Question

Work in the IT sector is also subjected to Taylorist labour processes. Substantiate this statement with a suitable example.

Answer 1

Long working hours are central to the industry’s ‘work culture’. This is partly due to the time difference between India and the client site, such that conference calls tend to take place in the evening when the working day in the U.S. begins. Another reason is that overwork is built into the structure of outsourced projects. project costs and timelines are usually underestimated in terms of man-days, and because man-days are based on an eight-hour day, engineers have to put in extra hours and days in order to meet the deadlines. Extended working hours are legitimised by the common management practice of ‘flexi-time’, which in theory gives an employee freedom to choose his or her working hours (within limits) but, which in practice, means that they have to work as long as necessary to finish the task at hand.