‘How long can you stare at your wife?’: L&T chief calls for 90-hour work week

Fueling ongoing debate on work-life balance, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) chairman SN Subrahmanyan has reportedly suggested that employees should not only work 90 hours a week but also work on Sundays. He seems to have gone one step further than Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy who sometime back recommended a 70-hour work week.

‘How long can you stare at your wife?’

During an employee interaction, when Subrahmanyan was questioned about L&T’s policy of working 6 days a week, he is supposed to have said he regretted that he could not make them work on Sundays as well, according to a report in India Today.

Watch | Why Narayana Murthy's 70-hour work week is unrealistic?

“I regret I am not able to make you work on Sundays. If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy, because I work on Sundays,” he said in a video posted on Reddit.

“What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? Come on, get to the office and start working,” he told his employees.

Chinese anecdote

To buttress his argument for a 90-hour week, the L&T chairman shared with them a conversation he had had with a Chinese man, who claimed that China could surpass the United States because the Chinese worked 90 hours a week whereas the Americans put in only 50 hours a week.

“So that’s the answer for you. If you have got to be on top of the world, you have to work 90 hours a week. Get going, guys. Come on,” said Subrahmanyan in the video.

Watch | Will you work 12 hrs a day, 6 days a week? How practical is Narayana Murthy’s advice?

Criticism from netizens

The undated video of the L&T chairman airing his views on the need for employees to not only work 90 hours a week but also on Sundays went viral, and netizens were quick to criticise him.

Some questioned Subrahmanyan’s understanding of work-life balance, some wondered about his family life and whether he was happy at home, and others criticised the very culture of promoting the concept of overwork.

“So unfortunate we have such business leaders! I think we must call them “leaders in baby diapers” (smiley emoticon). I had a few close friends who worked at L&T Madras. About 10 years ago. Going by what they said about the work culture, I felt it was like an adults’ kindergarten,” commented one reader.

Also read: Narayana Murthy ‘requests’ youngsters to work 70 hrs a week, netizens see red

‘Don’t care about competing with China’

“I don’t care about competing with China. Let China become number one; it doesn’t make any difference to me. I just want to sit with my family and enjoy the limited time I have here on earth with my loved ones. Even after paying so much tax, there isn’t a single proper road in my locality. The garbage dumps aren’t even covered; everything is out in the open. Every other day, a flyover or bridge collapses, and new expressways already have cracks and potholes. Fix all this first, then come and ask me to work 90 hours a week. China has progressed because its government is efficient from top to bottom, unlike here, where everything is stuck in babu raj, and every issue gets blamed on the middle class,” wrote another irate user on Reddit.

“TM Nair was a great leader in L&T. Now we have clowns sitting there. Boomer uncles, please retire soon,” was the advice given by another.

What especially drew the ire of several people was the fact that the head of a large multinational company was trivialising the personal lives of employees, and his comment about “staring at one’s wife”.