Punching down with punched cards

CHENNAI: If the State government has its way, our definition of work hours and play time could see a significant shift in the near future. The State had recently come out with the Draft Code on Wages, Industrial Relations as well as Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions.

As per the new rules, the existing work hour norm, which is eight hours a day, including rest intervals, has been revised to nine hours.

The Labour Department had published these rules last month and offered a window of 45 days in order to accept suggestions and objections to the proposal.

The release of this draft invited the wrath of many stakeholders including trade union chiefs who decried the proposal as a setback to hardwon labour rights. Ironically, the development was made public on the eve of the 100th anniversary of India’s first May Day celebration. Many workers referred to it as a cruel joke on part of the government considering that the celebration in 1923 was to commemorate the victory in capping work hours to eight per day.

As per trade unions, even though working hours per week are now capped at 48 hours, it’s just a matter of time before others exploit the caveat which says the nine work hours are excluding the break time or recess hours. Roughly, an individual might end up spending an average of 11 to 12 hours, or 50% of his or her day at the office.

But let’s take a step back and think about the nature of work from a bird’s eye perspective, in the light of the recent pandemic. For those who had the option to Work from Home, it seemed like a lot was getting done in almost half the time. The reason — an absence of routines that had become a mainstay of work culture for over a century. The daily commute sucked out a precious quantum of time. Those additional hours were in turn diverted to the home front, where a few professionals learned to multi-task while attending work calls on Zoom, minus the video, of course.

On the flip side, there was a lot of WFH fatigue, as the demarcation between work and leisure hours became less defined. That’s why many cheered when offices reopened as we rekindled our social networks in person and rediscovered the benefits of collaborative work, sans screens and earpieces. Setting aside commute times, extended work hours imply that people would need to spend an extra hour at office, whether or not their work is done. This will reduce personal time down to a trickle, and it’s also going to promote truancy as one lot of people will always find ways to finish a job in half the time, and use the rest of the hours to channel surf on the office internet or indulge in gossip.

But not everyone is as lucky as corporate staffers. Delivery boys and girls, factory workers, people working in essential services, hospitals, government offices, supermarkets, conservancy services and hundreds of such spheres of work do not have the luxury of WFH. Millions of these workers are the ones who stand to lose the most when a nine hour workday becomes the norm. In a nation, where private enterprises have zero regard for the notion of overtime, every additional hour at the workplace will entail a whole lot of reshuffling to be carried out on the home-fronts of employees. After all, everyone gets just 24 hours a day. If only the powers that be could understand that.

Are you in Chennai? Then click here to get our newspaper at your doorstep!