THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK-
-Dinkar Kapoor
State General Secretary, All India Peoples Front, Uttar Pradesh
Two days ago, while talking to his employees, S. N. Subramaniam, Chairman of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) construction company, said that workers should work 90 hours a week. For extra results, one has to work extra and work should be done even on Sundays. He said that for how long will the workers keep staring at their wives’ faces while staying at home. Before this, Infosys Chairman Narayan Murthy had also advised workers to work 70 hours a week. Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani said that if there is no work, the wife will run away from home and then what will happen? After this statement of the Chairman of L&T, a debate is going on all over the country on the working hours of workers. All this is being opposed within the corporate world itself. RPG Group Chairman Harsh Goenka criticized the statement of the L&T Chairman by posting on the social media platform X. He said, 90 hours of work in a week? Why not call Sunday ‘sun-duty’ and make ‘holiday’ a mythical concept! I want to work hard and smartly, but not turning life into a continuous office shift. This is not a recipe for success, but burnout. Work life balance is not optional, it is necessary.
According to the 2024 report of the International Labour Organization, Indians work the most among the 10 largest economies of the world. According to this report, workers are made to work 46.7 hours per week in India, 46.01 hours in China, 39 hours in Brazil, 38 hours in the United States of America, 36.6 hours in Japan, 36.3 hours in Italy, 35.5 hours in the United Kingdom, 35.9 hours in France, 34.2 hours in Germany and 32.5 hours in Canada. Despite this, the entire debate on increasing working hours in India is being conducted so that the social acceptance of the working hours which have been made 12 in the Labour Code to be brought by the Modi government in March 2025 can be achieved.
During the Corona epidemic, the governments of many states issued notifications to increase the working hours to 12. Recently, the Uttar Pradesh government has also amended the Factory Act and increased the working hours to 12. The Congress government of Karnataka has decided to increase the working hours of employees working in the IT sector to 14. A strong argument is given by the government to increase the working hours that it is very important to develop a work culture to bring domestic and foreign capital to India and workers will have to make some sacrifices for the development of the country. The truth is that despite abolishing the labour law and increasing the working hours to 12, the exodus of capital from India continues. According to the data collected by Henley & Partners, 48500 crorepati capitalists left India between 2013 and 2022.
Today, in the era of Artificial Intelligence, action is being taken to reduce working hours in opposition to the arguments of increasing working hours all over the world. The four-day work system has started in many countries of the world. AI innovators like Zoom owner Eric Yuan believe that AI will be the key to achieving a four-day work week for every company. According to him, there is a 92 percent success rate in four-day working. In countries like Japan, working hours are being continuously reduced. According to a report by the South China Morning Post, while Japan had 1839 hours of work annually in 2000, it has been reduced to 1629 hours annually in 2022. This has led to a decline of approximately 11.6 percent in annual working hours.
Along with Japan, countries like Belgium, Iceland, United Arab Emirates, Spain and Netherland have implemented four-day working weeks. From April 2025, Japan will move towards reducing working hours and improving work style reform. According to the findings of Takashi Sakamoto, an analyst at Japan’s Recruit Works Institute, working hours are now being reduced in the country like many European countries. After 2000, the salary of young employees has increased by 25 percent while working hours have decreased. According to a report by Autonomy, after the advent of Artificial Intelligence, about 88 percent of companies in the United Kingdom are reducing the working hours of employees by 10 percent. Overall, while work is being done in the world towards reducing working hours, in India, where working hours are already high, it is being advocated to increase it even more.
In fact, taking advantage of the helplessness of workers in the country’s severe unemployment and inflation, a law is being made to increase the working hours to 12. The sad thing is that all this is having a very bad effect on productivity. In September 2024, a 26-year-old woman named Ana Sebastian Paramil, working as a chartered accountant in EY Company in Pune, Maharashtra, lost her life due to excessive work pressure. Her mother Anita Augustine’s email to the company in which she talked about the pressure on Ana due to increased working hours, became a topic of national discussion. While talking to the labourers who had gone out in Sonbhadra, we found that due to the process of increasing the working hours to 12 hours in various states, the labourers have to work for 17-18 hours along with the time required for daily routine. This is having a very adverse effect on their body and health and their production capacity is getting badly affected.
Whatever is being done by increasing the working hours is clearly a violation of Articles 21, 42 and 43 of the Indian Constitution. The dignity of the individual has been mentioned in the preamble of our Constitution itself which has been interpreted in the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. Article 42 makes the state responsible for just and humane working conditions. At the same time, Article 43 makes the state responsible for providing the labourers with work, living wages, decent living standards and working conditions that ensure complete enjoyment of leisure, social and cultural opportunities.
In the era of Artificial Intelligence, when the world is feeling the threat of unemployment on a large-scale unemployment will increase even more in the country due to increase in working hours. There is a need to change the direction of economic policy, reduce working hours and provide employment to more and more people and by making employment a constitutional right, it should be made the responsibility of the state to ensure employment/jobs for the youth. This question is being raised strongly in the Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan Samvaad being run by the student youth organizations of the country.
