China’s Covid Zero Enforcement Army Faces Unpaid Wages, Job Loss
- Army of virus workers are losing jobs, struggle for pay
- Smaller firms are at greater risk of shutting this year: BI
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For Li Hua, who since June has worked at a Covid testing booth in Shanghai, the abrupt end of Covid Zero has been a struggle.
The company she worked for, which ran a network of booths where thousands of people would line up for near-daily testing back when China had zero tolerance for virus spread, decided last month that most employees would be fired on Jan. 8 — the day the country’s downgrade of Covid management took effect. Even worse, she and her colleagues have not been paid since November, she said. The workers are now refusing to leave their dormitory, but the company says it has no money as the government hasn’t paid their invoices.