Given the high production achieved with the new robotic and computer
technology and the very recent production technology linked to
artificial intelligence, the reduction of working hours should be the
natural objective of the workers' movement organisations . After the
global economic crisis of the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes, English
economist, one of the greatest references of the schools of economic
thought in the capitalist field and still today a reference of the
so-called "progressive and democratic" thought, in his collection of
essays published between the two world wars, warned public opinion and
governments against the ideology of "laissez-faire" , that is, the
abolition of any constraints or planning by the State on economic and
stated that workers' working time would be greatly reduced: "Three-hour
shifts per fifteen-hour workweek can keep the problem at bay for a good
period of time. Three hours a day " (Keynes, Exhortations and Prophecies)
This calculation was done with the machinery and technologies available
at the time. Today, given the new technologies, one might think of a
working week of just four hours, but the real trends of the global
economic system tend instead to increase working hours. In the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, despite a growing capacity for investments
aimed at increasing productivity, despite the fact that more industrial
machinery has been modernized, reaching the complete replacement of
human manual skills in some processes, it has been impossible for
workers to acquire new and significant reductions in their working
hours. A contradiction has thus been created between the high level of
production, which sees a quantity of goods never reached before being
placed on the world market, and on the other hand, increased working
times, with wages that are unable to cover the needs of direct workers.
producers.
Far from decreasing, working hours are continually increasing thanks to
new forms of exploitation of the workforce with production organizations
that are increasingly sophisticated and coercive compared to those
adopted in the past. In the twenty-first century, working time, with its
increased rhythms, with its organization spread out throughout the
working week, remains the tyrant of workers' life time, capable of
conditioning their entire existence. The capitalist mode of production
has its own laws, the main of which is the law of maximum profit. The
purpose of the economic system is not to generate goods for use to
satisfy the fundamental needs of humanity, but to create production
aimed at the simple profit obtained with the extension of the working
day and the increased productive intensity of the performance.
The China
The first clear increase in working time and decreased living conditions
in the workplace can be seen in the so-called former developing
countries, especially in China, which has now become one of the major
economic and political powers in the world, where in just a few decades
we have seen a notable increase in hourly production and equally the
increased working hours of each individual worker. Despite the fact that
by law work in China should be carried out weekly for five days of work,
with Saturday and Sunday rest, with an 8-hour working day from 8am to
6pm with a two-hour canteen break, and for a maximum of 44 hours a week,
in practice the boom in the Chinese economy has its basis in the super
exploitation of workers with an illegal and criminal extension of
working hours. In reality, working hours in the vast majority of
production sites, in particular in state-owned industrial plants and in
the numerous Western multinationals present, comply with the "996" rule;
that is, work goes from 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening, 6 days
a week, so much so that last August the Supreme People's Court of
Beijing, also following growing workers' protests, declared the "996"
working hours a serious violation of labor regulations, indicating that
overtime must not exceed thirty-six hours per month and defined as
illegal the widespread agreements imposed by bosses so that workers and
employees "voluntarily" give up overtime pay. This ruling is a direct
consequence of the various lawsuits brought against the numerous cases
of dismissals of workers who had refused to extend their working hours
with overtime, in particular due to the umpteenth death of two workers
due to stress and overwork.
The latter were employees of the e-commerce company Pinduoduo, the
largest agriculture-focused technology platform, which connects farmers
and distributors with consumers through interactive purchasing.
If this is the current situation of the working class in China, think of
the working conditions in areas and states of south-east Asia such as
Vietnam or Cambodia, where workers' resistance is even less than in
China, which in turn has begun has long been relocating its production
to these territories which have even lower labor costs and even longer
working hours.
The West
The working situation in the developed West does not present substantial
differences. In Europe, in industry, the working day is still eight
hours, it has been since 1919. The conquest of the eight hours became
definitive, throughout the old continent, between 1917 and 1919, thanks
to the revolutionary push of Russia and of Germany. But the conquests of
workers' struggles, in capitalism, are never definitive, and already in
the crisis of 1929 and in the subsequent Second World War, entrepreneurs
and various democratic and totalitarian governments increased working
hours. Once the war was over, the return to the eight-hour working day
was by no means automatic. In America people even worked 70 hours a week
in the mechanical industry. Throughout Europe, despite the restructuring
of production plants and the spread of new industrial technologies,
working hours did not decrease; indeed, in some sectors, with the
employers' demand for reconstruction, working times and rhythms remained
those imposed during the war period.
