May Day, May Day! Lives at stake in the IT sector

CHENNAI: Over the years, job opportunities have increased for both men and women. A lot of money has been tinkling in their pockets, along with myriad of heart-related diseases, especially for employees in the IT sector.

Since money was pouring in as products were churned out, industrialists encouraged and exploited workers to work more and produce more to get paid more.

Then came a check and balance. International labour organisations in different parts of the world established, after years of struggle and at times loss of life too, the schedule of 8-hour days and 5-day per week. Soon, it became the norm everywhere, even during the industrial and electronic revolutions. Even former US President Henry Ford is said to have been a champion of this in America and TATA industries in India.

All this changed when software companies, ITEs and BPOs (of multinational and purely national) entered the Indian market and kick-started the Y2K windfall. The kind of salary, perks and comforts given by these conglomerates were beyond the standard in other sectors including the government, railways, banks, universities, construction, real estate, etc. Predictably, there was a mass exodus towards the proverbial El Dorado.

They earned hitherto unforeseen wealth, but the latter came with a dark shadow – diabetes mellitus, hypertension and several heart diseases. Soon, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) increased exponentially and India became the CVD capital of the world.

According to Rajiv Gupta, convenor of Cardiological Society of India (CSI), “There is a sharp increase in sudden cardiac death in India with young adults being the worst sufferers.” A study was in 2020 by AS Kumar et al titled ‘CVD in India – A 360-degree overview’ said that according to WHO, one-fifth of the deaths worldwide among young adults, come from India.

Another report by Dr N Ganesan, HoD-Cardiology, Madurai Meenakshi Mission Hospital Research Centre, CVD cases have doubled in the age group of 20-50 years between 2000 and 2020.

The main causes of CVD are smoking, drinking, consuming junk food, obesity, minimal physical activity, and work stress, among others. Add a surcharge of 10% for sleepless nights to an IT employee’s everyday schedule (as his clients in USA or UK are awake only at night), he becomes a perfect petri-dish of all lifestyle-related diseases, especially CVDs.

It’s important to reemphasise that most MNCs give their employees a work-load to be completed within a timeframe, which require at least 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. Which is why the 8-hour day for 5 days per week has no meaning in the Indian IT sector. No wonder, the so-called work-life balance exists only in theory or in motivational speeches.

Employees in the IT sector must wake up and fight for the 100-year-old hard-won right of a 40-hour work-week from today.

The present State government and the Labour Welfare department of the Union Government must ensure a healthy life span for our youths. Instead, our State government passes a bill in the Assembly for a 12-hour work rule in all corporate sectors.

This would fill coffers of the corporates, government departments and hospitals but it’d would bring a tale of woes to our homes in the future.

And it’s unbecoming to a welfare state like Tamil Nadu.

(The writer is a Research Chair in Laser Diagnosis of Cancers at King Saud University, Riyadh)