Three arrested in China after staff forced to drink urine and eat cockroaches

Managers of a construction firm in China have been jailed for forcing its staff to undergo various nauseating punishments including drinking urine and eating cockroaches after they failed to meet sales targets.

Footage of the punishments reportedly filmed in Zunyi City, in the southwestern Guizhou Province, “shows workers standing in the middle of the room as they are being whipped, and then being forced to drink up urine from a cup”, reports The Daily Telegraph.

In the footage the staff, said to be employees of the home renovation company, can be seen drinking yellow liquid from plastic cups while holding their noses.

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Screenshots have also been published in Chinese media of what were said to be messages from the managers.

“If the sales goal has not been met by the end of this month, the team leader will have to eat three cockroaches for each failed sale,” one text message read.

Other punishments for not making targets “involved drinking vinegar or toilet water, selling condoms and sanitary pads on the street and having their head shaved, according to other text messages in the post”, says the South China Morning Post.

The company “had reportedly failed to pay their employees' salary for the past two months and staff was scared to speak up fearing they would lose the pay if they'd quit”, says the BBC.

Two of the company managers have been jailed for 10 days, while a third manager will spend five days in jail, Zunyi police said in a statement on social network Weibo.

It's the “latest in a string of cases of Chinese firms employing unusual measures to punish, shame or encourage their staff”, says the BBC

As economic growth slows in China, “labour unrest has been growing and reports of ill-treatment of workers have become more common”, says the South China Morning Post.

These reports of unrest have been exacerbated by the fact the government “bans independent labour organising, trade unions and workers from going on strike”, the paper adds.