After the war, the only significant reduction in working time occurred
with the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, imposing and generalizing the
eight-hour working day for five days a week. Years later, despite the
increase in production capacity made possible by new technologies,
workers in the industry of the European powers and in general in the
developed West are still required to work eight hours a day for 40 or
more hours a week, albeit compared to the early twentieth century, the
hours worked contain more productivity and more intensity, effectively
increasing the surplus value and therefore the profit. From the 1980s
onwards, massive investment in new technologies has seen an increase in
unemployment, an increase in productivity and a corresponding increase
in work intensity. In the United States after the "Reaganomics" of the
1980s, union activities were harshly opposed, leading to an effective
increase in working hours. In the manufacturing industry it was
increased to 41 hours and to these we must add the notable increase in
overtime, bringing working hours above the levels reached in the 1950s
and 1960s. Furthermore, as a direct consequence of low wages, the
continuous threats from entrepreneurs of closing down companies due to
international competition and the numerous relocations to countries
where labor was paid below subsistence, double work or working on
Saturdays and Sunday. After the economic crisis of 2007/2008, wages
decreased significantly due to employment blackmail, aspects which have
not yet been overcome despite the " reshoring" policy of recent years
(the return of some previously delocalized American productions) and the
organizational and of struggle of some unions, such as that of the auto
sector, the UAW ( United Auto Workers) which with its tenacious and
partly successful fight of 46 days of strike against the Big Three
(Ford, General Motors and Stellantis) achieved last year a notable
improvement in wages, greater guarantees for new hires, while failing to
affect and reduce actual working hours.
Japan
In the country of the Rising Sun, Japan, weekly working hours usually go
beyond 40 hours per week, both as a result of the lengthening of the
daily working hours and because, in small and medium-sized Japanese
businesses, made up of 2/3 of the entire workforce, working Saturdays
have now become part of normal working hours. Even in large industry,
72% of workers work at least one Saturday a month while the daily hours
are 15/30% higher than those in North America and the workers' vacation
days are 7.5 days a year. The peculiar form of organization of Japanese
industry, identified with "Toyotism" , which is nothing other than a
further form of control and command borrowed from "Taylorism" , was
established at all production levels following the defeat suffered by
Japanese trade unionism since the 1950s and the still absence of a large
militant trade union and political fabric. " Toyotism", especially
through the principle of zero stocks, has reduced and eliminated
warehouse expenses, saved time, space and work, minimized production
costs, maximized work productivity, going so far as to plan the
introduction of the workforce into production processes in order to
further increase working times, requiring more overtime hours and at the
same time creating with the so-called "quality circles" a sense of
loyalty and corporate belonging on the part of the workers. In fact, the
workers are involved in participating in some company decisions, albeit
the vast majority of which are fictitious, taken in "quality circles" or
they are called to join professional training courses outside of working
hours, "voluntarily" giving up part of their holidays, thus managing to
extract and impose complete collaboration and submission to the
company's will. It is in this way that Japanese capitalism, in addition
to taking away all the mental and muscular energies of workers, leads
workers to real physical exhaustion, even to death. In Japan it is in
fact customary to work well beyond one's working hours, to the point of
recording cases of workers with unpaid overtime that well exceed 100
hours per month. This reality constantly fuels that tragic phenomenon
known as "karoshi" which means deaths due to overwork, deaths which are
estimated at around 200 per year, even if the real and unofficial
estimates seem to be even higher.
Great Britain
In Great Britain workers obtained a small reduction in working hours
between 1979 and 1981, but in the following period, the so-called
"Thatcherite" period, named after the first female minister Margaret
Thacter, leader of the British Conservative Party and first Minister of
the United Kingdom from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990, with an
insignificant increase in investment in machinery there was a notable
increase in productivity and a 30% decrease in industrial employment.
This situation of blackmail and weakness of the trade union structures
in Great Britain and the United Kingdom led to an increase in working
hours with an increase in overtime hours; 10 hours a week for male
workers and 6 hours for female workers. The current contractual working
hours of English workers are 45 hours which, with overtime, reaches 50
hours per week, while for women it exceeds 45 hours.
