The Brief Graveyard Shift at Nepal's Tribhuwan International Airport

A range of issues came to the fore when Nepal's Tribhuwan International Airport's workforce had to be mobilized for 24-hour shifts recently. The communication of vital information between shifts became an issue. The levels of depreciation of the workers needed to be judged carefully. Preparations for “random accidents” needed to take place. Continuous encouragement had to be given to prevent fatigue from becoming the precursor to a political movement of workers' unrest. To fulfill these tasks, the whole managerial artifice of the airport had to be awake once a small but important portion of the airport had to work for 24 hours. The 24-hour shift, a rarity in Nepal, brought the nation within the set of those countries that operate their national-capitalist system throughout the night, like a machine that can operate without tiring. The seeds were sown in Nepal for the depreciation of the workforce to not become a hindrance in the vitality/operation of the capitalist machine; the workforce could be replaced, a new idea in itself for Nepal, or the workers' depreciation monitored continuously and countered as much as possible. A new model of “insomniac capitalism” became a possibility for the businessmen of Nepal as the strength of the work ethic of Nepali airport workers became evident. The airport management could be scrutinized closely to see whether Nepali workers could be submitted to graveyard shifts. And also, for the workers themselves, more important than earning money from the graveyard shift was the need to uphold a favorable image of Nepal as a hardworking nation.

In general, when we take the workforce in its entirety, we often find that it is a machine. The ability of two human beings to operate one after the other to perform the same tasks is vital in the formation of this machine. Without a loss of productivity, the day shift laborer hands over the responsibilities of work to a night-shift laborer and so on the relay goes, throughout the day. A communicative relationship ensures that day-shift and night-shift laborers are able to continue with work as long as one of the workers is able to communicate to the other the nature of the work to be performed and any specific details regarding the work of a particular day. We cannot speak of Marxist alienation at work in the machine-like work system because there is an imperative to communicate between two workers so that work may be done day and night in a number of shifts. Alienation only applies to that period of history when work was completed for the day after workers left the factory. In a system that operates without taking a break, the workers are responsible for seeking out and communicating with other workers the details of the task and the responsibilities ahead, so the workers are not alienated from one another, but come into contact too much.

What enabled the construction of this machine? Perhaps the workers' unions are an important factor, because we can locate in their activities a concept of machine-like capitalism. The workers' unions keep the machine in place and running through an accurate judgment of workers' depreciation and the effective prevention of “random depreciation” such as workplace accidents, spontaneous worker unrest etc. The workers' union also has a hand in the observation and judgment of the worker's health and abilities, and creates the proper conditions for the worker to either change to a graveyard shift or to resign, all in order that the machine is run smoothly. The workers' unions, in this role, are the most capitalist of entities, for they are not concerned with the generation of profit only, they are beyond that, their concern is ensuring that capitalism as a system produces in a constant flow, that it has a rhythm, that it is humming like a healthy machine...a poetic-philosophical image of capitalism which is quite tempting and hard to erase. The problem is that, these days, such is the level of habituation of the worker to work that the workers do not know when to stop working.

It has to be said that money, in this regard, is not the culprit responsible for a kind of unhealthy 'workaholic.' Money is not the enslaving/oppressive symbol that submits people to work beyond their will, rather, money is the symbol of people's eagerness to work; money is the object which symbolizes people's drive to work. Money is a symbol made by the people, it is not a symbol acting on the people. Given the free reign and circulation that money has in society, it seems to be resistant to its political management, and seems rather to be a cultural object, an object which is much more free in its flows throughout the globe, which is seldom the object of political scrutiny and censorship. Even if we make an allowance to say that the flows of money are in part economically and politically determined, we still have to say that the most worthwhile earning and spending of money is determined by our cultural practices, norms and habits. Unlike political signs, which are imposed on the worker, money then is a symbol of hard work formed by the workers in the celebration of their collective and machine-like endeavor.