Silicon Valley is keen, once more, on a working pattern of 12-hour days, six days a week. It really is time for a new approach ...
M
y current cultural comfort food is The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes’ deeply silly Manhattan toffs-in-bustles drama, in which one storyline (summarily dealt with due to lack of taffeta-rustling opportunities, I suspect) features a tycoon’s downtrodden steelworkers going on strike for “888”: eight hours each of work, sleep and recreation.
That wasn’t a revolutionary demand in the 1880s. The slogan, coined by the utopian social reformer Robert Owen, dates from 1817 (his New Lanark mill workers still did 10.5-hour days, though). Even then, it wasn’t unprecedented: apparently, a 16th-century Spanish ordinance limited New World construction workers to eight-hour days.
So what would Owen or Philip II of Spain think of “996”? That’s working 9am to 9pm, six days a week – 72 hours of grind. Originating in the Chinese tech industry, 996 was described as a “blessing” by the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma. Chinese workers disagreed, mobilising against it online, and launching – and winning – court cases against employers.
