Redefining Work: The Debate on Working Hours

The nature of modern industrial work is such that for most employees, work is merely a means to sustain life, fulfill desires, and achieve materialistic objectives. For them, the purpose of work is to maximize output to input.

- ACHARYA PRASHANT

The debate on working hours has intensified recently. Initially, it was suggested that Indians should work 70 hours a week, and recently, the chairman of a major organization proposed 90-hour workweeks. This conversation spans many dimensions, significantly pitting employers, who prioritize profit, against employees, who work primarily to earn a salary.

The nature of modern industrial work is such that for most employees, work is merely a means to sustain life, fulfill desires, and achieve materialistic objectives. For them, the purpose of work is to maximize output to input. Input refers to the number of hours worked, and output refers to the salary received. Work is typically seen as something that brings money through physical or mental labor, with input measured in hours worked. The currently raging debate has hardly explored the true essence of work.

Employers, on the other hand, seek to maximize profit and therefore promote long work hours. Corporate leadership reflects this obsession with numbers. CEOs, earning 300 to 1,000 times more than the average employee, advocate long hours—not out of passion but to extract an output that can justify the disproportionate CEO remuneration. If employees were compensated similarly, they might also work those hours.

This creates a class struggle between the employers and the employees, with both sides negotiating their interests. The work environments are loveless, where the various stakeholders have transactional relationships with each other, as well as their work. Then capping working hours becomes essential: if people are told to do 90 hours a week on jobs they hate, they'll go insane.