In a video uploaded to the Chinese social media platform Bilibili in October, a Shein warehouse worker in southern China with black-rimmed glasses tells the camera he picked 650 clothing items during his last shift—a feat he claims to have accomplished, in part, by not taking a single bathroom break. The worker says the sacrifice would help him reach his goal of earning 10,000 RMB (nearly $1,500 at the time) a month at his job picking and packing customer orders for Shein, the global fast-fashion juggernaut valued last year at $66 billion.
In a separate Bilibili video posted a few days later, a different Shein staffer says that he is “sweating profusely after picking goods all night,” but he’s grateful, at least, that his team leader is friendly. In a third clip shared to the short-form video platform Kuaishou in November, another Shein worker with long hair pulled back into a low ponytail tells the camera she is having trouble lifting her left hand after completing an 11-and-a-half hour shift at a Shein warehouse. “My first time working in logistics, there won’t be a second time,” reads the caption.
Over the past three years, dozens of purported gig workers at Shein fulfillment centers in southern China have filmed day-in-the-life vlogs like these, sharing with viewers extensive details about their wages, working conditions, and reasons for choosing to take jobs in the logistics industry.
WIRED analyzed more than 30 of the videos from four Chinese platforms tagged with the hashtag Xiyin (#希音), Shein’s name in Chinese. Together, they provide a rare and deeply human glimpse into the meticulously optimized logistics supply chain that allows Shein to send millions of $3 polyester tube tops and $5 pairs of patterned leggings to consumers around the world. (WIRED attempted to contact the workers in the videos for comment; some could not be reached and the remainder did not respond to interview requests.)
While Amazon tends to build fulfillment centers near major customer hubs to optimize delivery speeds, Shein ships the bulk of its orders directly from China, a strategy that critics in the US and Europe claim allows it to unfairly dodge import duties. (Shein says it pays millions in duties each year.) But testimony shared by workers in the videos—which WIRED corroborated using local job listings, Chinese-language news articles, and other publicly available information—shows that Shein enjoys another major benefit from operating warehouses in China: the ability to staff them with precarious gig workers who are not guaranteed the same protections and benefits that full-time employees are entitled to by law.
Job advertisements for Shein logistics roles in Guangdong province seen by WIRED indicate that many of the people who work in the company’s fulfillment centers are recruited through a controversial system known as “labor dispatch.” The arrangement allows firms to outsource responsibility for cohorts of temporary workers to staffing agencies, which oversee their wages, benefits, and other aspects of their working conditions.
“That separates the employment relationship from the actual use of labor,” says Lu Zhang, an associate professor at Temple University who has studied China’s labor dispatch model and wrote a book about worker organizing in China’s auto industry. “It allows companies to achieve labor on demand while cutting costs.”
Under Chinese law, only 10 percent of a company’s staff is supposed to be made up of labor dispatch workers. But Zhang says the regulations are often not rigorously enforced. She noted that companies can also circumvent the limit by hiring workers categorized under different outsourcing schemes that function in largely the same way, a strategy that job advertisements indicate Shein is using.
A spokesperson for Shein confirmed to WIRED that the company “works with third-party vendors to staff the vast majority of our warehouse operations,” but declined to specify what percentage of the workers are categorized as labor dispatch. “Shein’s practices are aligned with industry standards and comply with local laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Because many of Shein’s warehouse staffers are classified as gig workers, they are not guaranteed a set hourly wage, just like Uber drivers and food delivery couriers. Job listings and several videos reviewed by WIRED indicate that while workers are promised a monthly base salary, their total compensation is calculated based on their productivity levels, a system summed up as “more work, more pay.”
This structure gives workers the option to hustle to earn higher incomes. But when the volume of Shein orders decreases, their wages may also drop due to no fault of their own, according to one of the videos. In a clip posted to the ByteDance-owned platform Xigua in January, one purported Shein worker complains that she can’t earn enough money because “the amount of goods is not enough.” She adds that she imagined having a more stable salary by this point in her life.
“Shein is committed to ensuring the fair and dignified treatment of all workers within our supply chain and is investing tens of millions of dollars in strengthening governance and compliance,” the spokesperson for Shein said.
Shein told WIRED that, based on records from its vendors, the company estimates junior warehouse staff are paid roughly 7,000 RMB ($997) per month, while senior workers can earn more than 12,000 RMB ($1,709) on average. The current monthly minimum wage for full-time employees in Guangzhou, a major Chinese city close to where many of Shein’s warehouses are located, is RMB 2,300 ($327), according to China Briefing, a website run by the consulting firm Dezan Shira & Associates (this figure excludes overtime pay and other forms of compensation).
Shein’s use of labor dispatch workers has been covered previously. In 2021, the Chinese news outlet Sixth Tone reported that Shein allegedly “appears to rely extensively” on dispatch agencies in its warehouses, which the article noted “are associated with a host of labor problems.”
