India and the 70-hour work week

DW (English)

Young Indians should work 70 hours a week, demands an Indian billionaire. How does that compare to Germany, where there are clear working hours and a weekend off? Why are there rules about this in Germany but not in India?

Transcript

00:00 Narayana Murthy is the co-founder of the Indian software company Infosys, and he's a billionaire.

00:09 He has suggested that young people in India should work 70 hours a week to further boost

00:13 economic growth.

00:15 But why?

00:18 I don't quite understand where Mr. Narayan Murthy is coming from.

00:22 If at all anything, it's the senior bosses perhaps who need to be told that, you know,

00:28 they should be working hard, because they are the ones perhaps who have very little

00:32 to contribute in actual generation of value or performance.

00:40 Many people in India work under very hard conditions.

00:45 Long working days are quite common.

00:51 The average time, especially amongst the semi-skilled, unskilled workers, would range anywhere between

00:58 10 to 16 hours a day.

01:01 Even in the IT sector, where many well-trained programmers work, high expectations lead to

01:06 long working days.

01:09 The contract is basically saying that you ought to be available.

01:13 So in that sense, it actually violates the notion of a specific working time.

01:18 So the work then actually spills over into the leisure time.

01:23 And there is no way you can escape or say that, look, I'm no longer at the workplace,

01:28 so I have no obligation to really render you any service.

01:32 This is not something that is expected of an employee.

01:37 Long working hours can have serious health consequences.

01:41 Among those who work more than 55 hours a week, 745,000 people worldwide die of a stroke

01:47 or heart attack each year.

01:49 The figure is highest in Southeast Asia, with over 318,000, followed by the Western Pacific

01:56 with 208,000, the Eastern Mediterranean region with 77,000, and Europe with 57,000 deaths

02:03 per year, America as a whole with around 43,000, and Africa with just under 40,000.

02:14 They spend less time doing things that we know are good for their health.

02:18 So exercising, spending time with friends and family, sleeping, taking time off when

02:24 they're sick, right?

02:25 A lot of people feel pressure to keep working when they're ill.

02:30 In most European countries, people work less than 40 hours a week.

02:36 But how did this figure actually come about?

02:40 The eight hours is fairly arbitrary.

02:42 It comes out of a worker movement to have eight hours of work, eight hours of rest,

02:47 and eight hours to do what you want.

02:49 So that eight hours, which we've come to think of as being the standard, is really not something

02:55 that was ever established as the right number of hours for people to work.

03:00 Today there are many working hours models around the world.

03:03 Germany is currently considering reducing its work week to four days.

03:07 Other countries are sticking to longer working hours, depending on the culture, economic

03:11 situation, and employee rights.

03:14 At 52.6 hours, the United Arab Emirates has the longest average work week.

03:19 In India, it's five hours less.

03:21 In China, people work more than 46 hours per week.

03:26 In the U.S., it's 36.4 hours.

03:30 While Germany is one of the countries with the shortest work week, at 34.3 hours.

03:39 This has been hard won over the past century.

03:42 And yet many Germans still feel that their work-life balance is not right.

03:51 We need to depart from the idea that if you reduce working hours, the worker will win

03:58 and the employer will lose.

04:00 That's not how things work.

04:03 After all, employers also benefit.

04:06 It has long been proven that less work does not necessarily come with the expense of productivity.

04:11 On the contrary, a good work-life balance makes happy employees.

04:16 And they often achieve more in less time.

04:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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