In the profession of sanitation workers, some things can be roughly calculated: for example, you walk about 30,000 steps a day, bend down more than 400 times, there may be more than 60 cigarette butts hidden in a tree pit, and the garbage bag in your hand weighs 40 to 50 pounds; some people’s rest time cannot exceed 10 minutes, and it is forbidden to stay or leave work for more than half an hour, and the garbage on the road cannot be retained for more than 15 minutes...
Many more things cannot be calculated. For example, the actual working hours per day may be longer than the number shown on the clock record, and there is no overtime pay for overtime work; for example, the speed at which everyone throws garbage and the time when dogs defecate on the street are uncertain; for example, countless and endless fallen leaves, weeds that repeatedly appear in the cracks of bricks, mosquitoes hiding everywhere during the spread of chikungunya...
In four cities of different sizes, ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm" contacted more than a dozen sanitation workers and walked into their daily lives. They wake up and work in the early morning hours when no one cares about them, and return to rented houses or dormitories of less than 15 square meters at night. Like the mushroom monsters that serve as the basic unit in "Super Mario", they repeat the same trajectory and mechanical work every day, blending into the bustling background to keep the system running.
For systems, calculations are everywhere - the system only focuses on the results, not the process. It is constantly using technology, cost, and efficiency to fold workers at the bottom into even more cramped time and space.
Sanitation workers working in the early morning. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
01 “Shackles”: Electronic and Non-Electronic
Han Shouyi stood at the edge of the motorway, his broom clinging to the sidewalk curb, making a "swirling" sound. He poured the collected dustpan into the tall plastic basket on the three-wheeled work vehicle behind him. This is the early morning of February 3rd in Lanshan District, Linyi, Shandong Province. The temperature just reached 0 degrees. He wore a woolen hat on his head, which didn't look very useful. His nose was so red from the cold that he couldn't even wipe the runny nose.
He is 69 years old, but he is still efficient at work. He arrives at work at 5 a.m. and sweeps a long street from beginning to end. It wasn't until more and more traffic passed behind him that the whistling sounds reminded him to look down at the time. He slowly took out a palm-sized hard plastic sign with a sling from the car basket - "Punched in successfully."
Sanitation workers wear electronic badges. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
At this time, it was exactly 6 o'clock, an hour had passed since he started work.
"No matter what time it comes, even during the busiest leaf-falling season, when we start work at 3 a.m., we still have to wait until 6 o'clock to clock in." Han Shouyi told Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm": "It's the same in the afternoon. We are required to start work at 13:30, but we have to wait until 14:00 to clock in."
According to the punch-in time recorded by the machine, he works 8 hours a day. But in fact, he has to work close to 10 hours, and even longer when he is busy.
Like Han Shouyi, workers scattered in nearby streets stuffed the electronic work badges uniformly distributed to sanitation workers into their work uniforms. It looks light and simple, but it can sense that they have entered the work area. In the eyes of many elderly sanitation workers, it is just a simple clocking tool.
However, Gao Fang felt uncomfortable. She is a sanitation worker for another contracting company in Linyi. She heard that somewhere unknown to her, a large screen can display the location and length of stay of each worker in real time. A co-worker who had seen this big screen once vividly described to her how he became a dot on the map.
"It's not good to leave early. Sometimes I'm too busy and leave late. I can't even eat at home at noon. I'm worried that I won't be able to get to work on time in the afternoon." Gao Fang said.
This is no secret. Electronic work badges use positioning, electronic fence and other technologies to achieve comprehensive monitoring of work trajectories and inactivity time. A city in Zibo, Shandong once promoted: "Electronic work badges can realize visual command and dispatch of operations and dynamic and refined supervision of personnel."
In Ningbo, Zhejiang, Rudong, Jiangsu, Yuncheng, Shanxi, Nan'an, Chongqing and other places, electronic business license plates have been launched one after another. Nanjing Jianye also issued smart bracelets to sanitation workers. Once they stay for more than 20 minutes, the bracelets will automatically say: "Keep working hard!"
