to justify why you are not coming to work. But these days are certainly not paid. I guess this policy is more or less ‚common‘ in countries like China and that’s why I started with it.
Another office policy is concerning sickness. If a worker is sick he/she gets paid only 1 day each month for not coming to work. In reverse this means of course that the workers come in even if they shouldn‘t for health reason.
Just a few weeks ago one of the secretaries put up a note stating that everyone who comes in late gets cut off 50 Yuan of the monthly earnings (this is about half of the average day rate; I get about 80-90 Yuan [~9 Euro] ) each day. So most of our colleagues rather run to work than complain about it.
Working on weekends sometimes even sunday is basically required (except for us Germans fortunately) but is not paid. If you cannot work on a saturday you even get money off your loans. The calculation is stupid as well since they divide the amount of money you receive by the weekdays you worked in a month (weekends not included), the day rate is of course higher then so in the end it’s a higher loss for the worker.
But the best policy came out just this month. The secretary (I‘m sure on behalf of the boss) started categorizing the workers according to their status in the team and certain criteria that is mainly a highly subjective decision. Our German-speaking colleague told us for example that he was placed in the category ‚chief designer 3rd (lowest) class‘ which may sound good in the beginning but this means a cutoff of 2000 yuan each month (that’s his rent and the amount of money we get each month). He doesn‘t have a contract which is the next thing I would like to point out. Many workers have no contract and the boss talks it down by telling them that we are still a young and small office so once we grow everything will get better. The office exists since 1996 and due to a lack of leadership (to use a very business-like term) the company is not really growing and probably will never do so. But because the workers don‘t have any contract they have to face these policies without any possibility to complain. Same for social security. You can only get social security if the office registers you so most workers have no social security and even if they have they still pay the monthly rates the office does not pay even a part of it.
Before the secretary started this categorizing he came around asking our colleagues for their contracts so most people told him that they don‘t have one which then of course makes it easy to simply cut the money.
But the biggest problem is that the people don‘t stand up against it and rather accept their fate. And I asked myself already many times why this is so. The only way out is by looking for a new job themselves which obviously might be the same or even worse (who can tell?!). I assume you get the link with the introduction and the term ‚human resource‘ now. Everyone can be replaced and it seems more easy for our boss to change the team or loose the workers in a constant cycle instead of creating a more attractive work atmosphere. The second reason why they don‘t get critical is a cultural reason. Chinese rather pretend to live in harmony together than face a conflict. I knew this before but I heard exactly this sentence from my boss when we had a discussion about the holiday policy (of which he didn‘t tell us in the beginning and which also doesn‘t show up in our contracts): „Let’s not argue we have to work together in harmony. […]“

And to conclude this already very long text I have another story to tell. The (very much disliked) secretary started putting up notes more or less frequently since he has started working here in late May. The last note stated that our German-speaking colleague is responsible for the creation of the new website and has still failed to finish up this project. This behaviour casts a dark shadow on the work of the office and cannot be accepted. He forgot to mention though that I was on vacation (I‘m doing the graphic design for the website and have everything on my computer) and he was occupied with translation work for a project our office and a partner company started with the Technical University Stuttgart and was responsible for the interior design of two appartments as well.
My response note would have looked like this:

‚The Behavior of Mr Secretary with his constant denunciations lead to a very bad work atmosphere and is counter-productive in terms of efficiency and productivity. In the long run this will also affect our customers. I suggest an immediate dismissal if this doesn‘t stop.
Putting a smile on the face could also help.‘

Congratulations if you got this far you know much more about the work situation in my office.