ONCE again, a moral appeal of extending working hours to ninety hours a week has been proposed by L&T chairman resonating the need for extending working week to 70 hours proposed by Narayan Murthy last year. Workers should work more and preferably on Sundays to achieve higher growth and be on the top of the world. This is being floated when India is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Capitalists always vouch for higher efforts from the workers while being silent on the issue of return. The share of labour in value added had been declining sharply in the past three decades, real wages remained mostly stagnant and sometimes dipped further due to high inflation, the share declined further in 2022-23 compared to the previous year. Profit share in GDP skyrocketed in the past decades, number of billionaires increased many times, and few rich have attained living standards at par with the rich of the advanced economies. People who are impoverished, mostly the working people should be ready to sacrifice more to increase the wealth of the capitalist class!

Labour is the source of all new value created in the society, but the larger share of the value is being appropriated by those who earn profit not because they devote more physical or mental labour in the process of production. Their privilege to appropriate the larger share of value added does not emanate from their diligence or intelligence, neither as rewards for taking risks as most of the risks are diffused and socialised through financial systems, it is only because they as a class own the means of production.

The worker on the other hand, is alienated from the means of production, the labour process and from the fruits of their own labour but they are the ones who are supposed to be happy putting more effort and work more hours for the gains of the few capitalists. When there are so many unemployed in the country, particularly young people, if more work needs to be done, they can be easily employed. But capitalists would hardly prefer that because new employment entails higher incremental costs and if more and more people are employed, that increases the bargaining power of the workers as a class. What is always advocated by the capitalists in the name of work ethic and diligence is more work time by the existing employees without sharing any proportionate claim against increased working hours. So, the underlying message is not that more work effort needed and so more people have to be employed, rather the current workforce should be ready to be squeezed more to increase the surplus value for the capitalists.

INDIAN WORKERS WORK LONGER HOURS

The corporate bosses should also get the facts right. According to ILO’s latest figures (2024) an average Indian worker works 46.74 hours per week which is thirteenth highest among 170 countries of the world and just below Bangladesh and Pakistan. Highest number of hours are worked in Bhutan 54.44 hours followed by UAE recording an average of 50.93 hours a week. Developing countries such as China, South Africa, Brazil, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Thailand and Korea record much less average weekly working hours than India. The average weekly working hours of the developed countries such as Canada (32.24), Netherlands (31.55) Germany (34.24), UK (35.85), France (35.9), US (37.96) and Japan (36.6) are much less than that of India. More importantly ILO also gives figures of the proportion of workers in a country working 49 hours or more in a week. India ‘proudly’ stands second among the list of 170 countries. In case of Bhutan the share of workers working more than 49 hours in a week is 61.3 per cent and second is India recording 51.4 per cent. In fact, corporate bosses should be happy that they continue to enjoy the freedom of exploiting more than half of the workforce for longer hours and that proportion stands second in the world.

In fact, India’s capitalists want to remain buoyant in global competition by making workers work longer hours and pay them less hourly wage. They rely on the low-road of competition where the cost of production can be reduced by reducing labour cost. In the early phase of capitalism this was the usual route adopted by the capitalist class. They relied on enhancing absolute surplus value by making workers work longer hours. The workers will receive subsistence wage and shall be forced to work longer hours such that the share of unpaid labour can be increased. This was resisted by the working class through movements across Europe and America in the early nineteenth century, and eight-hours working day became the norm in many parts of the world. In response to this the capitalists class shifted focus from absolute surplus value to generating relative surplus value. In simple terms it means enhancing the productivity of the workers without proportionately increasing their wages. Hence workers will produce more, they may receive higher wages but proportionately less than the productivity gains. For example, if a worker produces double the output without increasing working hours, using new technology, but receive a wage one and half-times the previous wage, then also exploitation increases without increasing working hours and despite increasing wages in absolute terms.

TECHNOLOGY AND LONG WORKING HOURS

Capitalists in the advanced countries developed new technologies because forcing longer hours of work no longer remained an option. In developing countries including India where the institutional protection to workers’ rights is still very weak and covers a small portion of the entire work force and the rest essentially with no collective bargaining power, the possibilities of forcing workers work longer hours and at low wage continues as an option for the capitalist class. This is one of the reasons why Indian capitalist class time and again voices the moral appeal of increasing weekly working hours to seventy or ninety hours. This is also one of the reasons why pace of technological development in the developing countries is slower, because pushing down wages, making workers work longer hours are continuing options for the capitalist class to remain competitive. Indian corporates spend a very low share of their revenue in research and development compared to even other developing countries. Growth of productive investments in the corporate sector declined for the past one and half decade.

Finally, one may ask why people should work longer hours if there is so much technological development? Role of machines or technology is primarily to reduce direct human effort and that is the mark of progress. In fact, in the history of capitalism, development of technology had been very fast compared to pre-modern period and ideally that should have reduced average working hours to a great extent. But contrary to that although we are now in the phase of a new technological development people used to work longer hours on average to make both ends meet.

The paradox of longer working hours despite technological development is a systemic problem of capitalism and not of technology. Technologies and the process of technological development are owned and controlled by capital. They are continuously competing for higher levels of innovation so that they can outcompete their rival capitalists. And this race is also about valorising the capital involved in new technology as fast as they can before the new generation of technology comes in the market. Therefore, on the one hand use of technology leads to labour displacement and unemployment and on the other hand they continuously try to make existing workers work more and longer hours so that they can realise the value of their invested capital as fast as they can. Just think if these technologies were owned by the society in any collective form, the pace and focus of technological development could have been decided according to collective requirements and more importantly the social product would have been produced with more people being employed, while each of the workers working much shorter hours using new technology. Enhancing free time for creative human engagement of their own choice is a mark of progress rather than working longer hours just to fulfil bare necessities.