WORK ARASIYAL!

With labour advances being severely curtailed, unions falling into disrepair, and workers falling prey to popular morality, CE interrogates wage labour's placement as the central tenet of modern life

- SURIYA B, MARY CATHERENE

SAY, an average human being only has about 7,00,000 hours in their lifetime. Why then do we work so long and so hard?

Rewind to a hundred years ago. Madras witnessed one of the fiercest strikes in its history of the region, by the workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills, which has had a lasting impact along caste and class lines. In the meantime, workers in Tamil Nadu and around the world are predominantly facing severe setbacks, with regard to their ability to effectively strike and negotiate wages, and most importantly, to imagine a life outside wage labour. The historical anxiety surrounding work's dominion over life and living seems to be falling apart in the face of a greater, all-encompassing morality: The work ethic.

The compulsive belief that work is a moral good—the work ethic—has emerged as a key force in legitimising and enforcing a social existence, entirely based on wage labour. As scholar and anti-work theorist Kathi Weeks writes in her book The Problem with Work, "The behaviours that the ethic prescribes remain consistent—the identification with and systematic devotion to waged work". However, she also notes that how one justifies their compliance to the system can vary.

Most workers CE spoke to—daily wage, low-income—found it difficult to even comprehend a life outside wage labour, even hypothetically.

Babu (48), security guard at an apartment complex, said, "I work 12 hours a day, and get about half an hour for having my lunch. If I don't work, it will cause fights at home. Would anyone like it if you simply slept all day?" When pressed to imagine a life of idleness, he went silent for a minute. "I do not know what idleness even means. No such concept exists in my life," he added.