Karnataka News: When Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy made a statement about working 70 hours a week (14 hour shift) in October 2023, he was criticized all over the country. Now there is an uproar over the alleged plan of the Siddaramaiah government.
14 Hour Shift: The uproar over the issue of job reservation in Karnataka had not completely subsided when another scheme of the state government started creating a ruckus. In fact, the Congress government led by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is now considering making the shift of those working in the IT sector in the state 14 hours. This decision will also apply to employees of the IT/ITES/BPO sector. This scheme is being criticized from the streets to social media. At the same time, the suggestion of 70 hours of work a week by N R Narayan Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, the second largest company in the Indian IT sector, regarding working hours has once again come into the headlines.
First Narayana Murthy and now Siddaramaiah
It is worth noting that when Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy made a statement about working 70 hours a week in October 2023, it was criticized all over the country. Although his statement was supported by stalwarts like Sajjan Jindal and Bhavish Aggarwal, Bangalore’s famous cardiologist (heart doctor) Dr. Deepak Krishnamurthy has opposed Narayana Murthy’s statement. He had said that working 12 hours a day will have a direct impact on the hearts of the employees, which cannot be accepted.
Now employee unions have protested
The plan related to the IT sector has created an atmosphere of fear among those working in other sectors. Now the Karnataka State IT/ITES Employees Union (KITU) has appealed to the Siddaramaiah-led government to reconsider its alleged plan to increase working hours for employees of the IT/ITES/BPO sector, keeping in mind humanitarian grounds. According to the union, the government is planning to increase the working hours for employees to 14 hours per day, that decision is wrong.
A union statement said that a proposal to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act in this regard was presented in a meeting convened recently by the Labour Department with various stakeholders of the industry. Labour Minister Santosh Lad, officials of the Labour Department and the Ministry of Information Technology and Biotechnology (IT-BT) attended the meeting, which was also attended by representatives of the union. The union strongly opposed the proposed amendment, which it (the union) said was an attack on the fundamental right to private life of any employee. The labour minister agreed to hold another round of discussions before taking any decision, the release said.
The union said the proposed new bill ‘Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments (Amendment) Bill 2024’ seeks to normalise the 14-hour working day, while the existing Act only allows a maximum of 10 hours of work per day, including overtime. The union claimed that the amendment will allow companies to adopt a two-shift system instead of the currently prevalent three-shift system and lay off one-third of the workforce.
Hunger to please ‘corporate’ bosses?
During the meeting, KITU pointed to studies related to the health impact of increased working hours on IT employees and said that the Karnataka government, in its hunger to please its ‘corporate’ bosses, is completely neglecting the most fundamental right of any person, the right to life.
The union said that this amendment shows that the Karnataka government is not looking at employees as human beings who need personal and social life to survive. Instead it sees them merely as machinery to increase the profits of the ‘corporates’ it serves.
More than 20 lakh people will be affected
The association urged the government to reconsider and warned that any attempt to go ahead with the amendment would be an open challenge to the 20 lakh employees working in the IT/ITES sector in Karnataka.
