Carlos Slim wants a 3-day week. It wont work for India, but we need to get off our 6-day treadmil. If you have several score billions of dollars to your name, you can afford to put your feet up and treat life like one long holiday. So, when Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom billionaire whose wealth is currently valued at $79 billion , tells you that a three-day work-week with slightly longer work-hours should suit us all fine, one can wonder if he is speaking from la-la-land. However, when a man who employs thousands of employees talks about a three-day week, one cannot dismiss it as nonsense. So it is worth examining his logic and reasoning and check if it is workable, especially for us in India. Slim’s logic, to quote a Financial Times story mentioned in CBS News , offers two major reasons for this: one is about better work-life balance, with the balance tilting in favour of life outside work. Slim says: “With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life. Having four days (off) would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied. The other reason is that people may have to work longer anyway – well beyond the usual retirement age – as savings and pensions erode faster. Slim’s logic may work well in the developed world because work-weeks are anyway shorter at around 38-44 hours on an average and unemployment is high if not rising. So working 10-11 hours daily for three days a week would mean working around 30-33 hours a week – which is just marginally below France’s famed 35-hour work-week. It would also allow more people to be employed by companies. A 33-hour work-week would mean working over 1,700 hours a year. But, surprise, surprise, this is roughly the amount of work time in many parts of the world even now. According to this BBC report that quotes data from the US Federal Reserve, annual work hours are Rs 1,706 hours in the US, 1,708 in Canada, 1,706 in Japan, and 1,650 in UK. Continental Europe works less – in the range of 1,400-1,470 hours for Germany and France – while Asia slogs its butt off with Koreans doing 2,193 hours and Singaporeans 2,287 hours. Data for India and China were not in the story. So what does Slim’s suggestion actually amount to? A three-day week with 10-11 hours a day would amount to almost no net reduction in work time, but it has the advantage of separating work days from leisure/holidays and thus save time and money elsewhere. Technically, three-day weeks can increase employment opportunities for others, but this would work only for jobs where one person’s efforts can easily be substituted by another – like, say, on a factory floor. But, on the downside, working longer hours each day for three days would mean having to pay overtime more often – unless Slim’s idea is to forget about overtime since he is giving you four days off per week. Would a three-day week work for India, where average work-weeks run anywhere from 48-60 hours, and five-day weeks are not the norm? A few caveats are in order upfront. Actual work-weeks are tough to compute merely from presence in offices because they don’t take productivity into account. You could spend 10 hours in office, and five of them could be in the canteen or water cooler. Secondly, Indians may still be on a six-day week, but they tend to have more public holidays and paid leave – around 14-15 of the former annually (six in the US), and usually at least three weeks of paid leave, not to speak of leave called casual leave or sick leave. In the US, workers get an average of nine or 10 days of paid leave, and six days of national holidays, says this BBC report. Thirdly, work hours can be reduced only if productivity can be raised. In most Indian organisations, productivity is not even measured. So it is tough to assume most work hours are productive. People do time in the office, and it may not always be counted as work. Fourth, shorter work-weeks are relevant only if you are earning reasonably well. Higher wages in the west mean that working less may not seriously dent your lifestyle. For Indias poor and the middle classes, the work-leisure tradeoff is less wholesome, because most people have not achieved a minimum standard of living. Given a choice between working more and earning more and the opposite, the vast majority of Indians may choose the latter. That said, a shorter work-week would have the following benefits. *#1:* Suburban commutes, which take up several hours in most Indian cities, can be reduced. The time saved is time gained for a healthier life. A lot of the low productivity of Indian employees relates to the fact that long commutes makes them arrive tired for work. Stretching work-hours would also mean more commuting in off-peak time. *#2:* More jobs can be created if the work-week is shortened for those with jobs. However, this would work only if we have more flexible labour laws. If the laws remain rigid, employers will be unwilling to recruit more. *#3:* Indians typically have more family commitments than westerners – with social occasions – weddings, birth ceremonies, death rites, etc - being more elaborate than elsewhere. A short-work week would benefit our social lifestyle. *#4:* Shorter work-weeks also mean that the long list of annual holidays and leave entitlements can be cut. Conclusion: India needs a shorter work-week, but it has to be done in stages. We can’t straightaway crash a six-day work-week into a four-day or three-day one. At best, we can move to an assured five-day week, and then consider further reductions after studying the impact. Currently, while central government offices (and some states) work five days, most state governments offer five-and-a-half days (with every alternate Saturdays off), and many private sector organisations are officially into five days while effectively working five-and-a-half or even six.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 15:57:49 +0000
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