Working Hours and Well-being of Workers

Bhaskar Majumder

Some influential individuals continue to use state rhetoric without reflecting on its implications. Many of these influencers have recently emerged from the corporate sector, where there has been a push for workers to labour 70 to 90 hours per week.

People work for their well-being, and there is most likely nothing unethical about this. Personal well-being is not a concept that harms society. When individuals willingly participate in an interdependent society, it contributes to social well-being. This raises the question: where do the sermons from a few wealthy individuals fit into this context?

Most people in India actively participate in society; however, society is not homogeneous. Individuals engage in the economy both willingly and unwillingly. Some participate reluctantly due to adverse conditions in the labour market. As social beings, people undertake economic activities for their livelihood and become citizens or members of the state within a specific political and legal framework.

Recently, corporate tycoons have made statements that are out of touch with the realities of many workers in India. Their comments do not resonate with the daily struggles of self-employed family workers labouring on their subsistence-based farmland, urban rickshaw pullers working on an eight-hour basis, and women domestic workers serving multiple households from early morning until 2 pm. Each of these groups, along with many others, constitutes 90 percent of the workforce in India’s labour sector. Most of this work is survival-based, often necessitating that adolescents also join the labour market to help supplement the household income. It is unclear who the corporate leaders were targeting with their advice for people to work 70 to 90 hours a week, especially if reports from electronic media are to be taken seriously.

The history of May Day, which has fixed working hours for industrial workers, doesn’t require restatement in the context of India’s labour market. The very recent expansion of the fractured, fragmented labour market proves the irrelevance of working hours when workers are engaged ad hoc and move on the road anytime required to provide services. These workers are mostly in their youth running on tattered two-wheelers on dilapidated roads in urban India to supply to the doorstep households anything and everything and anytime. It is not understood who the working-time fixers aimed at.

It is difficult to understand why one needs to work 70 to 90 hours per week because technological advancement over the past few decades is expected to have lessened labour hours to produce the same output. It is also difficult to accept that national wealth is composed of only material wealth – national wealth is no less to be understood in the physical and mental health of the workers, education of children to be competent workers and all that. There is every reason to believe that 90 percent of the workers in India who constitute the unorganised segment of the economy do not have access to dependable healthcare facilities.

Time does not dictate the working hours of workers in the unorganised sector who do not have wrist watches; rather, the amount of work they complete determines their daily working hours. They work and live on a daily basis, making weekly calculations irrelevant to their circumstances.

To assess working hours accurately, it is necessary to recognise the potential workforce. Many individuals in the queue for jobs in the organised sector may not get the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to work extended hours–often up to 90 hours a week–because their predecessors produced more goods than could be sold in the market, dictated by their corporate employers. It is important to note that neither job-seeking nor job-exit workers should be blamed for the low demand for products produced by these corporate entities, as the choices made by the latter play a significant role.

The corporate masters of course are not accountable to the common people. The core state as the ‘willing guardian’ of the people is accountable–the people voted the legislative to power. The type of guardianship needs to be tested on the ground. The core state facilitates the formation and functioning of an economic system where common people are thought to be included in a favourable environment like regular employment or ‘Roji-Roti’. There is no denying that there is no right to regular employment for the working population in India.
If people’s expectations are not met, the result can be unemployment, poverty, and increased inequality. This may lead to begging, stealing, and borrowing. At such a low level of well-being, the core state fails to provide adequate education and health care. Corporate leaders need to recognise that education-wealth, and health-wealth are just as important as material-wealth. The recent proposal of a 90-hour work week by L&T boss seems to have been a misguided remark that shouldn’t be taken seriously.

It is undeniable that the present is shaped by the past, including the evolution of labour division and the working hours of wage workers. However, one must also understand that mistakes made in the past, such as slavery, cannot be used to justify current errors. A core state’s responsibility is to learn from historical mistakes and move forward, as demonstrated by the 1976 Act that abolished labour bondage. Past mistakes must not be set a precedent for today’s actions. The responsibility lies with the core state, not with corporate leaders.

[Bhaskar Majumder, Professor (Retd.), G.B.Pant Social Science Institute; Allahabad–211019, Mob: 9307947581, bmajumder56@gmail.com]