Chinese companies could be too paternal when it comes to disciplining employees who fail to deliver. In June, the bank manager of the Rural Commercial Bank in Changzi Province spanked the bottoms of eight employees during a company event because of underperformance.
On Monday, a similar incident happened in Shaanxi Province when a company in Hanzhong made employees who failed to meet sales quotas eat a mixture of meal worms and alcohol. The company held its meeting at a plaza attended by 60 young employees.
According to China News Service, the leader of the sales group who was with a bag containing worms, chopsticks, cups and a few bottles of a strong alcoholic beverage in China called baijiu called each worker who failed to meet their sales quotas and forced them to ingest the mixture of alcohol and insect larvae.
Only five or six employees drank and ate the strange mixture, while one pregnant worker reasoned out the concoction could affect her unborn child. The punished workers were made to eat four worms for every customer they lost, Shanghaiist reported.
It is not the first time that the company punished them for failure to meet their quotas. Previous penalties include making the employees eat live squid and ants. In defending the practice, Cao, the boss of the company, claimed the workers were willing to accept the punishment so they would be encouraged to be more productive.
China’s labor law actually has a provision, Article 88, which states that companies which cause physical harm to its workers are liable for compensation. But despite the law, there are still cases of cruel or unusual punishment being given to workers such as being made to drink bitter gourd or crawl on their hands and knees.
According to legal experts, those forms of punishment – if reported by victims – would make them eligible for financial reimbursement.