There was a time when we worked for more than 70 hours. Now, we shouldn’t. But is Narayana Murthy wrong in proposing a 70-hour work week? Should we work for 70 hours a week? What does history tell us about working hours? What can we learn from history?

Indians are one of the most hard-working populations in the world. But get one of the lowest pay. How should we solve this problem? What can India learn from other countries?

I discuss it in this video.

TRANSCRIPT/SUMMARY

Narayan Murthy’s remarks on a 70-hour work week gathered a lot of attention. From memes, op-eds and debates, we have seen it all.

Some say that yes, to become successful you have to work your ass off. But there are many people who say that one needs to take care of their health and give time to loved ones too.

So, kiski sune?

The short answer is usko bolna hai to bole, mera kya jata hai…mereko paisa mangta hai…aur weekend pe kaam nahi mangta hai. Meaning – Let him speak what he wants to speak…I need my money and no work on weekends, that’s it. Right? But the long answer is… ummm.. in this episode. I will delve into the history of working hours..there was a time when we used to work 16 hours a day…then I will analyse how much people in other countries work and earn, how much we work and earn in comparison and then I will talk about the future of work. There are so many things in this episode. I think the short answer will not give us all these things, so why don’t you stay and watch the entire episode?

OK. Let’s break 70 hours a week job. If we assume a 5-day week, we have to work 14 hours a day, that is if we start at 9 am we have to work till 11 pm. If it’s a 6-day work week, then we have to work for roughly 12 hours every day…from 9 am to 9 pm from Monday to Friday and on Saturdays, we can leave at 7 pm. That’s how much we should be working according to Narayan Murthy.

See, everyone knows who he is and everyone respects him for what he has done for the country. But this remark was not received well by everyone.

One thing that I feel he might be thinking of while speaking is about the really passionate people like himself and many others. We know the lifestyle of many business leaders, politicians, and film celebrities who have to work round the clock or at least be available throughout the day for their expertise. But not everyone aspires to become like them. People working as clerks in the bank or a trainee in the corporate might just want to fill their family’s bellies and go up the income ladder after a few years. And for them, they might not want to work for those many hours. Also, there are many people who work tirelessly, even 70 hours but earn a meagre salary. They fail to maintain their health and give time to people around them. That isn’t ideal either. So, the 70-hour workstyle might not be apt for everyone. Also, if someone is working for so many hours, please take care of your health.

This is just my feeling for this 70-hour rule.

But let me keep my feelings aside. Now, we will understand different aspects of working hours.

In the first section, we will understand how our hunter-gathering ancestors used to work.

Then, we will find out what happened after the Industrial Revolution and how we got into the 9-5 job that 8 hours a day setup.

Then, in the third section, we will understand, how much do countries across the globe work these days and how much do they earn.

And in the last section, let us think about the future.

Let’s begin the first section –

Till the 1960s and 70s, there was a notion that our forefathers used to work day in and day out…and clock in many hours to gather food. Their lives were phrased as “‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

However, people started getting into this subject and started challenging this belief.

An anthropologist Richard Lee went to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. He lived with Ju/’hoansi foragers, one of the last populations of hunter-gatherers on Earth. He wanted to know how they lived. He measured how much time they allotted for different activities and to everyone’s surprise, they worked only for 12-19 hours a week. However, after this study, many experts started enquiring more about it and even Lee concluded that they worked on average 40-45 hours a week, which is a ballpark figure even today.

Working hours means the amount of time took to get the food.

Now let us Jump directly to the Industrial Revolution era. Welcome to the second section and we are working 16 hours daily in factories for six days and even children are working.

Thanks to Robert Owen, our lives became better. He idealised “eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest”. He was a manufacturer and labour rights activist. This was around 1817 in Wales. The idea did not take its shape immediately as one would expect. It took a lot of years. Yes. a lot of years.

Life was, in general hard for workers. Employers or to be specific capitalists hated any demand for reduced working hours. They believed that reduced hours meant that they had to employ other workers on different shifts. That would mean a hit on profitability.

There have been demands from workers around the world. We have seen protests and a lot more than that. Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara said that For nearly 200 years workers, organised or not, sought to limit the workday. But employers have used all Saam-Daam-Dand-Bhed and quashed such initiatives. That era really saw some rough or kind of cruel side of capitalism.

Let’s go chronologically.

In 1847, the UK parliament enacted the Factories Act 1847. That law mandated a maximum of 10 hours per workday for women and children. But not men. So, the struggle continued.

