Chronic corporate exploitation

Any leader who makes casual remarks that clearly devalue employees has dubious professional integrity.
Image used for representational purposes only
Image used for representational purposes only
Updated on
2 min read

CHENNAI: Recently, not one but two notable corporate leaders made public remarks about wanting to make Indians work longer hours. In November, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy said in a podcast that he recommends a 70-hour workweek for productivity’s sake, and reiterated this thought in the press this month, claiming that he himself worked up to 90 hours a week until retirement.

Last week, an undated video featured Larsen & Toubro India’s chairman SN Subrahmanyan, urging employees to work 90-hour weeks, with two particularly insulting lines: “I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays” (emphasis mine) and “What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife?”

We cannot take these statements as mere rantings for two reasons. The first, obvious one, is that people in such positions have the power to instate or change policies and to penalise or incentivise. Others of similar status may follow suit, gradually impacting the entire white collar work culture for the worse — and make no mistake, it’s nowhere close togood as it is. L&T’s HR head released a statement about how “[Subrahmanyan’s] remarks were casual in nature,” but this is just spin-doctoring against the immediate backlash.

Any leader who makes casual remarks that clearly devalue employees has dubious professional integrity. In addition to the evident disregard for people’s rights to have lives beyond their jobs, Subrahmanyan’s comments also carry a ring of misogyny, indicating that the average employee is imagined as decidedly male.

The second reason is that important concepts regarding ethical labour practices, work- life balance, employee rights, and living wages have not truly become understood in India yet, let alone implemented. Companies with smart PR strategies may spout well-crafted campaigns about well-being, inclusivity, and diversity and supportive work environments, but only those on their payroll will know the truth.

I know I don’t speak only for myself when I say I have had to work for some truly exploitative people and organisations whose façades were full of buzzwords. The reality is that unless the nexus between caste, class, and capitalism is systematically tackled, and those in leadership roles, both influential and smaller, implement vast changes in their own mindsets and approaches, those vital concepts will remain just talking points. We who have to earn a living can only push back so much when the entire culture is built on unfairness.

Indeed, one part of this conversation that needs a closer look is that while few of us will challenge those talking and thinking points on a conversational or theoretical level when it comes to ourselves and our careers, the idea that the human infrastructure that actually undergirds our privileged lives in this country — domestic staff, delivery service executives and homemakers — should also have better working hours, employment conditions and commensurate earnings is not something that will occur to everyone.

Even we who are not in traditional leadership roles may be complicit. Those 70 to 90-hour workweeks have always been what working class lives are like. We easily understand why such demands are wrong for, say, the IT industry. Change may begin when we accept it’s wrong for everyone, too.

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