A 90-hour blast from the past
Summary
A section of India Inc. is on a warpath to advocate for long work hours. I argue that such advocacy serves the interests of the elite minority and seeks to reverse hard-fought gains from a labour struggle of over 100 years.
(This is part one in a two-part series about the 90-hour workweek)
This week in India, hustle culture and overwork have grabbed headlines again. SN Subhramanyan, Larsen and Toubro’s chairman, was in the news for a bizarre response during an internal interaction. When an employee asked him about mandatory Saturday work, Subhramanyan said,
SN Subhramanyan
“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. What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wife stare at her husband? Get to the office and start working.”
He then doubled down on his idea of work by lauding the Chinese for overwork, saying,
“Chinese people work 90 hours a week, while Americans work only 50 hours. If you want to be on top of the world, you have to work 90 hours a week.”
When the quotes of a senior corporate leader cause controversy, the company’s PR must firefight. And so they did! L&T defended their chairman, quoting their dedication to “nation-building”. Well, patriotism settles the argument, doesn’t it? “Extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort”, said L&T.
Subhramanayan isn’t the first leader to advocate for overwork. Recently, my ex-employer, NR Narayana Murthy, made an impassioned appeal for the “nation’s progress.”
NR Narayana Murthy
‘Our youngsters must say, “This is my country; I'd like to work 70 hours a week.”’
Not to be outdone, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal tweeted,
The argument remains a familiar one. According to Bhavish,
Of course, the biggest enemy of nation-building and the nation’s progress is work-life balance. In an interview, founder-CEO of Shaadi.com, Anupam Mittal, said this is about work-life balance.
“I think it is a big lie that's being told to this generation, and I think it stinks because you are not ever going to... okay, this is for people who want to achieve something extraordinary in life... you are not going to achieve anything extraordinary in life by counting the hours that you are putting in.”
Mittal talked about working – hold your breath – “16 hours a day” because
“We believe so much in what we are trying to build, and we never looked at our clocks and watches, although we were on salaries”
Amidst all this, we’ve forgotten the OG of modern overwork - Jack Ma. Commenting on the 996 system, which expects workers to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, Jack said,
Jack Ma
“I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing ... How do you achieve the success you want without paying extra effort and time?”
By the way, none of the India Inc. commentary has gone unnoticed. Between Faye D’Souza, HW News and the country’s foremost journalist, Ravish Kumar, the media has been sharply critical of these statements. But I’d like to take a breath and assess what these gentlemen (why are they all men?) are saying.
Each corporate boss I’ve quoted is wealthy, influential, and maybe even wise, so perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss their statements without consideration. What are they advocating for? Let’s break it down.
Long work hours lead to nation-building.
If people work long hours, they’ll achieve something extraordinary.
Companies should be able to make their people work for more than 40 hours.
If people aren’t working for their employers, they waste time in leisure activities.
Employees should work for 70 hours, 90 hours or even 120 hours for their employers.
The sound of those arguments has a retro vibe. To understand their beat, we must first examine the score of history.
The history of the 40-hour workweek
Workers didn’t always work 40 hours a week. During the Industrial Revolution, it was common for workers to endure 80 to 100-hour weekly schedules. It took a protracted battle between labour unions and entrenched corporate interests to arrive at a 40-hour work week. Here’s a brief timeline.
1817: Robert Owen, a Welsh social reformer, coined the phrase "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest," advocating for better working conditions.
1866: The National Labor Union in the U.S. called for an eight-hour workday, although their efforts initially failed.
1886: The bloody Haymarket affair in Chicago saw the signs, “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will”.
1926: Henry Ford introduced a five-day, 40-hour work week at Ford Motor Company after discovering that shorter work hours improved productivity and worker satisfaction.
1938: The U.S. Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, limiting the workweek to 44 hours and mandating overtime pay.
1940: The U.S. Congress amended the act to reduce the standard workweek to 40 hours.
A brief history of the 40-hour workweek in the US
The rest of the world soon followed - Australia in 1948, Canada in the 1960s, and much of Europe shortly after.
As a colony of the empire, Indian workers initially worked up to 16 hours daily, with no weekly holidays. But we’ve made gradual progress over several decades.
1911: The first milestone towards the 40-hour work week in India came with the Factories Act, which limited workdays to 12 hours and introduced a six-day workweek (72 hours per week).
1948: Independent India revised the Factories Act to stipulate an eight-hour work day and a six-hour work week (48 hours each week). The Minimum Wages Act stipulated guidelines for 2X overtime pay for any work beyond the 48 hours.
1980s - 1990s: The concept of a five-day workweek gained traction in select industries, particularly multinational corporations (MNCs). However, most private-sector companies and manufacturing industries continued with a six-day workweek.
1985: The Government of India formally introduced a five-day workweek for central administrative offices starting June 3, 1985.
1986: Following recommendations from the Fourth Pay Commission, central government offices standardised the 40-hour workweek nationwide by increasing daily hours from 7.4 to 8 hours.
2000s: As India's IT and service sectors rose, pioneering firms like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro adopted global workplace practices, including the 40-hour workweek (five days of eight-hour shifts). After all, they had to align with international clients and attract skilled talent.
