35
hour working week and
restricted
overtime campaign
Un(der)employed People's Movement against Poverty Inc.
Contents of this page:
Let's make short work of unemployment
FINAL DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFERENCE
Links to other pages
35-hour-week: Lower incomes and more work. Working-time reduction in Germany
Campaign for 35 hour week in Belgium
IT'S TIME FOR A 35 HOUR WORK WEEK!
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE 35 HOUR WEEK CAMPAIGN?
The fraud of the 35-hour workweek in France
Archive:
CAN SHORTER WORK TIME HELP SAVE TORONTO'S PUBLIC WORKFORCE?
The Progressive Labour Party favours the French 35 hour work week - and more
Links on this site:
Articles
UPM Publications
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Articles from all over the World
Let's make short work of unemployment
The fact that over 1,000,000 of our people have no paid work surely calls for decisive action to overcome this obscenity
By Ken O'Hara - Unemployment Networking (please contact web master to get in contact with Ken)
Of the many causes - insatiable drives of profits, downsizing and privatising society's needs, it's the new electronic technologies that interweave all.
Witness the banks, or the Port Kembla STeelworks - 23,000 workers (in 1980) cut to 7000 today equals 16,000 fewer jobs, yet the planet produces more steel than ever.
Of course, computers and other advanced electronic processes are the boon of all businesses today, but millions are being thrown into permanent unemployment world-wide through them, including school leavers being denied the right of getting their feet onto the first rung of the ladder of adult life.
Statistics show there is now a million of our people without any paid work at all, while two to five million working people are overworking up to 60 hours weekly, while endangering their health and family well being.
Such are the negative results of the introduction of these electronic technologies. initially heralded as promising shorter hours and expanded leisure for all.
Now it is not for a moment suggested that these could be dispensed with, but rather that society needs to rationally and humanely face up to the social consequences. Additional to the human misery researchers Langmore and Quiggan calculated the economic cost to the national budget in 1994 as $20 billion yearly - all of course paid for from taxation.
Many say that the way, indeed the only way, out of unemployment is through more economic growth, in contradiction to the fact that the economic growth of the past ten years did not ease unemployment, with most new growth these days being jobless growth.
But there is another way ou of this dilemma, articulated in the early 1930's by that great thinker, German physicist, Albert Einstein:
"Only a fraction of the available human labour in the world is now needed for the production of the total amount of consusmption goods necessary for life... therefore the number of hours per week ought so to be reduced by law that unemployment is systematically abolished."
Now it is not, of course, that Einstein said this, that we should adopt it, but rather to ask ourselves is there another way?
France and some other European countries are now doing this, and it woould not be foreign to Australians, as there has been a repeated lessening of hours during our 200 year history: first in the world to legislate the eight hour day, and in 1947 reducing standard hours from 44 to 40 and than to 35 hours for some.
Businesses have always handled reduced hours and now a rational approach could include new governmental inputs such as the elimination of payroll and other taxes on employment, and unionists welcoming leisure time and more employment for their children, rather than always pressing for new wage increases, with less taxes for all through the elimination of the massive tax burden of unemployment.
The fall in hours would need to be big to soak up the large numbers of unemployed and rescue those being burdened by overwork. Overtime would have to be limited by law, except for urgent health and safety needs. For those who might query this, it is being done in France and Italy, Denmark and other countries. It could be here too, by law.
The esteemed British philosopher Betrand Russel advised, similar to Einstein, on this burning issue, saying:
"Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all, but we have chosen instead to have overwork for some, and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no need to go on being foolish forever."
FINAL
DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFERENCE
Annecy, France, 29 September - 1 October 2000
http://www.labournet.org/2000/Nov/decla.html
Combative trade unionism must co-ordinate its forces Europe-wide and world-wide to put into practice international solidarity and common actions in order to achieve the following demands and tasks:
1. In defending the existing rights and gaining new ones, we must base on the rights related with wages, working conditions, social security, etc. gained as a result of workers' struggles throughout the 20th century.
2. We demand recognition of trade union rights and freedoms in every country and an end to all anti-workers and anti-democratic legislation which ban or restrict the right to strike, the right to collective bargaining and trade union activity.
3. One of our main objectives is to reinforce our unions, and it is our urgent task to support and organise initiatives to increase trade union membership.
4. We draw attention to the need for a more advanced co-ordination of the actions of working people at the national and international levels.
