Starting with an article dated 25 November 2008 of Times of India with heading “IT goes for more working hours”
The staring paragraph of this article was: “Technology firms are increasing working hours and monitoring the hours worked far more rigorously than ever before in a bid to squeeze more out of employees in these difficult times.”
But the question arise that does increasing working hours will increase the productivity?? An increase in working hours will directly impact productivity and revenues, but how?
The reason is:” By increasing work hours by an hour a day an employee works an additional 22 hours a month. If an hour of his/her work is billed at $20, the company makes an additional billing of $440 per employee. That means, in rupee terms, a single employee can bring in additional revenues of Rs 22,000 a month for the company.” Now that makes sense …right?
But what about employees?. Are they happy? Of course not, one employee of an MNC says “Some people are good and are capable of finishing even the extra work that is given to them in 8 hours. So they are wondering why they should hang around for 9 hours “
Ok I agree that increased working hours will increase the revenues but one should be paid for these extra hours because According to the Factories Act, (refer this article )workers being made to work for more than 8 hours a day have to be paid overtime. The time limit for even overtime is fixed at eight hours a week. “This is an internationally accepted norm that workers can work for 1/3rd of the 24 hours. Beyond this, workers need rest. All work beyond this limit has to be compensated in terms of overtime. I am just wondering whether this act is also applied for private firms(specially IT) or not?