Doubts came in, calling these technologies "electronic shackles" and "sacrifice of workers' dignity." Some netizens thought of the donkeys wearing bells, and "the masters would whip them if they couldn't hear the bells ringing."
But the simple sanitation worker cannot think of the aspect of "dignity". They only remember that surveillance has been everywhere since there was no work permit.
Sanitation work vehicle. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
Inspections, patrols, and assessments of various types and frequencies form a dense web. The inspector may be a squad leader, team leader, company leader, or a village or town cadre or even a city leader. Monthly assessments, weekly inspections, and daily inspections several times a day, some places require "non-stop, mobile" inspections. The inspectors don't know when they will appear. Once they find garbage left on the road, they will take pictures and send them to the WeChat group.
If the captain discovers it, they may just need to go back and clean it again. If external supervisors discover it and find the unit to suppress it at all levels, they may be criticized or even fined.
The section of road Gao Fang is responsible for is located at both ends of the traffic lights, and he has to cross the road to be responsible for the opposite section. She had just cleaned one end, and when she turned around, there was garbage again on the other end. In just one morning, she would pick up three or four items and go back and forth.
When she was tired, she turned her back to the three-wheeled work vehicle, supported the vehicle body with her backhand, quietly leaned her stiff back against it to relax, looked around, and was ready to pick up the broom at any time. Except when riding to the next section, your butt should not touch the seat. This is not an express rule, but is based on her own experience: "You can't rest for more than half an hour, but if you sit down and rest, even for less than ten minutes, if the leader sees you, you will be considered lazy."
"There are more than a dozen people working in a team. Sometimes the leader has already moved to the next intersection, and will suddenly turn back again and again." Gao Fang told Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm" that some people were fined for failing to pass inspections. Another nearby sanitation worker told Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm" that the company required the sanitation workers to arrive at work half an hour early because it was during a major inspection period by superiors.
62-year-old Zhou Xiulian is responsible for cleaning green belts in a certain first-tier city. Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm" followed her all the way. She was carrying a big black garbage bag and a clip several feet long in one hand, and picked up cigarette boxes and lunch boxes from the tree pit... Compared with the street, the garbage in the green belt was more complicated. She picked up the mineral water bottles and plastic bags that pedestrians used for emergencies and then discarded, and said with an expressionless face: "It's urine."
Zhou Xiulian walks about 30,000 steps a day, carrying forty to fifty kilograms of garbage, and piles it at an intersection in the green belt, waiting for collection. The leader can check several times a day, she said cheerfully: "But it's okay, usually no money will be deducted."
After walking about 1 kilometer, she was suddenly stopped by management staff. "Have you picked this up, huh?" A mobile phone was thrust into her face. She saw the photo clearly and quickly explained: "I picked it up! It's over there, a big bag..." The two couldn't argue, and it seemed they could only go back to check. Zhou Xiulian was taken away by a van. Before leaving, she forced a smile and winked at Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" and said goodbye hastily.
Digitalization and intelligence are to make the realization of "purpose" more convenient, more accurate, more traceable and verifiable. The controversy surrounding electronic work badges lies in what exactly this “purpose” is and whether the “purpose” is sincere.
Ningbo Yinzhou District once stated that after using electronic work badges, the system background can automatically generate work forms containing information such as attendance time, working hours, stay timeout, separation from work, etc. based on the data collected by the work badges, as a reference for performance appraisal.
Yinzhou District Electronic Business Card Intelligent Positioning Screen
Of course, what more places emphasize to the outside world is the safety rescue purpose of electronic work badges - the elderly have high safety risks when working outdoors, and accurate positioning facilitates improved rescue efficiency.
Gao Fang showed her work badge to Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm". Among the four simple buttons, there is an SOS alarm function. "Press three times in a row, and the captain will come to check."
But at least two sanitation workers said they were never told how to use the feature. As if to prove that it was really useless, Han Shouyi pressed the "SOS" button hard, once, and again after a while. "It's useless, press it casually and no one will care about you." He said, “If anything really happens, I can only rely on my mobile phone.”