In 1850, the New Factories Act was enacted. As per the law, mill workers could enjoy Sunday holiday, a privilege which was given only to government employees earlier. The number of hours was reduced to 10 hours every day.

On the other side of the English Channel, that is in France, in the year 1848, there was a massive civil unrest movement. Now called as French Revolution of 1848. On 2 March 1848, the Commission of Labour reduced the working day in Paris from 11 to 10 hours, and from 12 to 11 hours in the provinces. Reduced by just an hour…and that too after a civil unrest.

From France, we now go to the US again. Owen’s idea travelled to the US after the Civil War. The Civil War ended in 1865.

In 1866, the National Labor Union asked Congress to pass a law on an eight-hour workday. But that did not happen.

On 1st May 1886, unionists, workers, and reformers gathered on the streets of Chicago and made the city the epicentre in demanding an 8-hour workday a rule. There were parades around the streets of Chicago. As many as 35000 workers walked out of their jobs, people urged other workers to stop work and join the strike. It became a major law and order situation.

The strike became violent. There were many clashes between the mob and the police. Someone dropped the bomb on the police.

Sixty officers were injured, 8 died and numerous workers were killed and wounded. There was bloodshed everywhere.

Things went out of hand for many days.

Today, 1st May is celebrated as May Day or International Labour Day.

In the same year, i.e. 1866, the International Workingmen’s Association demanded an 8-hour day at its Congress in Geneva.

In 1867, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was published. And we all might know how labour welfare was central to Marx’s ideologies.

In 1869, US President Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation that guaranteed an eight-hour workday without a decrease in pay. But it only applied to government workers.

Slowly, an 8-hour workday spread across different industries. In 1898, United Mine Workers, in 1905, the printing industry, In 1916, interstate railroad workers, in 1915, Uruguay adopted it. In 1918 Czechoslovakia adopted. In 1919, Denmark. Slowly many European countries started adopting it.

In 1919, Kawasaki Dockyards, now Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation, became the first company in Japan to adopt.

IN 1919, the International Labour Organisation was formed under the League of Nations, which is the previous version of the United Nations. ILO was formed as a reformist response to the post-World War 1 labour uprisings. In the same year, the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention was also declared which mentioned an 8-hour work day.

This was later ratified by many countries. British India ratified it in 1921. Greece in 1920. Italy in 1924, Chile in 1925. Portugal in 1928, Spain in 1929. Many countries agreed to abide by this standard, on paper. And things started moving in that direction.

In 1930, Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention was held which is for private sector and mandates 8 hours work day like before. A smaller list of countries have ratified it. India is not in the list.

Then In 1923, the US steel industry adopted an 8-hour workday.

But in 1926, the most revolutionary event around the world took place that really made a difference and that was driven by Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors. He began 5-days, 40-hour workweek for all its workers. Over and above that, in 1914, he had doubled the male employee wages too.

Many industrialists joked about it. But Ford’s performance kept everyone silent and people began thinking. Ford saw that workers became more productive, production boomed and profits improved significantly.

In 1938, US Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which limited the workweek to 44 hours which was shortened to 40 hours in 1940.

So, that’s the world history of working hours from till the first half of the 20th century.

In the case of India, in the 17th and 18th centuries, many European merchants (who later became colonisers) started trading with Indians and ports like Cochin, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta became main trading hubs. Europeans influence increased and they started dictating terms as many people started settling in the subcontinent. At that time, Indian workers had to work for 16 hours a day without any holiday.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, labour unions got stronger and started demanding better working hours and facilities. In 1891, the first Factories Act came into force but it was silent on working hours. In 1911, there was an amendment which specified 12 hours a day and a 6-day working week, which means weekly, 72 hours.

In 1922, the weekly working hours were brought down to 60 – that is 10 hours daily. In 1942’s 4th Session of the Indian Labour Conference, Dr BR Ambedkar brought up this issue and total working hours were brought down to 8 hours daily. Then, in 1948, in independent India, a revised Factory Act was passed which mentioned a 48-hour work week, which means 8 hours a day for a 6-day work week pattern.

As per Minimum Wages Act, for all adults, 9 hours in a day and 48 hours in a week are termed as normal working hours. Over and above that should be considered as overtime.

However, as per the new labour code that was passed by the Parliament and notified by the government, the daily working hour limit has been extended from 8 hours to 12 hours. But the weekly working hours have been capped at 48 hours only. ILO said that it will review the new law. However, the effective date of this new labour law has not been announced yet.

By the way, did you know that Indians are the seventh most working population in the world?

Chaunk gaye? Welcome to the third section of today’s topic.

