Microsoft employees urge company to back protesting Chinese tech workers

A group of Microsoft employees today called on the company to stand in solidarity with Chinese tech workers who have adopted GitHub as a platform to protestation unfair labor practices. In an open letter posted to GitHub in English and Chinese, the Microsoft employees urge their employer to resist whatever pressure to conscience or remove the GitHub repository used past the Chinese workers (via Bloomberg).

The repository in question is called "996.ICU," which is a reference to the working hours that tech workers in China are protesting: 9 a.thou. to 9 p.yard., six days a week. The ICU refers to employees who work these hours somewhen ending upwardly in the Intensive Care Unit at hospitals from the grueling schedules. The repository serves equally a place for workers to protest the working weather condition and demand change.

Since its inception in March, a number of Chinese browsers have censored the repository. In their open up letter, Microsoft employees are urging the visitor to resist pressure to remove the repository:

In response to these events, we, the workers of Microsoft and GitHub, back up the 996.ICU movement and stand up in solidarity with tech workers in Mainland china. Nosotros know this is a trouble that crosses national borders. These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole. Another reason nosotros must take a stand in solidarity with Chinese workers is that history tells us that multinational companies will pit workers against each other in a race to the lesser equally they outsource jobs and take reward of weak labor standards in the pursuit of profit. We accept to come together across national boundaries to ensure just working conditions for everyone around the globe.

Nosotros encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and bachelor to everyone.

The alphabetic character is signed past "xxx tech workers."

The letter is another effort by the "Microsoft Workers 4 Practiced" movement, which has advocated for change on a range of problems related to Microsoft and the tech manufacture at large, including efforts to combat climate change and ethical concerns over work with the U.S. military machine on lethal technology.

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