02 Fine, finer, “endless”
Most sanitation workers have heard of the term "Chengcheng" (creating a national civilized city), but if they were asked to explain it, there is only one sentence: "I don't know how to do it specifically."
In the city creation evaluation system, environmental sanitation is the core assessment indicator, which directly affects city rankings and honors. Therefore, various localities will improve environmental sanitation standards, extend working hours, and strengthen supervision and assessment during the city creation inspection stage.
Some cities require that the landing time of garbage should not exceed 5 minutes, and some require that it should not exceed 15 minutes or 30 minutes. The requirements for primary and secondary arterial roads are different; in addition, there must be less than one piece of visible garbage per 100 square meters; some places even require that brick joints are dust-free and dust is swept and weighed... Local governments will sign responsibility certificates at all levels in the city. Environmental sanitation outsourcing companies face strict assessment and scoring. If they fail to score, service fees may be deducted, contracts may be terminated, or even be blacklisted.
What drives Han Shouyi and his co-workers to persevere under this harsh system is a simpler survival logic: they don’t want to cause trouble to their leaders, let alone themselves.
Therefore, in the "Cigarette Butts Don't Fall" campaign specially held in Linyi Lanshan District, each cleaning staff had to pick up more than 400 cigarette butts and bend down more than 400 times every day; every year when the grass grows and the orioles fly, sanitation workers in many places pick up weeds from the cracks of bricks with their bare hands; on February 3 this year in the freezing Chuanying District of Jilin City, sanitation workers wore cotton clothes and gloves and wiped the guardrails in the middle of the road...
Pictures come from the Internet
Falling leaves season is a nightmare for almost all sanitation workers. As soon as autumn arrives, the leaves cannot grow anymore and are blown away by a gust of wind. They float under the walls and on the sidewalk, and soon they are piled on top of each other. This is the most tiring season, and the work has become "endless". People have to follow the leaves, collect the fallen leaves piled on the roofs of the cars on the roadside, shovel a big bag, and carts of fallen leaves are pulled away, and the cycle repeats.
Cheng Jun, a sanitation worker working in a certain first-tier city, ships dozens of bags of leaves every day during the leaf-falling season, and his workload is far greater than usual. A gust of wind may render all efforts in vain.
Most sanitation companies are not too harsh on the laws of nature. It's not a big problem to have one or two leaves on the ground. What's important is that they must be swept away at any time without stopping.
But Cheng Jun has been criticized for falling leaves. He was 65 years old. He was embarrassed by the boss who was more than 20 years younger than him, so he had to quickly clean up. He knew not to talk back, "talking back is no longer a matter of scolding, unless you don't want to do it anymore."
On a windy day, Han Shouyi lost control of his emotions. The fallen leaves he had just collected were blown away by the wind. Annoyed, he slapped the ground with the broom as if to vent his anger, and the leaves flew everywhere. This scene happened to be seen by the patrol leader, who fined him 150 yuan once.
This is equivalent to a large portion of his two thousand yuan salary, which can buy a lot of things and eat several meals. He felt distressed and asked himself more than once: "Why do you have to suffer this anger when you haven't reached the point where you can't eat salt?"
He was also fed up with dog poop on the road. The hot feces couldn't be cleaned immediately, so he could only cover it with a piece of paper and wait until it cooled and hardened before handling it. But the leader doesn't care and will criticize or fine him if he sees it. Even though I have done my job well, I still can’t meet the requirements. This always made him feel uncomfortable: "The leader will only criticize me, but never those who walk the dogs."
Sanitation workers cleaning the streets in the early morning. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
The workload also increases on snowy days. Every time it snows, Cheng Jun has to bring a pot of boiling water, first scald the hard ice and snow on the ground, then shovel it clean with a shovel, then pour water and sprinkle with snow melting preparation, finally sweep it with a broom, and then mop it again to ensure that the ground is not slippery. After doing all this, his hands and feet were numb from the cold.
