Re: I want one of those jobs
36 hrs per month x 12 months / 50 working weeks year = ~8.64 hrs of overtime a week.
Assuming 40 hr std work weeks, that is ~48.64 hrs a week, or ~31.36 hours *less* than I work in an average week.
Even if China allows 60 hr workweeks before overtime pay kicks in, it is still 11.36 hours less than I work in an average week.
I sure as hell don't get overtime pay; and if I understand correctly, they are making so much above national average as to be reasonably considered upper middle class. (By the standards of their society.)
Sounds perfectly reasonable! Now, the n-hexane, child labour and other things are pants, (and someone needs to scream loudly about them,) but the hours and pay sound pretty damned good to me.
Yes, the raw salary seems low by our standards. But the cost of living (goods, property, services, etc) are so much lower there that there is no reason to suspect that someone making a middle-class chinese salary doesn't live a life roughly as affluent (in terms of posession of material goods) and horrible wasteful as my own.
If the cost of bread/rice/iPhones/rent/etc. is 10x less, you need 10x less income to achieve the same quality of life.
I can't claim to know enough variables about the Chinese economy to know if these folks are really getting a raw deal or now. The information just isn't available to me.
But harping on about how many hours they have to work isn't earning sympathy points here. They seem to work about as many as I do, maybe less.
(Understand that I am not complaining about my hours here; I do what needs be done to pay the bills. This is just a discussion of facts, not a whinge fest.)
And at least they have a job. 30 million able bodied individuals of working age on my continent can't say the same.
Perspective. We need it.
There are legitimate workplace issues in China to get out panties in a bunch over. Hours worked is not one.