Mid-to-late 2000s: During the rise of the agile software movement, the original XP practice Kent Beck outlined explicitly recommended a 40-hour work week to avoid burnout and maintain quality work. Beck said that if overtime is necessary in one week, the following week shouldn’t include additional overtime.
Even China, home of the 996 system and its many practitioners, hasn’t been impervious to this trend. In 1995, China adopted the 40-hour work week to implement the 1994 Labour Law. Here’s what I understand about the letter of the Chinese law.
Standard work hours: Under the standard system, employees work up to 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week.
Overtime limits: One can’t work overtime for over three hours per day or 36 hours per month. Overtime pay is mandatory.
Rest days: Employees are entitled to at least one rest day per week, typically two days for most industries.
Yes, China recognises that some industries with flexible working hours may have irregular schedules, but they must still comply with overall limits. In fact, the 996 system didn’t pass the muster of China’s Supreme Court, which deemed it illegal in a 2021 ruling.
Key takeaways
The call for long hours and overwork seeks to reverse many years of progress, and we must appreciate and value our achievement of the 40-hour workweek.
The 40-hour workweek is a hard-fought win from over a century of struggle.
70-hour, 90-hour, or 140-hour workweeks are illegal in most countries, particularly India.
Beyond 48 hours, the laws mandate that Indian companies pay overtime for extra work. China has similar laws.
In other words, the nations in question don’t support the free-labour-driven “nation-building” the elites seem to advocate for.
A tale of unequal incentives
In her conversation with Anupam Mittal, Namita Thapar of Emcure explained the difference in incentives between capitalists and commoners.
“The founders, set of co-founders and top management, look at the kind of money they are making. Obviously, we could work 20 hours a day, which is what we all do. But the employee? Today, my accountant, he is making a salary, he does not have the upside of putting in that kind of hours… So, I think for people with high stakes, yes (work long hours), but for common employees, have a reasonable work limit, knowing that there will be some blips during deliverable time, but it cannot be a constant 70-hour work week, which is what a lot of people are proposing.”
Thapar is saying the same thing as Beck. Working extra for a few days is okay as long as you can catch your breath in another spell of work. But she’s also making the point that overwork isn’t for everyone. Let me explain.
Corporations have enjoyed lower tax rates in India for about eight years now. Despite corporate profit growth of 4x, income growth has stayed stagnant. Much of the wealth and incentives are for the bourgeoisie, and very little trickles down to the typical workers.
Take SN Subhramanyan’s L&T, for example. Subhramanyan receives an annual compensation of ₹51 crores ($6m), while the average L&T employee earns about ₹9.55 lakh ($11000).
SN Subhramanyan earns 534x the median salary at L&T.
Let’s examine another company - NR Narayana Murthy’s Infosys. Let’s compare the percentage change in costs and two salaries - the CEO and the entry-level employee. All expense data comes from Numbeo and uses Bangalore as a benchmark, and the currency is INR (₹).
| Item | 2010 | 2024 | Inflation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expenses | Meal - inexpensive restaurant | 99.71 | 307.82 | 208% |
| Meal McDonald’s | 221.67 | 350.70 | 58% | |
| Milk | 21.20 | 51.52 | 142% | |
| Tomatoes | 20.09 | 43.88 | 115% | |
| Rent (1 bedroom apartment) | 9875 | 27112 | 174% | |
| Fuel | 59.18 | 102.72 | 72% | |
| Compensation at Infosys | Entry level graduate (median) | 370,000 | 380,000 | 1.6% |
| CEO - Salil Parekh | 10,100,000 | 662,400,000 | 6500% | |
| Narayana Murthy (equity) | 90,000,000 | 318,100,000 | 253% |
Infosys’s CEO earns 1743x the median salary of their entry-level graduates. Narayana Murthy, post-retirement, earns 837x that of the entry-level salary.
Key takeaway
Income disparity isn’t surprising in capitalism. The rise in executive compensation over the last decade and the stagnating wages elsewhere illustrate that the average reader of this article is unlikely to gain much from a 90-hour work week.
Founders and c-suite members inevitably live and breathe work throughout their waking hours. When they talk about their commitment to work, we may experience implicit pressure to be like them. It’s improbable, though, that our reward for overwork will be the same or even proportional to that of the big bosses.
Moreover, someone who earns a few hundred times your salary better work all the time! It’s only fair, don’t you think?
So, it’s been 70-odd years since asking an Indian employee to work for 70 hours was legally OK. Throughout the labour struggle in the US, corporations have used all sorts of fear-mongering to push back against the labour movement. Some quoted a loss in productivity. Others warned that the 40-hour work week wouldn’t allow “nation building” because the US would become less competitive than countries with longer work weeks. Some even argued that long hours were a moral necessity. Wouldn’t the workers’ idle minds become the devil’s workshop?
Despite all the opposition, the US and the rest of the world adopted the 40-hour work week and didn’t look back. Until, of course, India Inc. decided it was time to turn back the clock and make Karl Marx roll in his grave. Easy Karl, we’ve got this!
I hope you appreciate the 200-year history of the 40-hour workweek and understand its value and significance. I also hope you see how unequal the incentives for overwork are. Those sentiments conclude part one of my commentary on the 90-hour work week.
In next week’s article, I’ll explore how much leisure we really have, the notion of “extraordinary impact”, and the idea of a portfolio week. If those topics interest you, keep watching this space.