Not long ago, a heavy snowfall in Linyi coincided with a major event. Gao Fang and his co-workers were transferred to the event venue to clear the snow. They were so busy that they couldn't take time to eat for a whole noon. The company distributed hot buns to everyone, and they squatted on the roadside where the lingering snow had not disappeared and swallowed them in a hurry, feeling the cold wind filling their stomachs.
Sometimes I don’t even eat at night. When she got home, Gao Fang was so tired that she had no strength and just wanted to fall asleep. She is getting older and has been riding a tricycle for a long time, straining her knees. Sometimes her legs feel like they have been soaked in cold water, so she can only take some calcium tablets to support them.
But Cheng Jun couldn't "just fall asleep". He lives in a 6-person dormitory, and the company strictly manages employees' daily lives. I got up at 4:30 in the morning and went home slowly after 8pm with backache. According to the dormitory regulations, you have to go to bed on time at 9 p.m. The time is stuck tightly and accurately, as if there is a clockwork on your back.
But many times, when he gets home, it's past 10 o'clock at night after drinking some water and washing up. "How can I lie down and fall asleep immediately?" Regardless of whether he can fall asleep or not, the clockwork must still be tightened on time the next morning.
03 The corner of the city
Cheng Jun's dormitory is not far from the road section he is responsible for, and can be reached on foot. This is a house of about 60 square meters. There are 6 single beds in the room, and the space between the beds is only large enough for you to walk sideways. To them, it’s just a little nest that meets their basic sleeping needs.
There is no kitchen stove in the room. For two meals a day, he and his co-workers pick up meals from home-cooked restaurants arranged by the company. The company orders and pays uniformly. "A meal is 12 yuan. You can eat whatever you want. There is no choice." In a basin, the rice is topped with tomatoes, scrambled eggs, cucumbers, eggs, or shredded potatoes, and it is considered a serious lunch. Occasionally add an extra dish with some pork rinds in it to improve the meal.
In any case, the free food and accommodation allowed Cheng Jun to save a lot of money in the city.
He is from Xingtai, Hebei Province and has just been here for more than two months. A big city is indeed different. There are many shops, snack streets, taverns, specialty restaurants, movie theaters, and business districts. Guys and Dolls dazzled him, and they also brought doublings of garbage.
Cigarette butts on the roadside in first-tier cities. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
What impressed him most was the crowds partying late into the night on New Year's Eve. In the early morning of the first day of the New Year, the city returned to silence. Under the dim street lights, Cheng Jun came to the streets to prepare for work. In front of him, the ground was in mess. "Some people vomited on the ground after drinking, and some even had diarrhea."
Zhou Xiulian should envy him. How could the small outsourcing company she worked for have the money to rent a house in the city? The boss rented a 6-person dormitory in a suburb more than 20 kilometers away. Every morning before dawn, I would take the workers and drive more than 40 minutes to the working section.
Lunch was also packed in a thermos bucket in the car. There was only one hour of lunch break at noon, so in winter she would take a break in the car. In summer, Chow usually sat on the roadside or on a park bench to have her lunch. After eating, she would lie on the ground under the shade of a tree for a while.
Once, she was sitting in the shadow of a restaurant entrance, wanting to cool off for a while, but she was driven away not long after. "People think I'm in the way." She felt uncomfortable, but quickly persuaded herself, "There's nothing we can do about it. We just work in the countryside, so it's normal for people to look down on us."
Unlike these outsourced workers, in Guangzhou, 38-year-old contract worker Gao Hongbin is trying to truly integrate into this metropolis. He started the job a year ago and was initially overwhelmed by the smell of garbage. However, Guangzhou's policies have given this profession a special appeal: children of sanitation workers can apply for admission to public schools according to "policy-based student care", which gave Gao Hongbin hope to change the destiny of the next generation.
