The return of punishing work

When I read last month about the death of a young accountant in the India office of Ernst and Young due to overwork, it felt personal. I have known several friends in India and abroad who have quit their jobs for the same reasons that caused young Anna Sebastian Perayil’s death. I know several more who face existential crises because their jobs require them to choose between basic income and basic health.

To be sure, this is not just an Indian problem — or even a new one. Earlier this year, a Bank of America associate died in New York after allegedly working for 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row. In 2015, a Goldman Sachs intern died in London after working for 72 hours straight.

How did we get to a point when going to a mundane desk job could literally kill you?

The truth is that this isn’t your grandad’s work life. In the old days, when our fathers and grandfathers still organised into unions and fought for workers’ rights, people went to work for eight hours a day, clocked in and clocked out, and returned to their own lives after work. But with the advent of workflow technology and smart devices, people increasingly work all the time, wherever they are. A senior corporate executive once told me that he refused to accept a company smartphone or laptop. “If they give you the devices,” he said, “they will keep you in chains round the clock.”

But most young professionals don’t have the luxury of choice — and corporate attitudes have changed in the last few decades.

Back during the Industrial Revolution, most people worked a punishing 100 hours a week. Factory-owners operated with impunity and replaced workers easily when they burnt themselves out.

That changed in the 1920s when the Ford Motor Company reduced its working hours to 40 a week and set a standard for labour laws. At the time, its president, Edsel Ford, argued that the change would build a healthier workforce without sacrificing much productivity. “[Every] man should have more time to spend with his family, more time for self-improvement, more time for building up the place called home,” he declared.

That sentiment is now long gone. Last year, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy arguedthat India will not be “able to compete” unless young people worked 70 hours a week. A few years ago, Alibaba founder Jack Ma endorsed the ruthless Chinese work culture known as “996” — or 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. He said that those who work shorter hours “won’t taste the happiness and rewards of hard work.”

Murthy and Ma may paint rigorous work hours as the product of passion, but in fact, people work long hours because they have few alternative jobs. When Ford introduced the 40-hour workweek, it was because many of its workers were quitting for more interesting and less strenuous jobs at General Motors. At one point, Ford was losing almost four workers for every worker it hired.

But in the modern economy, the creation of skilled jobs is barely able to keep up with population. In India, as many as 8 million educated jobseekers are entering the workforce every year. Strikingly, one report from the International Labour Organisation says that Indians with graduate degrees are almost nine times likelier to be unemployed than those who can’t read or write.

All of this has effectively rendered skilled professionals disposable. Most employers know that if people who work for them quit or rebel, they can simply replace them with others who are just as desperate for work. At least in that sense, the Industrial Revolution has finally come to India. Welcome to the 1800s.