When work is a ‘warship’: Pushback to government’s 12-hour working day proposal

Bengaluru: The Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) has called upon the entire working class to resist the Karnataka government’s move to increase the working hours in IT/ITES/BPO sector to 12 hours a day.

The proposal to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act to facilitate a 12-hour working day was presented at a meeting called by the labour department on 18 June with various stakeholders in the industry.

Labour Secretary and other officials from the Department of Labour attended the meeting. Representing the employees in the IT/ITeS sector were KITU General Secretary Suhas Adiga and Secretary Lenil Babu.

KITU representatives strongly raised opposition to the proposed amendment, which they claim posed a serious attack to the basic rights of any worker to have a personal life.

“The proposed amendment to the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act attempts to normalize a 12-hour working day. The existing act only allows a maximum of 10 hours work per day including overtime. This amendment will allow companies to go for a two-shift system instead of the currently existing three-shift system and one-third of the workforce will be thrown out of jobs,” they alleged.

During the meeting, the KITU representatives pointed out the detrimental impact this new policy will have on worker health and said it would not be sustainable.

A recent report on mental health in workplace, they said, proclaimed that 90 percent of corporate employees in India under the age of 25 were struggling with anxiety, and deaths and suicides due to excessive work pressure were becoming common in the IT sector.

The recent suicide of a software engineer at OLA’s Artificial Intelligence unit in Bengaluru, due to extreme work pressure, underlines this situation, they said, and added that increasing the working hours would further aggravate this situation.

They alleged that the Karnataka government  was too eager to please the corporates in their hunger for investments into the state, but this was in complete contrast to the fundamental rights of any individual — the right to live and live well.

This amendment shows that the government was unwilling to recognize workers as human beings who also require personal and social lives to survive, they said, and urged the system to stop viewing them as machines instead.

KITU said that they claim of the loyalties of 20 lakh employees in the sector and any move to dehumanize them would be met with strong resistance.