The area he is responsible for is a section of about one kilometer in the community, with residential buildings on both sides and many shops. In addition to sweeping the floor, he also has to change trash cans to ensure that garbage does not accumulate, disinfect mosquitoes and clean up stagnant water from time to time. It is common for residents to complain if there is garbage that is not swept away in time.
From time to time, he also has to deal with dirty work that residents are unwilling to do, such as piles of debris and dead rats in front of their doors. He will always come to him. Once, when he was squatting in the fence to clean up garbage, someone threw garbage in through the fence for convenience, hitting him on the head.
Garbage on the roadside in first-tier cities. Photo by "Eye of the Storm" ifeng.com
No matter how you are not used to it, you still have to stand firm. In Guangzhou, sanitation workers can apply for public rental housing at favorable prices, but the area of the public rental housing is only suitable for one or two people and is too small for a large family. Gao Hongbin took his family and rented a house not far from the community where he works. The rent is not expensive, only more than 1,000 yuan per month, and the house appliances are complete.
But with a monthly salary of around 4,000, it is still not easy to support a family in Guangzhou. When the child is just over one year old, the mother has to take care of it day and night. Gao Hongbin can only run out of food every morning, noon and evening between work to support his family. He has to run for a total of three or four hours a day. Normally, he would also pick up some scraps and sell them, which was another source of extra income.
In first-tier cities, due to relatively abundant local finances, sanitation workers' wages are relatively higher. Gao Hongbin also has five insurances and one fund. His salary also includes garbage sorting subsidies, delayed overtime pay, etc.
But wages in other counties and cities will be much lower, around 2,000 yuan in third- and fourth-tier cities, and only around 900 yuan in smaller villages and towns. Sanitation workers only have accident insurance, and the company does not pay social security. Some people have compared that the hourly wages of sanitation workers in some places are only 3 yuan, which is not even as good as shared power banks.
A sanitation worker from a small county in Langfang told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that after working as a sanitation worker for about six years, his salary was only 2,100 yuan, or 70 yuan a day, or less than 10 yuan an hour. Last year, the company withheld wages for five months, and then repaid them more than 10,000 yuan.
In Linyi Lanshan District, the salary of sanitation workers is between 1,900 yuan and 2,500 yuan. A sanitation worker told Ifeng.com's "Eye of the Storm" that for a while, wages were delayed for several months. "At that time, everyone had to eat and pay rent, and life was particularly difficult." Later, someone called 12345 to report the situation, and since then, wages have been paid on time.
Among sanitation workers in first-tier cities, the treatment of outsourced and regular employees is also very different.
Cheng Jun gets a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, which works out to 100 yuan a day. Those colleagues who are well-established have a much easier job than him, but can get a monthly salary of five to six thousand. He found it boring, "We belong to the lowest level, we work a lot and make little money."
During this Spring Festival, the company requires sanitation workers to be on duty without overtime pay. "Don't say triple the salary, just double it. Even if it's an extra 100 yuan, I'll feel better." Cheng Jun felt it was unfair. His children had all gone home during the Chinese New Year, and he wanted to see his children.
You have to ask for leave when you go home, and if you ask for leave, your salary for that day will be deducted. He didn't care, "It's not like making a lot of money... Even if it's three or five days, go home and have a piece of meat, okay?"
Some cities are gradually learning to improve the salary of sanitation workers. Guangzhou has prepared fixed rest areas and a dedicated sanitation promotion room for sanitation workers. Gao Hongbin said that there is hot water inside, some books, and a photo wall. But in most places, apart from the 100 yuan monthly high-temperature subsidy in summer and the occasional rice, flour, grain and oil, there are not many measures to make them feel dignified.
04 The way out for the second half of life
No matter how hard the work is and the income is meager, at least this industry is stable enough, tolerant enough, and the threshold is low enough. It houses those who are still struggling in the second half of their lives.
Six years ago, Gao Fang's wife passed away, and the sky fell for Gao Fang, who was in her early 60s. Life had to go on, and within a few days she went to Linyi to work as a sanitation worker. She doesn't want to put a burden on her children, "earn some money to subsidize them, and help them a little bit."
