Manu Joseph: What promoters of hard work don’t get about workers

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. About 20 years ago, the five-day week was not common in India. Some people in an office in Mumbai approached their boss to demand it.

The boss said he had no problem with this very modern global idea; he would ask the proprietor. But, he said, they should know what the owner would probably ask. “So the work that takes six days now can be done in five?" If the answer is ‘yes,’ he would consider the office overstaffed, proceed to sack 17% of the workforce and retain the six-day week for those who survive.

I don’t think the boss was exaggerating. This is how most owners think even today, notwithstanding the fact that they have made peace with the five-day week. They want people to work hard because they believe that’s what workers should do.

And ‘work-from-home’ is not their idea of work. A few days ago, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, rebuked his employees for resisting his demand to end work-from-home and return to the five-day week system. Over 1,200 employees had signed a petition asking for more flexible working hours.

In an address to the bank’s employees that was leaked on the internet, he is heard saying that they were too distracted on Zoom, “…looking at your mail, sending texts to each other… I call a lot of people on Friday… not a goddamn person to get a hold of… I can’t stand it anymore… I come in and I’m like, ‘Where’s everybody else?’... We didn’t build this great company by doing that. By doing the same semi-diseased [bleep] that everybody else does." Now and then, an Indian business patriarch would say Indians should be working long hours in office.

Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy said Indians should work 72 hours a week. S.N.