A 90-hour work week is illegal in India. So, why are CEOs pushing for it?

It was a spring Saturday on May 1st, when some two lakh workers laid down their tools and marched up Michigan Avenue in Chicago. “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will,” they chanted in unison, demanding an eight-hour work day. That was in 1886. The refrain fast became an anthem for the workers’ movement that swept the US in the mid 19th century.In 1889, May 1st was declared an international holiday for labour. It was the same year that the International Workers Congress in Paris accepted a resolution of an eight-hour workday. So why is it that Indian CEOs are pushing for 90-hour work weeks now, 135 years later?“I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays, to be honest,” said SN Subrahmanyan, Chairman and Managing Director of L&T. “If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy, because I work on Sundays also,” he added.Subrahmanyan went on to say that if India wants to be a global leader, Indians will have to work 90 hours a week. Back in 2023, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, also faced similar criticism online and became the subject of social media memes after saying that Indians should work 70 hours a week to drive national progress. medium117371846The push to work longerIn India, the maximum workday is capped at eight hours. This is a legal safeguard designed to protect workers' rights and ensure work-life balance. And yet, as Prakash Reddy, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader from Mumbai pointed out, India’s corporate elite persistently push for longer, more exhausting hours. The online backlash on Subrahmanyan’s statements was so severe that L&T was forced to respond. “I can confidently state that MD & Chairman, SN Subrahmanyan (SNS) never implied or mandated 90-hour work weeks,” Sonica Muraleedharan, head of Human Resources at the company wrote on LinkedIn. “His remarks were casual in nature and have been misinterpreted, fuelling a controversy that doesn’t reflect his true intentions.”But was it just a casual remark, though? Not according to labour unions in India who are fighting tooth and nail to continue the eight-hour workday safeguard. “It’s no secret that every corporation knows they legally cannot mandate more than an eight-hour workday, excluding overtime,” says Chandan Kumar, a well known national face in the trade union movement. “Yet, the issue arises when such discussions take place, followed by claims that these were just casual remarks, misunderstood by others.”Kumar is associated with the ‘Working Peoples' Charter’, a national coalition of workers collectives. He adds, “This behaviour goes beyond mere miscommunication — it's an intentional attempt to push boundaries, testing the waters for what can be normalised attempting manufacturing consent.” American public intellectual Noam Chomsky explained ‘manufacturing consent’ as a propaganda model of communication, where the media selectively shows government policies in favour of the powers that be.Kumar alleges that both Narayana Murthy and Subrahmanyan are trying to normalise what is ‘illegal’ as per Indian law and shrouding it by a nation building narrative. Hence, manufacturing consent. He also points out that, in India, due to lack of inspections, compliance of eight-hour workday is low in many sectors and companies get away with it. medium nocaption117375401The World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) have both highlighted the risks of long working hours in a 2020 report. The report found strong evidence linking working 55 or more hours per week to an increased risk of both fatal and non-fatal ischemic heart disease. This elevated risk is considered clinically significant, underlining the importance of addressing long working hours as a modifiable factor for improving public health.Is it legal?In India, the Factories Act of 1948 and the new Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, mandate a 48-hour work week. India made history by pioneering the struggle for an eight-hour workday, a full 24 years before the May Day incidents in Chicago. In April-May of 1862, around 1,200 railway workers in Howrah (Kolkata) went on strike, demanding an eight-hour workday.In 1919, the ILO adopted its first convention, which called for an eight-hour workday for all its member countries, including India. The ILO's convention emphasised the idea of dividing a 24-hour day into three parts: eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of leisure. India later ratified this ILO convention.Further progress was made when Dr BR Ambedkar, at the 7th Indian Labour Conference in 1942, declared the eight-hour workday for India.“India should be a model for other countries in respecting International Labour Standards set by ILO. Our nation should not be made a global hub of exploitation and forced work,” Kumar emphasises. medium nocaption117375416Employers don’t seem to be happyKuchik Raghunath, General Secretary of Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, says that never in the history of workers’ rights has the eight-hour workday been given voluntarily by employers. The push for longer working hours is being made openly, in the name of nation-building and growth. “If you read carefully what the L&T chairman has said, he mentioned that ‘he can’t make you work on Sunday.’ So being so powerful, he can’t do it legally in India. That is his complaint,” Raghunath adds. Furthermore, he states that when the law can’t be changed, certain rules are modified since workers’ and labour rights fall in the concurrent list. States like Maharashtra have made it mandatory for labour inspectors to get permission from senior officers before conducting regular inspections to ensure work-hour norms are being followed. The Karnataka government had to hold back a bill that would have made the IT sector's workday 14 hours long after facing backlash. So, from multiple sides, pressure is building in India to increase working hours from eight to 12 or more.Morally, ethically, and legally, what the L&T Chairman has casually put forward is problematic, says another labor leader, Milind Ranade. “To suggest that India’s labour protective laws are a hurdle to development is propaganda. The laws exist, but to implement them, unions like ours engage in multiple negotiations and constant follow-ups. People are already spending 3-4 hours commuting for work and often work more than 8 hours because they don’t want to lose their employment. “Many companies have already stopped paying for overtime. Not everyone enjoys the luxurious life of a CEO. The civilised world has moved away from a ‘slave culture,’ and the health and dignity of working individuals must be considered. What is nation-building and growth if the health of workers is compromised by illegal long working hours?” he asks. medium nocaption117375425How does India compare to the rest of the world? Indians work more than the majority of the world. On average, an employed person in India works 46.7 hours per week, according to the International Labour Organisation. Over 51% of employees in the country log more than 49 hours each week, the second highest in the world after Bhutan. The ILO's ‘Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World’ report from 2023 reveals that over one-third of global workers regularly work more than 48 hours per week, while about 20% work fewer than 35 hours per week, often in part-time roles. It also highlights the gap between actual working hours and workers’ preferred hours, emphasising that working longer than desired negatively impacts workers' work-life balance.Some countries are already moving towards further reducing the standard eight-hour workday. In 2017, a Swedish councilor proposed adding a one-hour sex break to workers' benefits as part of an effort to enhance work-life balance.In 2019, Microsoft Japan conducted an experiment with a four-day workweek, resulting in a 40% boost in productivity. The trial, held in August, led to more streamlined meetings and increased employee satisfaction, with workers taking fewer sick days.Germany successfully reduced unemployment after the global financial crisis and during the Covid-19 pandemic by implementing the ‘Kurzarbeit’ scheme, which involved reducing working hours instead of laying off workers. This approach was also adopted by Belgium, France, and Italy to help mitigate the economic impact and preserve jobs. medium nocaption117375436There are also new forms of working time such as compressed workweeks, staggered working time arrangements, annualised working hours, flexitime and on-call work, which offer both new opportunities and challenges.