Come Labour Day (May 1) and it is an appropriate time to reflect on the constitutionally and legally mandated rights of the working class. Of these rights, reasonable working hours (8 hours a day or 48 hours a week) are important.
In India, these worker's rights were also included in the Factories Act 1948. Section 59 of the Factories Act entitled the workers to wages at the rate of twice their ordinary rate of wages, in respect of overtime work (if more than 8 hours a day).
This clause had been openly violated across the country under the government’s watch. In the last few months, CEOs of a few companies have openly called for increasing weekly hours, but there has been no mention of paying double wages.
More intriguing was the justification of this discourse of over-exploitation by some media channels and the silence of the Union Labour Minister as well as the state governments, who utter no word against these calls for open violations.
The chairman of L&T S.N. Subrahmanyan recently reignited the debate. During an interaction with employees, the chairman of the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, Subrahmanyan, was asked why L&T was still making its employees work on Saturdays.
"I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays. If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be happier, because I work on Sundays," he said.
He further questioned what his employees did at home when they're not working. "What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? Come on, get to the office and start working."
‘Over-work is Good’ Argument is Flawed
Quite obviously, his comments generated heated debate among the Indian work force. Over 9% of this workforce is suffering, while over 40% are sad, according to the Gallup Workplace Report of 2024.
Another report by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and digital healthcare platform MediBuddy pointed out that 62% of employees experience work-related stress and burnout.
Earlier, another corporate pundit, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, had advocated for a 70-hour work week, which was followed by Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Ola, terming Saturdays and Sundays as Western concepts, while former CEO of Niti Aayog, Amitabh Kant and some other also shared such opinion.
Their bold assertions of open exploitation are presented under the garb of "nationalism" as all of them boast of making India a developed nation, for which the Indian middle-class and working-class should overwork or, say, be over-exploited.
However, their understanding of a "developed India" differs from that of the Indian working population, including the blue-collar job holders. It is also profoundly flawed on various accounts.
The United Nations Report of 2021 claimed that long working hours could have severe consequences on employees' physical and mental health. The same report claimed that work-related injuries and illnesses kill nearly two million people annually.
Looking At Data
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) 2023 report titled "Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World" argues that Luxembourg, Ireland and Norway are the first three with the highest labour productivity by GDP Per hour.
Luxembourg has the highest labour productivity with $146 GDP per hour, followed by Ireland $143 and Norway ($93). The average weekly working hours of these countries are Norway (33.7 hours), Luxemberg and Ireland (35.6).
These countries also fall among the top in various development indices, including the World Happiness Index, per capita income, etc.
Now take the example of countries where working hours are among the highest in the world.
Bhutan tops the list with 54.4 average work hours, followed by UAE with 50.9 hours average work per week, followed by Lesotho (50.4 hours), Congo (48.6 hours), Qatar (48 hours), India (46.7 hours), Liberia (47.7 hours) and Bangladesh (46.9 hours).
Notably, having more working hours neither brings development nor increases the per-capita income. India's per-hour labour productivity is $8, placing it at the level 133 among the lowest productivity level countries.
Most countries with the highest working hours are poor; their GDP is very low, their per capita income is relatively low, and poverty is very high. For instance, Lesotho, which stood at the third slot, had a per capita income of $2596 in the year 2023 and stood at the 167th slot, while Congo had a per capita income of $1135 and stood at the 182nd slot. Similarly, India is on the list of countries with the highest working hours at $9160 and stands at 124th position in the list of a total of 183 counties.
They also lag behind in the happiness index as Lesotho stood at 141st rank, Congo stood at 99, and India at 136 slots in the list of 145 countries as per World Happiness Index 2022. Among the top listed countries with the lowest working hours per week was Luxembourg at the 6th slot, Norway at the 8th, and Ireland at the 13th slot, as per the same report.
It is clear from these figures that increased working hours have nothing to do with the development of a nation and its public. A question then arises: Are these corporate pundits oblivious to these facts? Surely not, and their intentions are obvious.
Pay Disparities
Corporate leaders like Subrahmanyan and Murthy intend to increase their profit and wealth on the pretext of making India a developed country. As per media reports, Subrahmanyan earns Rs 51 crore in annual salary, which means Rs 14 lakh daily.
His responsibility is to increase the profit of his company and his benefits. He knows that unemployment in India is very high (9.2%), and that over 38% of IIT graduates across 23 campuses in India were not placed in 2024, while the minimum salary package reached a mere Rs 4 Lakh.
