A gavel in a court. [Photo/IC]

A VIDEO has been widely spread online, which shows employees at a photography studio in Guang'an, a city in Southwest China's Sichuan province, being made to drink cups of water from a squat toilet by their supervisor because they did not meet their targets. The local police have already found their tormentor and he has been detained for four days. Beijing News comments:

The incident sounds rather unsavory, but it happened. It seems the supervisor was proud of his deed because he uploaded the video on the domestic social networking platform, WeChat.

Reports say the supervisor required each of the members of staff at the photo studio to get as many as 20 customers within one hour, which was clearly mission impossible, and when they failed, he forced them to drink cups of water taken from a squat toilet as it was flushed.

He did not consider the dignity of the people he was tormenting, and indeed he treated the whole incident as something funny.

Worse, after the video was widely spread online, it inflicted another psychological blow on the punished employees because they felt humiliated. Actually, it was a female employee who was punished that called the police after she saw the video online.

The incident is not an isolated one. Previously, there have been many reports about employees being humiliated by bosses because they fail to accomplish ridiculous tasks: Some are forced to kneel and apologize, some are made to crawl on the streets, some are forced to berate themselves in public. They do such things because they want to keep their jobs.

According to the Labor Law, those humiliating or bullying employees face detention for 15 days and a heavy fine. The Criminal Law also says that those humiliating others face fixed terms of imprisonment if their deeds are so serious as to be considered a crime. In order to prevent these things from happening again, it is necessary to more strictly enforce the laws, and hold employers who humiliate their employees answerable for their illegal deeds.