PM [1]
Rank : Helper
Status : Super Owner
#1
What is worse than an outrageous statement made by someone of note?
Writing about it.
What is worse than writing about it?
Researching about it.
What is worse than researching it?
Thinking about it.
What is worse than thinking about it?
Making sure that all this thinking is counted as ‘work' that is being clocked on a daily basis.
Work. It's an agent of both Eros and Thanatos. We live for and love work, or we die doing work. An oft-repeated quote on work attributed to Robert Frost, “By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day”, shows work to be the Janus-faced entity that it truly is. There are rewards and retributions attached to work and how we approach it.
When entrepreneurs and job creators extol the virtues of long work hours, it is imperative to examine the intent behind it. But let's look at the working habits of the rich and the poor before passing judgment on whether a 40-hour week needs to be buried in favour of a 90-hour week.
Brains Replace Hands
Factory workers are referred to as “hands” in Hard Times, Charles Dickens's novel set in 19th-century England. They work hard for very little. Their ‘weekend' seems to come not from any assertion of labour rights but religious reasons—Sundays were a holy day in the Christian world. The holiness of the Jewish world contributed to a longer weekend, with a free Saturday for observing Shabbat. The Islamic world observes Friday as a holy day meant to be away from work.
It was much later that labour laws in various countries codified humane working hours for “hands”. All of that has changed with the changing definition of the “hands”. Brains are the new hands. In an era of technological dominance, the brain makes an appearance on the work floor as the uniformed worker. There is a case to be made against the pedestrianising of the brain: it is, after all, deemed the most superior organ. But an organ it is, and, sometimes, it's the only organ that a person can use to earn a livelihood. When a technology giant makes a case for working more hours than the mandated ones, it is essential to understand what it really means. Simply put, technology sweatshops need brains to work overtime without paying them an overtime bonus.
To What End, Work?
Another idea emerging from this debate on work hours is the redefinition of the work the brain does. Is work to be defined as something that gets done within the punch-in, punch-out timeframe? Or does it also include the off-floor preparation it takes to be logged in? And what about networking and working the net?
Let's talk about the latter, too. In an ‘image' driven world, careful curations of personal life are put out to fetch professional gains. This ‘work' is not exclusive to those who earn a livelihood on the internet. All the work that goes into presenting oneself as a wealthy, urbane, intellectually engaging, and creative thinker has clear rewards. Like lying on one's resume and spreading fake news about one's qualifications through the grapevine, social media feeds are intended to grab attention for career progression opportunities. How does one quantify the hours spent there?
Working vs Pretending
There's no place for laziness in a highly competitive, profit-driven world. What some of the 90-hour workweek supporters forget is that it takes two to tango. Productivity and quality do not generally get negatively impacted because people work less-than-necessary hours, but because they put less of themselves in the necessary hours. That's where management's laziness and poor judgement play a significant role. Hiring people who appear to work or forcing people to appear to work are problems that are created by the heads of organisations, rarely by the hands.
If workers are not paid for the extra hours demanded, the stretched work schedule will become a self-limiting problem. People, without the commensurate reward, will pretend to work. It serves the greedy managers right. Additionally, those who actually ‘work' in those extra hours may never be recognised for their contribution to the altar of productivity. They are the unsung martyrs.
Work has the bad habit of turning everything it touches into itself. Everything has the potential of becoming work. Even Rihanna's sexy song Work, which, according to Spencer Kornhaber, is “about working for a paycheck no matter what else is going on in your life”.
How much of it do we need?
(The author is a Delhi-based author and academic.)