Chinese workers are circulating instructions [on Chinese social media] for reporting excessive working hours to European authorities, using the EU’s forthcoming forced-labour rules as leverage in a domestic labour system where complaints often produce limited results.
Videos tagged with phrases such as “EU reporting website” and “EU reporting procedures” received more than 200,000 views on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, according to an examination of social-media activity by Reuters. Similar discussions appeared on RedNote, although some posts were later removed.
The activity shows that workers are beginning to view access to the European market as a pressure point before the regulation becomes fully applicable in December 2027.
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The EU Forced Labour Regulation prohibits products made wholly or partly with forced labour from being placed on or exported from the Union market. It applies to every sector and origin, including individual components within a finished product.
Authorities will be able to investigate substantiated concerns, prohibit affected goods and order their withdrawal. Customs officers will enforce decisions at the border, while a single portal and shared database are intended to collect information and co-ordinate cases.
Excessive overtime is evidence, not a verdict
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The European measure uses the International Labour Organization definition: work or service exacted under the menace of a penalty and not offered voluntarily. Excessive overtime can be an indicator when workers are coerced, threatened, indebted, deprived of documents or unable to leave. Hours alone do not settle the case.
Official figures indicate that Chinese employees work more than 48 hours a week on average, compared with a legal standard of 44. Enforcement is uneven, particularly where factories face tight export deadlines or workers depend on overtime to reach an acceptable income.
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Some Chinese companies have announced mandatory clock-off times, partly in response to public criticism of the “996” culture of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The persistence of online complaints suggests that formal policies and factory practice can diverge.
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Lu Ming, a member of China’s top political advisory body, warned earlier this year that weak [Chinese] labour protection could provoke foreign trade barriers if other countries concluded that export competitiveness was built on excessive work and poor living conditions.
A new risk for European importers
The regulation does not create a blanket presumption against Chinese goods. EU and national authorities must use factual, verifiable information and follow a risk-based process. The burden of establishing a violation rests with the lead authority, not with an individual worker posting a video.
Worker testimony may nevertheless provide the starting point for an inquiry. A detailed submission identifying a factory, product, production period and coercive practice is more useful than a general complaint about long hours. Preserving evidence is difficult when posts disappear or employees fear retaliation.
European companies will need to examine more than first-tier suppliers. The prohibition applies where forced labour has been used at any stage of extraction, manufacturing or processing, including in components. A finished product assembled under acceptable conditions can still be affected by conduct further upstream.
That prospect changes the economics of compliance. Importers may demand payroll records, working-time data, grievance procedures and access to employees. Audits arranged by suppliers are unlikely to be sufficient if workers cannot speak freely or records can be altered.
The worker interest also lands in a tense trade relationship. Brussels and Beijing are already disputing subsidies, market access and industrial overcapacity. A forced-labour investigation would be legally distinct from those cases, but Chinese officials may still regard it as part of a wider European effort to restrict competitive exports.
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For workers, that political sensitivity is part of the attraction. A domestic overtime complaint can be contained within one employer or locality; credible evidence affecting EU market access can reach customers, customs authorities and corporate boards thousands of miles away.
The regulation applies from 14 December 2027. Its influence has begun earlier, not through a Commission enforcement action, but through workers testing whether European trade law can give their grievances a commercial consequence.
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