Moreover, the profits of corporate houses have been ever-increasing. Following the reduction of corporate tax in 2016, data reveals that the profit of private sector/corporate houses in India went up to a 15-year high in 2023. However, the employees' salaries of these private-sector companies remained stagnant from 2019 to 2023.
While the private sector's profit has increased by around 400%, their employees' salaries increased a meagre 0.8-5%. In fact, if one were to include inflation and increasing expenditure, then a person earning Rs 38,000 in 2008 and a person earning Rs 1 lakh in 2024 have the same purchasing power. This is quite unsettling to imagine.
Another grim reality is that India's richest 1 percent own more than 40 percent of total wealth.
The CEO of Bombay Shave Company, Sudhanshu Deshpande claimed that 2000 corporate families in India, owned over 18% of India's total wealth, but they paid less than 1.8% of the tax. The Union government's budget 2024 revealed that the contribution of tax paid by the middle class and common masses has surpassed the corporates' contribution in tax.
Overall, the scenario sums up like this: the tax on the common masses, including the middle class, has increased, their salaries are stagnant, and now steps are being taken to increase working hours. On the other hand, corporations pay less tax, their income and profit are growing, and now they are proposing to increase working hours to increase their profit.
They are free to do so, as the labour laws in India have been rampantly violated, and perpetrators remain unpunished. The employees or workers can be thrown out of the job at any time, as evidenced by the protest of the Maruti Suzuki workers of Gurugram, who demanded permanent jobs and pay parity.
Workforce Exhaustion
Another reality of the Indian working population is that they already work over 13-15 hours daily, which accounts for 90 hours a week.
For example, if anyone who is going to a government/private office or for manual labour has to reach his/her work site by 8.00 or 9.00 AM, then the family has to wake up at around 5.00 or 6.00 AM to freshen up, prepare breakfast for family including children, pack lunch and then travel for anywhere between one to three hours. But these three to four hours before office timings are never included in the working hours, while in the evening, the same three to four hours are spent reaching home, preparing food, and being ready for the next day's work.
The private sector workers only visit their homes to prepare for the next day. Does anyone count this time as working hours?
The situation and struggle for working women is even more grave. So, in promoting a 90-hour work schedule, does Subrahmanyan want people to remain in the office for 13 to 15 hours? Then, imagine when they will have to wake up to manage daily chores.
What about health, education, family responsibilities, caring for old parents and relatives, celebrating festivities, etc? The majority (99 per cent) of the working masses would never be able to become corporate CEOs like Subramanium and would remain in the category of workers or the middle class.
Their community bonds—not wealth—are their true source of strength and joy. While elites like Subrahmanyan believe everything has a price, the working class knows what money cannot buy.
There are also gaping holes in Subrahmanyan’s development theory. L&T constructed the Ram Temple, but its roof started leaking after the very first rainfall. Similarly, the Pragati Maidan tunnel, also constructed by L&T, is frequently flooded during rains. This could be why L&T donated around Rs 85 crore through electoral bonds to political parties, as revealed in media reports.
The developing and developed countries have been implementing a four-day work week and are trying their level best to maintain a work-life balance among their employees as studies have found stress and depression levels peaking in workers. People working in the corporate sector are fed up with the toxicity, and many have committed suicide as the bosses continue to talk about increasing the toxicity rather than reducing it.
It appears from their statements that they still treat the Indian masses as slaves, and the happiness of their families is not worthy of their consideration. It is symptomatic of the colonisers' mentality for their colonised and it appears to be an effort to justify modern-day slavery under the garb of making India a developed nation, which is not at all the development of its public but only of a few corporate houses and their bosses.
Data also reveals that the rich-poor income inequality in India is worse than during British rule.
‘In Praise of Idleness’
In the book ‘In Praise of Idleness’, Bertrand Russel has established the significance of fewer working hours – four hours per day – and has advocated for an increase in free time and leisure.
"Leisure time cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences. It wrote books, invented philosophies and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, humankind would never have emerged from barbarism," he aptly wrote – a lesson our corporate leaders should perhaps follow.
The Labour Ministers of all the states, Union Territories and Unions should also reflect on their constitutionally mandated duties and responsibilities to devise policies for workers while opposing and rejecting the open calls of violation of Labour laws.
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