"...extending the working day...not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself." - Karl Marx, Das Kapital
On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company made a radical change, to the amusement of their competitors: in one fell swoop, they both doubled the pay and decreased the mandated working hours for their employees, from 9 hours to 8.
Within two years, they had increased their production and doubled their profits. Their competitors soon followed suit.
Today, in most industrialized countries, the 8-hour work day is standard. In fact, in a shift toward less menial labor and more stimulating and enjoyable jobs, the hours per day worked by those in the upper divisions of education and wealth are on the rise: we all know stories and have seen in movies the workaholic wealthy businessmen who practically sleep in their offices and brag about the 80 hours a week put in at their high-rises. But there is a difference between working long hours at a job you enjoy, whose remunerative and personal benefits are tied directly to the hours you spend at it even when you're salaried, and the 12-hour 6-to-7 day a week shifts put in by many who sign up to be the labor force of emerging markets and developing-world economies, who are not so much a slave to financial gains as they are a slave to their survival.
An article in the Economist discusses the shift: "Back in 1899 Thorstein Veblen, an American economist who dabbled in sociology, offered his take on things. He argued that leisure was a 'badge of honour'. Rich people could get others to do the dirty, repetitive work—what Veblen called 'industry'. Yet Veblen’s leisure class was not idle. Rather they engaged in 'exploit': challenging and creative activities such as writing, philanthropy and debating. Veblen’s theory needs updating, according to a recent paper from researchers at Oxford University. Work in advanced economies has become more knowledge-intensive and intellectual. There are fewer really dull jobs, like lift-operating, and more glamorous ones, like fashion design. That means more people than ever can enjoy 'exploit' at the office."
So what about those who do not enjoy "exploit" at the office? Who, mostly in developing economies, still hold "really dull jobs" by the droves? How do you persuade companies that take advantage of systemic loopholes in labor laws, that enable them to turn a blind eye to small disregards in hours-per-day worked, to adopt "radical" change on their books?
The answer, of course, is not so simple.
In discussing labor laws at a friend's house in Geneva recently, a Scandinavian businessman told this story. The company he works for, which has a factory in Siberia, discovered that their contractors were overworking the Eastern European laborers who formed the factory's migrant workforce. They company demanded the men have their hours cut to 10 per day and that they have 1 1/2 days off a week. The result was that the men began to seek out extra work on their days and hours off, putting in time at other factories in order to accrue more money to send home to their families. In short, without the incentive of personal investment in one's free time, when the only investment being sought is the betterment of the lives of families abroad, more down time was simply more opportunity to work.
In gulf countries, many people in menial but mentally-taxing jobs, such as construction and taxi driving, work 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, a danger both to themselves and to others. Even when this labor force works for reputable companies, many of those on the lower rungs of the labor workforce, especially when hidden by clever contracts with third-party labor suppliers, end up with 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week. These hours leave little time for rest and recreation, forcing grocery shopping, cooking, laundry and general errands to be slotted inbetween long hours and crammed into single days off. On the one hand, a small price to pay for the "right to work"; on the other, an almost inhumane act considering the health and emotional side effects of such hours: depression, high-blood pressure, obesity, to name a few.
There is no easy solution for what to do about an over-worked workforce; certainly statistics that point to a rise in voluntary working hours becomes anecdotal evidence that extra work is a boon, and that people even desire to spend their time on the clock. But these anecdotes do little to better the lives of those who have been given few choices in life, who are not equipped to make the decision of bettering their personal lives verses bettering the lives of the families on the receiving end of remittances. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, no matter how disputed, does possess at least a modicum of merit: when survival needs have not been met, it is difficult to achieve self-actualization, and self-actualization is a motivation in economies all its own. It behooves employers to not wait for heavy labor laws to remand the loopholes in emerging markets. Ford's profit margins speak for itself: when people no longer have to scrape for survival, the profits they produce more than compensate for the time given over to leisure and personal fulfillment.