Captains of industry are equally disgruntled. Having earlier broadcast the generous concessions they have granted employees – periodically allowing them to WFH, or absolving them of their participation in the gig economy – some, like N Narayana Murthy, have now taken to sharing unsolicited advice. This includes prescribing a 70-hour work week and working three shifts a day, practices unheard of even at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
What is especially facile about this counsel is that work has been reduced to many hours and days in the mistaken belief that the unitary method, and indefatigable labour will drive endless efficiency, growth, and profits. Nearly a century ago, Henry Ford took the fateful step of reducing the work week to 40 hours (without shrinking wages) when he realised that longer hours drove no incremental efficiencies. Today, even a pedantic mathematician is likely to scoff at the reasoning of the Indian employer.
Every corporation advertises platitudes about the quality of their workplace: it respects workers’ rights, promotes fair treatment, is an equal opportunity employer, promotes growth and rewards schemes, and ensures a healthy work-life balance. But few are eloquent about the quality of work offered.
This is because the prevailing belief among employers is that a higher salary – relative to competition – will offset the tedium of the most unpleasant, mind-numbing, and soul-destroying job. Unfortunately, this breeds a perception among employees that work is inherently disagreeable and should pay a lot for the smallest expenditure of labour. Consequently, the former is soon disabused of their confidence and the latter disillusioned by their cynicism.
Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgment, offers an insight that may be instructive. Work, according to this former resident of Konigsberg, then in Prussia, now in Germany, consists of skilled labour involving human effort that is produced by choice, with a clear purpose that involves thinking. In other words, for workers to be satisfied, they must believe that the outcome of a job demands their active participation in which they are allowed to make free, deliberate, and creative choices. However, enabling such a work environment is challenging. Indian companies are accustomed to the explicit distinction between strategy and planning, controlled by top management, on the one hand, and execution and delivery, delegated to the worker, on the other. Coupled with a fanatical belief in the myth of infinite growth and the real need to standardise production to curb revenue compression in the wake of commodification, the prevailing managerial doctrine favours a formula for its employees that consists of 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration: an over-commitment of labour and time, a work environment of explicit rules and instructions, and a compensation scheme without guarantees. In such a situation, the mercenary impulse is bound to arise in the breast of the humblest employee. Recognising this, Vinod Khosla, coming to the aid of his tech-billionaire confrere, made a mockery of ridiculing mundane temptation. Not working 70 hours a week, he stated, may not ‘get you the biggest house or car to show to your neighbours. But you can make that choice. Bigger titles, bigger houses don’t make everyone happy.’
This is the most risible cant. The competitive and exclusionary nature of capitalism works on the principle of the inequitable control and distribution of wealth, decoupled from the contribution of labour. Even if millions were to sacrifice everything – their minds, integrity, families, and health – to the demands of unreasonable employers, not even a fraction would realise this potential aggrandisement.
Ultimately, the world is what it is. Instead of peddling smoke rings and mirrors in an already meretricious job market, business leaders may want, even in small measure, to heed the advice of Kant and make work a little more meaningful, if less materially enriching. Some may actually be satisfied with that.