In July, two significant things happened, economically speaking. The first was the India Forum’ analysis of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, which showed that about 33.8% of the Indian population lives on less than Rs 100 a day. As Indian workers become increasingly food insecure and unemployed, the second thing happened: the Karnataka government presented a proposal to extend the limit on daily hours of work.
Through the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments (Amendment) Bill 2024, the state labour minister Santosh Lad aims to change the current system of 10 hours (including eight hours of work and remaining time for rest, intervals, and change of shifts) + 2 hours overtime to a 14-hour work day.
While this move may have been shelved for the moment because of protests by IT/ITeS workers, it can be useful to examine it in some depth. This is because, first, this proposal is part of a series of anti-worker policies that the state has introduced (discussed later). Therefore, some variant of this proposal, perhaps in a different sector or in a different state may not be too far away. Second, even the critics of such a move need to be reconsidered given the significant emphasis on productivity to the marketplace. It is crucial to understand in what ways this proposal failed in order to come up with better labour policies.
Also read: Karnataka IT Employees’ Union to Hold Protests Against 14-Hour Workday Proposal
At the outset, the two events described above are inextricably tied as they are both neoliberal offensives – while governments aim to “improve” unliveable earnings by compelling people to work more, people regularly find themselves deeply impoverished and food insecure despite working inhumane hours. As the debate on whether ours is the most exhausting age in history makes the rounds, capital, state and the market together continue to grotesquely usurp more of our time and earnings than ever before. In India, this takes a particularly sinister turn as thousands apply for a fraction of the jobs, given the all-time rise in unemployment.
But this move to amend work hours has consequences beyond the approximately 20 lakh IT/ITeS employees in Karnataka. Through such a proposal not only do IT companies think that workers need less rest, they also assume someone else at home will do all the tasks and chores required for us to keep our lives going.
Social reproduction examines how the daily as well as generational renewal of life is essential for the sustenance of inequality and capitalism. In other words, social reproduction involves the performance of those tasks and processes which ensure the perpetuation of social structures.
In the context of increasing work hours of IT workers, there is an assumption by companies that someone else at home – presumably women, given the results of the Time Use survey – will be performing unwaged work to ensure these workers are able to work for the IT companies the next day.
Representational image. Photo: pexels.com/throughmylife_in_ INDIA
This work which is foundational to the ability of companies to exist had led to an international Wages for Housework campaign in the 1970s. Now in India, this is especially crucial, since it often gets buried under the pretext of “love” to ensure that lakhs of workers are able to put in even more hours towards extractive capital. This is particularly disheartening because according to the Time Use Survey of 2020, women already perform 10 times the time on household maintenance, and care of children, the sick and elderly, than men.
Even critiques of increasing work hours have kept increased productivity in the market, as the central argument in their rebuttal to such moves, commenting that “an exhausted nation won’t have the time to upskill”. This assumes that workers’ free time will be used to think up ways of how to be more useful to the productive economy.
But is this argument sufficient, or does it play into capital, by keeping productivity and capital on a pedestal? Not only do workers need time for rest and rejuvenation, they also need time to perform the tiring hours of social reproduction work which ensures they are able to go to work the next day. The endless mountain of domestic chores which make our houses homes, and which allow us to contribute to the ‘productive’ economy the next day, remains unspoken of in any real sense thus far in this debate. This is fundamentally the work that companies expect will be done for free and are greatly reliant on, to ensure that companies function smoothly. But now, this work will have to be done after a punishing 14-hour work day.
Although one may argue that these IT workers can always hire paid domestic workers to do the extra work – this is ultimately neither always possible nor does it solve the problem. In fact, according to the Time Use survey of 2020, even urban women with secondary or higher levels of education (presumably those who hire paid domestic workers) end up spending about 291 minutes a day performing household chores, and 146 minutes a day caring for members of the household. This work and the time taken to do it shows no signs of reducing.
In terms of policy, this proposal has currently been shelved by the government to get the labour department’s perspective. However, this proposal to increase work hours is not isolated nor singular, and it inherits the deliberate, anti-poor and capital-centric social reproduction-extractive approach of other attempts by the state to dilute labour rights.
Labour rights trampled upon
Past inroads into labour rights have taken the form of increasing the number of Special Economic Zones (where labour laws are weakened), tweaking rules relating to SEZs to favour specific companies, introducing new labour laws which further erode workers’ rights, rash policies such as demonetisation which ultimately led to a loss of approximately 9.5 million jobs, amongst many others.
When asked, the ruling government has relied on promises of “respecting” workers, without guaranteeing any rights. The last time someone (the Anoop Satpathy Committee) told the ruling party that minimum wages need to be hiked (to Rs 375 per day), the recommendation was soundly dismissed because this “may burden the employers”.
Worse still, despite the promises of “respecting” workers, the Union government’s own Periodic Labour Force Series survey reveals that real wages – even among salaried workers – have remained stagnant from 2017 to 2022 despite rising inflation. To contextualise this a bit more, between 2022-23, 22.6% of the national income went to the top 1% of the population – the highest percentage ever since 1922. All of this is happening along with an unemployment rate which is at a morale-breaking high of 9.2 %.
According to the Karnataka IT/ITeS Employees Trade Union (KITU) secretary Nidiyanga, this proposal by the labour minister caters to companies’ needs to minimise expenditure incurred by them by reducing workers’ shifts. In other words, if working hours are increased, companies will not need to hire extra workers, especially during busy periods such as December and March. Moreover, if this were to be implemented, one-third of workers would be out of employment because of the change from three shifts to two.
This proposal also comes at a time when work is getting increasingly informalised, which is especially disquieting given that 90% of India’s labour force is already in the informal sector. Workers’ rest periods and well-being are dismissed because they potentially hinder the growth of some sectors (according to the Economic Survey). The Survey further states that limiting work hours is in fact a hindrance to workers’ capacity to earn more, completely disregarding the socio-economic factors which compel workers to work for poverty wages and beg for jobs in the first place.
What next? Tellingly, the Karnataka labour minister has already informed the public that the state government is under pressure from different companies to expedite and approve this proposal. Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union or KITU has organised several campaigns, but next week on August 3, they intend to organise a massive campaign at 32 units against this proposal, and workers will be leading a procession to the Labour Commissioner’s office.
This procession is powerful – Karnataka’s IT/ITeS workers significantly contribute to the over USD 250 billion industry. This is a fantastic opportunity to address the fact that 14-hour work days and uncompensated care work that capital relies on not only impact workers’ rest and leisure but continue to usurp and invisibilise such social reproduction work.
Shardha Rajam is a lawyer working on labour and migration issues in the Asia Pacific region with a regional feminist organisation.
