90-hrs work-week
Mumbai: An innocuous ‘progressive’ remark by Larsen & Toubro group Chairman-Managing Director S. N. Subrahmanyan (SNS) - mooting a 90-hour-week or deterring his 4-lakh plus employees from ‘staring’ at their wives on Sundays - triggered a massive backlash engulfing India Inc, trade unions, celebs and commoners alike besides acidic outpour or lampooning on the social media.
The comment – coming at a time when India almost scraped the bottom (126 out of 143) in the World Happiness Report-2024 – saw SNS mostly getting frowned upon by the likes of Gautam Adani, Anand Mahindra, Harsh Goenka, Adar Poonawalla, Rajiv Bajaj, Harsh Mariwala, CITU, AITUC and Deepika Padukone and other women, plus many more.
Apparently avoiding a direct attack, Adani – the second richest Indian in the world – told an interviewer that nobody should ‘impose’ their individual work-life balance on others.
The Adani Group chief also advocated employees to find their own ‘work-life’ balance while exhorting that they spend at least four hours with the family, and if both sides were happy, then it would be well.
Flaying SNS, the All India Trade Union Congress General Secretary Amarjeet Kaur said though India has the need for all the work hours possible, “what about the raging unemployment” with a lot of youthful energy going waste.
Hitting hard, she (Kaur) said that the wealth created by the existing workforce at an (average) 48 hours a week is siphoned off by “leeches like Adanis, Ambanis, Choksis, Modis and others” increasing the rich-poor divide in India to a level where it was 80 years ago.
Terming SNS’ statement as ‘satanic’, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) General Secretary Tapan Kumar Sen suspected a ‘rogue competition among corporate messiahs” to rinse the blood and sweat of Indian workers in connivance with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government.
The AITUC’s All India Working Women’s Forum Convenor Vahidha Nizam condemned the objectification, dehumanization and disrespect shown to the womenfolk by SNS’ remarks.
“Wives are not to be adorned or be ‘stared at’… Subrahmanyan should know that a woman is an independent entity and her identity is not defined by her relationships,” she added sternly.
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