Amid the ongoing controversy over the 90-hour work week debate, a former employee of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has come to the defense of the construction firm’s chairman SN Subramanian. Subramanian has been a favorite child of controversy ever since his comment about workers working 90 hours a week went viral for all the wrong reasons.
The former L&T employee, identified as Ame Kulkarni, said in a post on X that the chairman’s comments were in line with what the construction firm needed. He also recounted his interactions with Subramanian during his long stint at L&T from 2015 to 2017.
“I have worked with Larsen & Toubro for two years. Also interacted with Mr. SN Subramanian a few times in 2015. The working weekend was always stressful and taxing for me. But his 90-hour work The comment of the week matches exactly what his company needs,” he said in his post.
He also said that L&T is a hierarchical organization like the Army where knowledge, creativity and smartness are not as important as work ethic and discipline.
Needless to say, the L&T employee received a huge backlash from netizens. Social media users suggested that if L&T has so much work going on, they need to hire and train more people.
“If you have so much demand for work, how to hire more workers? Then assign work in shifts. But how will that work if labor costs go up and Mr. Subra won’t be able to pad the bottom line,” shares There will be” don’t grow, he won’t get his paltry salary of 50 crores, etc. Way to fool people, lol (sic),” one user wrote.
“If your boss wants to complete the metro project in 5 years instead of 10, he should hire more people instead of asking the workers already there to work extra hours. This will help reduce unemployment. ,” another user said.
“L&T has to hire more people, train them and make sure they all work according to the law. You don’t expect to work 90 hours to complete your projects. Hiring more also increases employment,” said a third user.
“What kind of logic is that? If you want people to work at night to complete a project in half the time, you hire two teams that work at night and do more work during the day. If you If you draw the same people, it will not cause problems in the project but they will not be able to work efficiently, perhaps, they have many orders but it costs very little increase which makes the government more money. Meets, I think in the national interest, like L&T Corporates should rethink their approach,’ commented another user.
The L&T chairman’s comments drew strong criticism from the likes of actress Deepika Padukone, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, and RPG Enterprises boss Harsh Goenka. While Padukone called the suggestion “shocking”, Mahindra said it’s the quality of work that matters rather than the number of hours.
Goenka, on the other hand, said working such long and taxing hours is a “recipe for burnout”.