ILO data shows that we are in the top 10 countries when it comes to working hours in a week.

UAE tops the list by working 52.6 hours a week, followed by Gambia, Bhutan, Lesotho, Congo and Qatar. Next in line is India which works for an average of 47.7 hours a week. China works for 46.1 hours, Singapore for 42.6 hours, Japan for 36.6 hours, US for 36.4, UK for 35.9 and Germany for 34.4.

Workers in Vanuatu island work least at 24.7 hours a week.

And how does working hours relate to the salary? Do you believe that the higher the working hours higher the salary?

If yes, then, unfortunately, you are wrong. Because it’s the other way around.

Have a look at this chart. It shows Average weekly wages on the X axis and Average Working hours on the Y axis. This data is from OECD countries only. And thus India is not available. In this chart, we can see that there is one clear outlier and that is Mexico. People work on average for 43 hours a week but get less than $400 a week.

On the other hand, look at Germany. In this chart, we can see that Germans work for around 25 hours a week but get $1200.

Similarly US. Americans work for 34 hours roughly and get more than $1500.

Now, one disclaimer. Data on working hours for many countries in this chart do not tally with the ILO data. Such types of databases contain such issues. I don’t know why there’s a difference. For example, the ILO data on working hours show that Germans work for 34 hours, but here we can see that they work for 25 hours. It’s a significant difference. Usually, such databases are prepared using surveys and can have different people surveyed, then the period also matters, plus the primary data sources can also be different. So we will not delve into it.

But the point which this chart tries to convey, and which is a generally presumed relationship, is that as the economies progress and adequate capital is put to use, overall productivity increases. That means, even if you put in a lesser number of hours, the output can remain the same..or can even rise in some cases.

So, the salary for the workers becomes higher and that reward is due to higher productivity.

We have some data on India. Let us use Working hours from ILO and salary data from a Mint article, which was sourced from the World of Statistics. Now, the year for which the data is used can be slightly different as we have used different sources. So, please be aware of that.

According to these databases, Indians work for 47.7 Hours And earn around $140 a week. So, lets try to insert this data into the existing chart. So, this is it.

We need to increase the Y axis to fit India’s working hours. But you can see that we work more than Mexico and earn lesser than that. So, we have to buck up and try to reduce working hours and increase earnings.

More investments in technology, capital goods, training and skilling, research and development are needed. Laws and govt policies need to support MSMEs and labour and human resource development. Economic growth with lower inflation that can provide ample job opportunities is necessary to achieve higher productivity gains.

Many countries have climbed up the ladder and hopefully, we will too. It is not to say that we haven’t done anything at all. However, it is important to understand the current demographics of the nation. We are young. But we will become old. And we should not become old and yet work for 50 hours. No. We have to ensure that we employ people, get the most out of them and push the economy upwards.

Yes, if you are passionate and want to become an outlier, sure, you can or should probably, work more. But that should not be applied to every Indian. We are already working a lot but not getting enough money.

So, neither the problem or the obstruction between today’s and tomorrow’s India is not that people are working less, nor does the solution lies in logging in more number of hours. The problem, instead, is that the productivity is low and that lesser number of people are working in general. Only 58% of Indians work. Therefore, the solution is that more number of people should work and their productivity should increase.

So, that’s about the data on working hours.

Let me give you food for thought in the last section of this video.

You can see that in the last couple of centuries, we have drastically reduced working hours from 16 per day to 8. That itself is a remarkable feat and everyone who likes this should thank all the people who fought for it and died for it.

Overall, there are 2 main reasons behind decreasing working hours. First is of course the labour uprising movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Second is the technology.

So, what’s next in line? What does our future look like?

A few nations have started a 4-day work week. That seems to be a plausible future for the world in the next decade or so.

In 1930, JM Keynes, the father of modern economics, predicted that by 2030, people from developed economies would work for only 15 hours a week.

Well, only 6 years to go, but no such signs of reduced working hours are visible as of today. In India, we are very far from that target.

But we should not find the answer to what is next in the number of working hours alone.

I believe we can direct this conversation to something substantial and closer to the human heart, health, psychology and purpose.

I will try to come up with my thoughts about the future of work in some other episode. It will need a lot of thinking, reading, drafting and rewriting. But what are your initial thoughts about the future of work, because the concept of work is changing and with the newer generations inclining towards passion and purpose, I believe we have to rethink the models on which we run the labour market today.

Write down in the comments below what according to you should be the future of work. Also, let me know your feelings about working for 70 hours a week. Are you in for it or not?

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