José Elías: 'Working 8 hours a day is called slavery'

José Elías: 'Working 8 hours a day is torture'

Working eight hours is not slavery. Earning an amount for them that doesn't cover the rent for a room comes pretty close. That's the line separating businessman José Elías from a large portion of the Spanish payroll. 'We've raised a generation that calls working 8 hours a day slavery,' he said. He added: 'The sad thing is that, besides leaving them with economic debt, we're teaching them that working 8 hours a day is torture.'

The two statements, reported by Diario AS, have been enough to reopen a conversation that isn't really about hours. It's about prices. About the cost of living and what the market pays for living by working.

What exactly did José Elías say

Elías didn't just blurt out a spontaneous phrase at a bar. He's a businessman with a constant media presence, including a podcast, and his message has a recognizable structure: the problem isn't the system, it's the attitude of those working within it. He hasn't specified the economic debt he mentions at any point.

His thesis is based on a debatable premise: that the eight-hour workday is perceived today as a punishment rather than the civilizing minimum it was when achieved. Some argue that precisely this achievement is being undone through low wages.

How much does the State take from each paycheck?

The most repeated breakdown isn't signed by any official body, but it circulates widely: the 21% VAT charged on each invoice, between 20% and 25% income tax or corporate tax depending on the case, and 45% of the salary for each worker in social security contributions. The sum presented as a headline figure, that the State takes 65% of the cost of employment, mixes different bases and doesn't equate to what appears on the payslip.

The relevant point isn't the accuracy of the calculation, but its rhetorical function: it shifts the argument from working hours to the percentage of your labor that doesn't belong to you. And there, anger doesn't distinguish political lines.

The shift that doesn't fit the effort theory

Where the argument breaks down is in the actual calendar. Those who work shifts describe weeks of five working days, one day off, three working days, and three days off to start again. Others combine a split shift with a two-hour lunch break: ten hours away from home to earn for eight. Added to this are things not mentioned in any contract, like moving targets, increased supervision, and induced errors.

The issue of the eight hours is actually fought over the eight hours plus everything else. Those who measure it by the time clock and those who measure it by physical wear and tear are not talking about the same thing.

A salary that doesn't even cover shared housing

Here the analysis becomes almost unanimous, even among those who reject the word slavery: if the salary were enough to live on, this conversation wouldn't exist. The most common scenario is someone working full-time, renting a shared room, and having no prospect of buying a home.

Working stops being a path to pogre and becomes a way of not sinking further each month. When this continues for years, the word slavery stops sounding like youthful exaggeration.

From the sixties to the housing boom

The generational comparison is where things get most tangled. It's recalled that in the sixties, a 40-hour split shift was enough to support a house, family, and a holiday apartment on the coast in August. Today, 35 hours under contract or the minimum wage leave you with a packed lunch and an apartment with more tenants than rooms.

At the same time, some argue the opposite of what the businessman implies: that recent generations are more docile towards company authority than previous ones, and that this docility allows conditions to deteriorate without resistance. The image of the housing boom, with apprentices who dropped out of school to work on scaffolding because they paid like stars, serves as a reminder of what happens when money isn't scarce: no one asks how many hours are involved.

The businessman and the system: suspicions without proof

In the final section, the focus shifts to the speaker. It's argued that the big Spanish businessmen who get rich create little real value and act more as intermediaries, and that it's impossible to get rich here without proximity to public funds. Speculation about the specific origin of his fortune is offered without any supporting evidence.

None of this is supported by data, and it's worth remembering before turning a suspicion into an accusation. Criticism of a business model is legitimate; baseless fruta is not.

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With salaries below the cost of housing, the label of slavery is not going to disappear from the labor vocabulary, and any similar statement is likely to receive the same response. What is not at all clear is that the diagnosis will change anything: the workday is better defended with a contract than with an adjective, and conditions improve when someone has the real capacity to negotiate them. On that, they will most likely continue to disagree.