Russian billionaire calls for 12-hour, 6-day work weeks: ‘We need to work more’

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska is worried about the country’s slowing economy, and has one possible solution to address the issue. Deripaska said on Monday that Russians should work 12-hour days, six days a week to save the economy.Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska is in favour of longer work weeks.According to a Business Insider report, the billionaire, who began his career as a metals trader, said that Russia’s slowing economy is not a temporary downturn caused monetary policy.”This crisis is deeper. It is caused a difficult transformation: from the global opportunities we once had to regional ones, with all sorts of restrictions,” Deripaska said in a Telegram post.“Work more,” says billionaireThe Russian argued that his country needed to take advantage of its only real resource — a “national characteric.””In difficult moments, we know how to pull ourselves together and work more,” wrote Deripaska.(Also read: ‘80-hour weeks aren’t extreme’: Indian founder in San Francisco backs 14-hour workdays)The founder of Rusal, a major aluminum producer, went on to suggest that working 12 hours a day, six days a week could help combat the economic slowdown.”The sooner we switch to this new schedule — from 8 am to 8 pm, including Saturdays — the faster we will complete this transformation,” he said in his post.The argument for longer work weekDeripaska is hardly the first entrepreneur who has suggested longer working hours as a way to nation building. Closer home, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has also advocated for 70-hour work weeks.“India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading, I don’t know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress,” Murthy said in 2023.“So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say ‘this is my country. I want to work 70 hours a week. This is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War,” Narayana Murthy had said.(Also read: Narayana Murthy points to China’s 9-9-6 rule to advocate 72-hour work week)