On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 9:24 AM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: [...]
> > But regular time off once a week is alien in India, cruel as it may sound. > If > you look at Indian businessmen, traders, farmers and priests there is no > concept of taking one day off in a week. Oh yes people take time off > regularly > every day. Maybe they sleep every afternoon, and take time off for > festivals. > On the street outside my house street vendors, male or female are there > every > day of the week. but during some festivals - notably Pongal or Dussehra > they > vanish for several weeks at a stretch. This is the very complaint Indian > employers have about unskilled Indian labor. If you are constructing a > house > in India, work will come to a standstill during some festivals, even if it > goes on day in and day out 7 days a week. > > [...] > > But I think the focus will have to shift outside India to find out who > thought > up the idea of a 40 hour week. I recall that when I was a boy, most > developed > western nations had only Sunday off and maybe half day Saturday. I vaguely > recall the time that work week was reduced to 5 days a week and 8 hours a > day. > 5 days a week 8 hours a day is unnatural. It is unnatural for the police, > doctors, firemen and a whole lot of others. It is unnatural for farmers and > soldiers. Unnatural for seamen and fishermen. It seems normal only for > employees working for someone. > There is one sociologist called Robert Castel who describes the process by which workers were disciplined to work as today. To have a separation between work time and non-work time. It was not always like that even in the late XIX and early XX century. The 40 hour work week came as a worker conquest and came as kind of a consequence of the way society and economy were structured after WWII. Salaries to workers were increased and they got time off so they would not only be producers, but also consumers of mass produced-goods. Before that time there was no expectation that workers would be entitled to paid time off, or that they would be required to work through festivals. It was just as you describe for India. Andre