5. It is one of our tasks to oppose unemployment and to make trade unions more sensitive to the fact that, irrespective of their gender, language, religion, etc. the unemployed are part of the working class. Our Conference also draws attention to the importance of the struggle against the anti-workers and anti-popular imperialist policies of institutions such as the IMF, WB, WTO and G7.
6. Defence of peace in Europe and in the world, abolition of the Atlantic alliance and Nato, the struggle for the withdrawal of imperialist forces from every country of the world, mainly from the Balkans, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, are among the demands that the trade union movement cannot overlook.
7. It is the international demands of the workers to fight for social, democratic and environmental rights, to oppose privatisation and heavy tax burdens, and to reject the commoditisation of health and education through privatisation.
8. We demand a 35-hour and 5-day working week and 7-hour working day without any reduction in the wages (the question of hours may vary from country to country).
9. We denounce the kneeling down of the trade union movement to big capital, and fight against the conciliatory line and the impositions on our unions to collaborate with capital.
10. We have set up a committee consisting of trade unionists from different countries to co-ordinate the decisions of the conference internationally and to do the preparatory work for the third conference.
11. We will oppose the employers, the governments in the service of capital, and the decisions of the Brussels Commission; and we will fulfil the requirements of the task to support the understanding of combative trade unionism.
12. Our first common action will be practised during the ILO meeting in Geneva in June 2001. This should be seen as a continuation of the activities in individual countries. Our common slogan will be "Let's internationalise our struggle against imperialist New World Order!"
Links to other web sites with articles about the 35 hour week:
35-hour-week:
Lower incomes and more work. Working-time reduction in Germany
Collective working-time reduction is being seen by many
as an effective instrument to fight the madness of today's capitalism
which produces millions of unemployed while forcing those employed to
work overtime. The demand for a 'radical working-time reduction' complements
that for a 'guaranteed income' where leftist unionists and welfare politicians
begin to co-operate. Shorter working hours seems a good idea to most,
but the (union) slogan of working-time reduction meets with deep mistrust
amongst workers.
Since the mid eighties it has been a crisis regulation mechanism in the hands of companies and unions, with workers experiencing double betrayal: working-time has not been reduced significantly, but the wages have gone down. The 35 hour week abolished the eight hour day and made possible a radical flexibilisation of working-time in industry. Unlike in France it was not introduced by law, but 'fought for' by the unions in 1984 in a seven and a half week strike.
To read more go to http://www.umwaelzung.de/35-hour.html
Campaign for 35 hour week in Belgium
After France and Italy, 35h in Belgium! That's the objective of an appeal launched in order reduce working time in Belgium. The initiators of this appeal demand a legislative initiative from the political parties and the Belgian government to come up the unemployed expectations.
To read more go to http://www.labournet.org.uk/1998/Jan/belgium.html
IT'S TIME FOR A 35 HOUR WORK WEEK!
The Fight for Shorter Working Hours is an Essential Part of the Fight for Full Employment Tony Dewberry
It is high time for the Australian union movement to launch a campaign for a shorter work week. To deal with chronic unemployment and the steady decline in the quality of working life we need: a 35 hour week with no loss in pay restrictions on overtime - coupled with a general wage rise for low paid workers a complete ban on unpaid overtime.
Issues of worktime, working life and union conditions were the subject of a recent union conference in Melbourne which discussed evidence of: a decline in job security, a rise in the intensity of labour and its associated health problems, the spread of part-time and casual labour, and the growth in unpaid overtime (60% of workers doing regular overtime are working for free!). The organisers of the conference should be congratulated, and the ideas generated there should be the starting point of the fight for a 35 hour week.
To read more go to http://www.netspace.net.au/~sibill/archive/041wrk4.htm
WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO THE 35 HOUR WEEK CAMPAIGN?
John Andrews
The 35 hour week (without loss of pay) has been ACTU policy since 1957.
Today, with mass unemployment and underemployment, we need to re-open
the debate on the shorter working week and press the union movement to
begin a campaign for 35 hours without delay.
The hours question has always been central to the workers’ struggle for a better life. Gradually, the bosses were made to concede the workers’ demands for shorter daily and weekly hours, paid holidays and so on. Every concession had to be wrung out of them and each time they screamed that they would be bankrupted by the workers’ “exorbitant” demands. As writer Barry Hill put it: “When we inspect the early development of capitalism, the better to get a grip on the time we are living in right now - we see that an essential part of the story is to do with social struggles about the ordering of the working day ...It was practical - who was going to hold the watch at the workbench if indeed, the workers were permitted to know the time at all?” [Barry Hill, Sitting In, Heinemann, Port Melbourne, 1991.]