But Shein has never mentioned the practice in its annual sustainability and social impact reports, which detail the company’s efforts to ensure its suppliers are adhering to local regulations and its code of conduct. In its latest report released in August, Shein disclosed that it hired third-party firms to audit 15 out of its 21 logistics warehouses in China last year and found they “all … performed well.”
The company didn’t specify whether the audits encompassed the third-party agencies that send workers to those facilities. Unlike competitors like Amazon and H&M, Shein doesn’t make the names of its suppliers public. “As a private company, Shein does not disclose business and financial information,” the spokesperson for Shein said.
Shein, which reportedly is exploring a London public listing this year after its attempts at a New York IPO drew opposition from US lawmakers, is far from the only global brand that relies heavily on dispatch labor in China. Over the past decade, journalists and human rights groups have alleged that a number of household names—including Foxconn, one of Apple’s suppliers, as well as Amazon and Volkswagen—had large numbers of dispatch workers in their factories or contracted with companies that did.
In 2020, The Information reported on internal documents from Apple that indicated the company knew for years that a number of its suppliers in China had been exceeding the 10 percent legal cap on dispatch staffers, but didn’t take any major action over fears that intervening could increase costs and potentially delay product launches. (Apple did not return a request for comment. The company said at the time that it monitors the use of temporary labor in its supply chain and works with suppliers on corrective action plans when they violate its code of conduct.)
While there are no official statistics, Zhang said multiple sources have estimated there are currently about 40 million dispatch workers in China, representing roughly 10 percent of the labor force as of 2022. The practice became more widespread after 2008, when the Chinese government enacted a landmark labor law that introduced sweeping protections for full-time employees, including requiring that workers receive written contracts and severance pay. According to the worker rights group China Labor Bulletin, employers turned to labor dispatch as a way to get around the new regulations, and it has remained popular even after authorities closed loopholes in the law more than a decade ago.
Labor dispatch remains irresistible for many companies because it allows them to quickly tap into China’s large manufacturing workforce when customer demand surges or a product deadline is looming; then, if business needs change, they can shed those same workers just as rapidly. Flexibility is especially crucial for Shein, which touts itself as an “on-demand” fashion company that can rapidly analyze “customer feedback in real time” and adjust its supply chain accordingly.
Shein lists thousands of new products on its website each day, but it initially orders batches of just 100 or 200 of each garment from its suppliers. If a certain item is a hit and sells out, its proprietary software system alerts the factory to start making more. Shein, which reportedly earned $32.2 billion in sales last year, says its business model reduces waste and keeps prices low, but it also requires suppliers and workers to contend with fluctuating revenue levels and constantly shifting demands from the ecommerce giant.
Zhang says that local authorities, however, may hesitate to punish companies for exceeding the limit on dispatch workers because of the impact it could have on the country’s already struggling economy. (Officials from the city of Guangzhou did not return a request for comment. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, told WIRED that while it wasn’t aware of the specifics of Shein’s operations, “the Chinese government places great importance on protecting the legitimate rights and interests of workers.”)
In recent months, China’s central government has specifically encouraged the growth of so-called cross border ecommerce firms like Shein that can potentially help boost the country’s exports. In June, the Ministry of Commerce, together with eight other state agencies, called on local governments to find ways to help cross-border companies build “advantageous industrial clusters” and assist them in “going global.” Two months later, authorities in Guangzhou said they approved Shein’s proposed plan to build a $514 million supply chain hub in the city, which will include logistics and shipping facilities. The announcement, though, didn’t include any information about the kinds of workers who will be hired to operate the new warehouses.
In multiple videos viewed by WIRED, workers say their goal is to earn 10,000 RMB a month, typically on the higher end of the earnings advertised by staffing agencies in job listings. But reaching that figure can “really be a struggle,” as a worker in one video put it. Rui Ma, founder of the technology-investment consulting firm Tech Buzz China, told WIRED she’s seen clips where workers challenge themselves to lasting 100 days at Shein, “and then they don’t make it.”
But what the Shein workers show in their vlogs—which often appear aimed at viewers who might also be considering taking gigs at the company—is far from all doom and gloom. While some may be carefully choosing to omit certain details to avoid drawing the ire of China’s internet censors, their content is full of sarcasm, jokes, and dark humor. In one clip uploaded to Xigua in July 2023, a worker pans over a patch of dirt on his walk to work. “I want to spend a day playing in this mud, don’t know if my boss would agree,” he tells the camera.
In a Bilibili video from October, a different Shein staffer strikes an almost poetic tone, suggesting to viewers that there’s comfort in knowing that life is universally arduous for all workers. After his shift ends at 8 pm, he explains that he will go straight back to the employee dorms to sleep, but first, he is briefly distracted by the night sky. “I just noticed the moon is really round tonight,” he says.
Source : Wired
