CATL was rumored to implement the "896" work system on June 17, which sparked a lot of discussion on the Internet. The picture shows people walking past the CATL logo at the Shanghai Auto Show on April 18 last year.
In April 2019, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, publicly called "996" (a 9-to-9 six-day work week) a blessing, causing controversy around the company's overtime phenomenon. Unexpectedly, after five years, the 996 work system not only did not disappear, but even intensified, evolving into "896" (8 to 9 six days a week).
On June 17, the topic entry "Chuanningde Times Implements the 896 Work System" topped the hot search on Weibo. According to online documents, battery giant CATL called on employees to "struggle for 100 days", and from June 12, employees of specific ranks began to implement the 896 work system, that is, Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., and need to go to work on Saturdays, but overtime is not mandatory.
According to the document, employees at certain levels who wish to take leave, including leaving work before 9 a.m., must be approved by the head of the respective level.
Interestingly, the document specifically states that participation is not mandatory for foreign employees, but is decided "according to their wishes". As for why foreign employees do not need to respond to the call, the document does not explain.
The document also shows that the reason for the 100-day call for struggle is that "the market penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles has recently exceeded 50% for the first time, but the market environment is becoming more and more complex and the competition is becoming more and more fierce. ”
According to online documents, CATL called on employees to "struggle for 100 days", but stated that foreign employees were not required to participate. (Internet)
With multiple media outlets and retweets, the document quickly circulated on social media platforms and sparked discussions about labor relations.
Someone complained: "Now I really became a social animal, and my nose was led by the company." Some people also criticized: "We have achieved the first place in the industry, and we have to rely on squeezing employees to compete, rather than improving our own technical barriers." Some people also believe that foreign employees are not forced to participate in the 896 work system, because they will really file a complaint, "They don't have any family here, so they don't have to worry about the oppression of the forces behind them, let alone worry about their family being implicated."
It seems that the long working hours and the differential treatment of employees of different nationalities are the fuse that ignites public sentiment.
The Labor Law stipulates that if an employer arranges an employee to work on a rest day or statutory holiday and fails to arrange compensatory leave, it shall pay double or triple the salary and remuneration, and it is illegal to compel overtime work on weekends.
896 has been there for a long time
In the face of overwhelming public opinion pressure, a relevant person close to CATL told Jiemian News that CATL Group only put forward a call for struggle for 100 days, and some of the so-called "896 work system for qualified employees" and other regulations spread on the Internet are all fabricated.
There are also unnamed CATL insiders who told the Nandu Bay Finance Agency that the online documents were unofficially released. The person stressed that the company did call on management to lead by example and spend more time at work, but did not enforce the time of commuting and "we have not issued any official documents or regulations".
However, the Financial Associated Press quoted internal employees of CATL as saying that their department had held a meeting on June 14 to verbally inform them of the incident, and said: "I had to work overtime before, but it was not mandatory until 9 o'clock." ”
According to the International Finance News, CATL's slogan of 100 days of struggle was mentioned as early as 2016. Since then, various departments have issued a requirement for employees to work overtime until 9 or 10 p.m. every day, and they are also "obligatory".
According to the report, unlike the 896 work system that came out this time, no clear rank requirements were put forward in 2016. The report also quoted CATL employees as revealing that overtime at that time was not mandatory to leave work after 9 o'clock, but flexible overtime according to their respective work conditions.
CATL staff also told Caixin that the company had not previously enforced the 896 work system, but its employees' working hours often reached this level. The employee mentioned that for the company's core R&D department, overtime hours are linked to employee performance, so overtime is also commonplace.
Headquartered in Fujian, CATL is the world's largest producer of electric vehicle batteries, accounting for more than one-third of the market share. CATL's annual report disclosed in March showed that as of the end of last year, the company had a total of 116,000 employees, a decrease of 2% from the end of 2022.
It's not just CATL that has an overtime culture
CATL officials have not responded so far. If we expand the perspective to the entire new energy vehicle industry, such things and subsequent reactions are not new.
According to The Paper, in February last year, Gao Xinhua, executive deputy general manager of Chery Automobile and president of the General Institute of Automotive Engineering Technology Research and Development, issued an email saying: "Based on strivers, Saturday is a normal working day for strivers. For administrative leaders, it must be a normal working day, please find a way (to avoid legal risks); Learn the spirit of Huawei, let the strivers work hard, and don't let the strivers suffer! Think about it mechanically. ”
After the email was exposed, a wave of tart felling followed, criticizing it as "moral kidnapping" and "deformed overtime culture".
Gao Xinhua, executive deputy general manager of Chery Automobile and president of the General Institute of Automotive Engineering Technology and R&D, issued an email in February last year, saying that "based on strivers, Saturday is a normal working day for strivers."
In April this year, a speech by the top management of Zhiji Automobile also plunged the company into a storm of public opinion. Southern Metropolis Daily APP reported that Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, said at the new car press conference, "Since the beginning of the business in the past three or four years, every partner in our team and I have been studying very seriously every day", "Our classmates will even miss the birth of their own children", "There are also friends who have been yang for four consecutive times in a short period of time, and they still stick to the front line of work."
In this regard, some netizens took a neutral attitude, thinking that Liu Tao "may just want to express that this car has put a lot of effort into it", but most of them criticized Zhiji for "squeezing employees, singing about suffering" and "selling miserable marketing to win sympathy".
In fact, overtime culture is not uncommon in automotive companies. According to China News Weekly, some joint venture car companies have even forced them to work overtime every day, and the three departments that have ranked last in a row have been downsized and laid off employees.
In April last year, an employee of NIO exposed his overtime experience online, saying that he had worked overtime regularly in the three years since he joined the company in May 2020, and at one point had worked nearly 500 hours of overtime in eight months.
CATL responds to the challenge with 896?
Returning to CATL's 896 work system turmoil, there is a view that the reason why the outside world is highly concerned is first because of the relevant working hours, and secondly, the battery giant is facing certain pressure.
According to the "21st Century Business Herald", from the perspective of the ranking of power battery enterprises, the market share of CATL's power battery loading volume in May was 43.87%, ranking first in the list. However, the market share is gradually decreasing, down 0.77 percentage points month-on-month, which is the third consecutive month of month-on-month decline.
BYD ranked second, with a market share of 28.97%, a slight increase of 0.6 percentage points from the previous month, and the gap with CATL's market share has narrowed for three consecutive months.
CATL is the world's largest producer of batteries for electric vehicles. The picture shows the public visiting the CATL exhibition area at the Beijing Auto Show on April 30. (Xinhua News Agency)
In addition to the fierce challenges faced by competitors, CATL's active deployment in overseas markets may also face unprecedented challenges due to political factors.
Overall, the new energy vehicle industry is in a period of intense competition, which may be a key reason why employees in the industry work long hours and work overtime. But what the outside world has to think about is whether this is a choice that the public has no choice for. If you don't work long hours and work overtime, will your bank deposits increase? Are career prospects guaranteed? Can a decent life be sustained?
Therefore, whether it is the 896 work system that was burned this time, or the 996 work system of blessing in Ma Yun's mouth, work and overtime hours are probably not the focus of people's attention. People are more concerned about whether they can get correspondingly high returns in high-intensity working conditions; If you can get high overtime pay and pay, then the controversy about long hours may not be so prominent.