Before the rise of industrial capitalism 200 or so years ago, time was viewed somewhat differently. As the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson has argued, peoples lives and work were more governed by the natural rhythms of the seasons and the hours of daylight. Most people did not possess clocks and small passages of time were described as, for instance, “a pissing wyle” or “an eating wyle”. Up until this century, Irish peasants often had watches with only an hour hand!
To read more go to: http://www.netspace.net.au/~sibill/archive/047campg.htm
The
fraud of the 35-hour workweek in France
By Marianne Arens and Françoise Thull
9 November 1999
The legal enforcing of the 35-hour workweek in France is considered a prime example of the reformist politics of the government of the “pluralist left". Supporters of Socialist Party Prime Minister Lionel Jospin at home and abroad praise it as step towards full employment and a "more human society". On closer inspection, the measures prove to be a fraud.
The project of Labour Minister Martine Aubry, daughter of former European Community leader Jacques Delors, envisages the reduction of average weekly work time to 35 hours for all businesses with over 20 employees, starting from January 1, 2000. Firms with fewer than 20 workers must introduce this regulation in the year 2002.
Since 1982, the number of hours worked per week is officially 39 hours. But according to calculations by Insee, the National Office for Statistics, it is substantially higher—about 41 hours and 48 minutes. These long hours apply particularly to senior management and other high-level personnel.
Articles on this site:
Employment
and the Shorter Work Time Network of Canada
Issue No. 7 June 1998
In this issue:
- Danes Fight for the Right to Relax
- Shorter Hours & Eco-Taxes
- Flex-work and the Struggle to Juggle
- Rewarding Skill & Service with Free Time
- What Americans Really, Really Want
- AND LOTS MORE!
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I. CAN SHORTER WORK TIME HELP SAVE TORONTO'S PUBLIC WORKFORCE?
Can voluntary and
negotiated options for reducing work time help save
municipal jobs? Answering that question should be a top priority of the
new City of Toronto.
The City and its employees
are facing some tough choices, with over 2500
jobs on the line. The City has been put into this situation by the
Harris government, which forced an unpopular amalgamation on Metro
Toronto's six municipalities and then dumped a series of new costs on
the fledgling entity. The provincial Tories deserve the blame for the
financial and political mess faced by the City. Unfortunately, the
citizens of Toronto have to come up with ways to minimize the damage,
and to do so quickly.
The Progressive Labour Party favours the French 35 hour work week - and more
This is a policy paper. It is about a real policy having been promised, introduced and implemented in France in the past two years by the social democratic Lionel Jospin Government. In spite of skeptics, cynics, strong opposition and claims of trade off to explain the remarkable policy the results have been most encouraging. Of course there have been some problems. We need to look at these but the principles underpinning the 35 hour work week are sound.
It is also a policy paper because it deals with the similar policy of the Progressive Labour Party, a political party which was planned in Lismore in May, 1996 launched in November, 1996, in Newcastle, federally registered early in 1997 a participant in several election since and in the forthcoming federal election of 2001. The author is a co-founder of that Party. It is the only Australian political party that has a radical plan for reform of employment of this kind. The Party has been systematically ignored by the main stream commercial media in Australia. Unemployment is still very high in Australia, in reality much higher than the official figure of around 7%. The need for policies that distribute work more equitably has been obvious throughout the 1990s to anyone who has made a careful analysis of the changing nature of work. Our major political parties have elected to pretend that today’s unequal distribution of work need to be solved by the remedies of yesteryear. Dominated by the big corporations they may be frightened to suggest radical changes that might upset their major donors in election campaigns. How to break this vicious circle?
Leonie Jennings, Southern Cross University
Abstract: This paper confronts the seeming contradictions that occur once welfare recipients and their families join the ranks of the Working Poor within the context of an increasing casualised labour market. Despite blowouts in welfare budgets and growing welfare dependency, this paper argues the case for tax credits/or work incentives to supplement the earnings of the Working Poor. Drawing on programs implemented in other neo-liberal democracies, it will be argued that Australia should reconceptualise innovative tax policies by encouraging people to earn more and not be penalised in their attempts to cover the basic necessities of life.
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