It was an extremely cold winter, and she would shed tears involuntarily while sweeping the streets. I miss my wife and feel sad about my fate. She was riding a tricycle without a windshield, and the cold wind blew against her tear-stained face, like a razor blade, and her cheeks were cracked again and again.
In the past, the old man worked as a security guard and was the backbone of the family. Now, illiterate and with few skills, she has no choice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it, you can only do it forcefully.
She started earning work points by hard work at the age of 16, doing "tug of war", pouring ammonia, and carrying corn. At the age of 17, she went to the mountain to pull rocks. She worked in groups of three around a simple forklift, pulling a rope on each side with all her strength. "Sometimes the rope can be broken."
At that time, the conditions at home were not good. My father had tuberculosis and could not do heavy work; my mother had pain all over her body because she had worked hard for several children all year round. She must shoulder the burden of life early, "otherwise the whole family will not be able to live."
But as I get older, no matter how hard I am, there are not so many jobs to choose from. She once worked in a food factory in her hometown, responsible for packaging onions and garlic seedlings. She would get up early and work until late every day. In those few years, the factory was prosperous and she could earn some pocket money. However, not long after, small local factories closed down one after another. Back home, there was no way out. "The old man has no money to spend, and he has no place to talk about any grievances he has suffered. Life is difficult," she said.
Pictures come from the Internet
Whenever there were other ways out, they mostly tried them.
Before working as a sanitation worker, Gao Hongbin ran food delivery full-time in Guangzhou. In fact, the income from food delivery is relatively higher, but there is no guarantee and "it will not last long." Although working as a sanitation worker is a bit dirty and tiring, he has five insurances and one housing fund, which is a vital sense of security for him.
He has also considered other options that would pay for social insurance and provide points for his children's schooling, such as working as a firefighter or a funeral home. However, the threshold for these industries is too high, requiring either professional skills or certificates, or a college degree or above. A sanitation worker is his "reachable" choice.
Han Shouyi worked as a rural teacher when he was young. He taught for 23 years but was fired for violating the family planning policy. He clearly remembers that because of this reason, the local government later issued teaching age subsidies to those with teaching experience, but he did not receive any points.
After losing his job, he worked as a construction worker, kept bees, and did odd jobs. As he got older and could no longer do the heavy work, he went to Linyi to join his son. He rented a house near his son's home, with a monthly rent of more than 100 yuan, less than 15 square meters. He and his wife couldn't live in one room, so they rented two rooms next to each other.
Most of them don’t want to ask their children for money. "If someone has it, they can give it to me. If they don't have it, it's hard to ask for it again." The younger generation is trapped in mortgage and car loans, and some even need subsidies from the elderly. This anxiety is transmitted to the old man, which is the simplest understanding: "You can't stop working. If you stop, the house will be taken away by the bank."
Although people are old, they can still move. If you can move, you have to work and save some money for the day when you can't move.
Every time Han Shouyi was criticized by his boss, he would tell his wife, "I don't want to do it anymore." But after getting bored, he always chooses to grit his teeth and endure it, "After all, at my age, I can't find any other job."
Even Cheng Jun, who has retired from his post as a rural teacher, still has to find a living for himself. It is simply not enough to rely on farming one-third of an acre of land to support his retirement. In his hometown in Xingtai, the old man could only look after the gate of the community, working 12 hours a day in two shifts, with a monthly salary of just over 1,000. People who want to make more money go to the city.
In his staff dormitory, the other sanitation workers are all in their 60s, singles, and divorcees. They only have a monthly pension of about 200 yuan. Their jobs can at least give them a place to stay. Among the workers, there is also an old lady from Henan. Her husband is paralyzed and has no ability to work. In order to treat the old man's illness, she has not been home for two years.
This profession accommodates them, but also supervises and disciplines them. After they reach the age of 70, when they have burned out all their energy, the system will no longer count them.