A male employee of Chinese e-commerce giant Poundland committed suicide by jumping off a building in Changsha, Hunan province on Saturday. The company has already had two employees die unexpectedly in the past week.
The identity of the man was confirmed by Pindo on Sunday. The employee, surnamed Tan, joined Poundland on July 8 last year and worked as a technology development engineer. He had just passed his probationary period before his death and completed the conversion process on Dec. 30 last year, the company said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Pindo said, “The company expresses its deep condolences for his tragic death, while awaiting the final investigation results from the local authorities on the cause of the incident. In the meantime, the company will fully cooperate with the aftermath of Tan Moulin’s passing.”
On Dec. 29 last year, a 23-year-old employee of Poundland suddenly collapsed and died on his way home after work at midnight.
On top of that, a video posted on Weibo by a fired employee of Poundland on Monday (Jan. 11) became the subject of a hot search online. It was accompanied by a photo of an ambulance arriving at the company to pick up an employee who had collapsed at work. The photo reads, “The second Poundlander has fallen”.
The employee, who goes by the screen name “Wang Taixu”, said he saw an employee being carried to the ambulance by two people while he was at work on the morning of Jan. 7 and took a photo of it.
“Wang Taixu said on Weibo on Sunday that he was fired from his job after the company found out about the photo. He also pointed out that the company’s poor working conditions are something internal employees know firsthand. Some departments require employees to work at least 300 hours a month, he said, and employees of the grocery service where the woman who died suddenly worked were even required to work no less than 380 hours a month.
Pindo said the employee, surnamed Wang, was fired not for putting the ambulance photo online, but for making “extreme comments” on social media in the past, which violated the company’s internal code of conduct.
The successive incidents have exposed the intense work pressure and difficult living conditions faced by the employees of Jindo, and also prompted a new round of public opinion debate on the “996” working hours, which means that workers work 12 hours a day (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) and 6 days a week.
While China’s labor laws require workers to work eight hours a day and five days a week, in practice most companies, especially technology companies, require workers to work overtime without pay. This is also the case at both Alibaba, the most well-known company, and the e-commerce company Jingdong. Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma and Jingdong’s founder Liu Qiangdong have both publicly expressed their support for the 996 work week, encouraging employees to cherish the rare opportunity to work for the development of the company and the happiness of their families.
Many people have commented on the photos and videos posted by “Wang Taixu” against the overtime system, suggesting that young workers should not accept the cruel work requirements like the previous generation of workers.
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