Germany
In Germany, although there had been massive investment in industrial
technologies and machinery since the 1980s, working hours did not
decrease at all. Since the first achievement by the German working class
of the 40 hour week, nothing had changed in terms of work improvement;
on the contrary, German democratic legislation continued until 1994 to
be based, in the matter of working hours, on a law of 1938, which
provided for a weekly duration of 48 hours, excluding overtime. The
increased productivity had coincided with a massive increase in
processing times, consequently increasing the degree of worker fatigue
and causing, in many cases, serious mental and physical disorders. This
was one of the causes of a long and harsh workers' protest, which
resulted in the request, by IG Metal, the largest German metallurgy
union, for 35 hour working weeks. But even after the formal reduction of
working hours in 1995, the average working hours in German industry
remained at 40 hours due to the increase in the usual overtime hours. In
the latest agreement of 2018, applied for now only to the Stuttgart
region (which still has around 900 thousand employees in the sector,
including those of Daimler, Porsche and Bosch, and which will pave the
way for the entire sector which at national sector has 3.9 million
employees) the possibility is envisaged for workers who have particular
family needs to request a 28-hour working week for a period of time
ranging from 6 months to 2 years, with a relative salary reduction ,
after which we return to the regime of 35 nominal hours, but as we were
saying, 40 effective hours. Those who reduce their hours to 28 hours and
have children up to 14 years of age will be able to have a bonus of 8
more days of holiday, but will have to give up the wage subsidy that the
company partly offers to those who reduce their hours. Finally, since
2009, the so-called "mini jobs" have been introduced with wages of
EUR450/500 per month and with an hour limit (at least formally) of
around 15 hours per week. The companies that hire with this system
receive an incentive from the State and the worker called upon to
replace the absent worker is forced, given the miserable pay, to further
squeeze by the employer with the use of hours in excess of the his
normal working hours. France is the European country where working hours
have decreased the most. Nominally reduced to 35 hours per week already
at the end of the nineties, but the subsequent laws issued in 1990,
which give companies the opportunity to operate their plants at maximum
capacity, requiring greater flexibility from the employee, actually lead
to an increase in working hours through an incentive for overtime; over
35 hours you pay at least 10% more, after the first 8 hours of overtime
you pay 25% more, for the subsequent hours you pay 50%.
Spain
In Spain, until the end of Francoism, working hours exceeded 40 per
week. It was the socialist government of Felipe González that changed,
in 1983, the working week from 43-44 hours to the legal 40 hours in
force until today, normally distributed over five days of eight hours
each. From 1978 to 1991, thanks to the resumption of workers' protests,
working hours were reduced by 10%, approaching the European average, but
the employers immediately returned to imposing all possible forms of
precariousness experienced in all production sectors of the
industrialized world. By 2022 there were more than 18 types of
fixed-term contracts, and the regular use of overtime had led to a
substantial increase in working hours. Although the last decree approved
in December 2021 and validated by parliament in February 2022 provides
for only two types of fixed-term relationships, the structural one, for
circumstances related to production, and that of replacing another
worker, the overall duration of the Effective working hours are still
more than 40 hours per week.
Italy
In Italy, after the Second World War there was no substantial reduction
in average working hours; 7.95 hours per day in 1948 and 7.77 hours in
1984. The workers' struggles of the sixties and seventies, which led to
the conquest of the Workers' Statute, protecting and conquering rights
that were unimaginable before those years, however, failed to
materialize in a daily hourly reduction, but the five-day week was
generalized, from Monday to Friday with the Saturday holiday, remaining
at the levels of 40 hours per week. However, working times expanded with
a massive use of overtime and piece work, particularly in related
industries, far exceeding those of large industry.
Between 1976 and 1989, overtime hours in large industry increased by
4.7%, increasing the weekly working hours from 42 to 44 hours at Fiat
Mirafiori and 47-48 hours at the former Alfa Lancia in Pomigliano. The
debate on the reduction of working hours to 35 hours began in the 1990s
and in particular during the first Prodi government 1996 - 1998. The
failure of the political debate first, the failure to approve this bill
afterwards, but above all the launch in 1997 of the infamous "Treu
Package" formally introduced temporary work on a large scale, arriving
in subsequent stages in 2001 and 2003 to generalize project contracts,
vouchers and intermittent contracts. If on the side of our business
organisations, consistently with their class interests, the use of
greater flexibility in working hours was hoped for , it should be
highlighted that from the trade union point of view , there was a wide
willingness to consider the matter of working hours, not in a dry and
substantial reduction of daily and weekly hours, but in terms of a
process of flexibility through the modulation of hours, the use of work
shifts and a greater development of part-time. This unfortunate trade
union strategy, called "concertation" and defined by the trade union
leaders since the early 90s of the last century, is constantly
re-proposed to this day with more or less similar formulas, despite the
fact that the fate of the workers' movement is always unchanging and
increasingly difficult with regards to actual working hours and their
general condition of exploitation. Analyzing the data relating to
working hours in Italy , we can actually see how a substantial stability
of actual working hours was accompanied in the second half of the 1990s
by a greater use of so-called atypical hours, with a relative increase
in evening work . and on public holidays, including May 1st, on
weekends, as well as a large diffusion of non-voluntary part-time work,
including vertical part-time work (i.e. work concentrated on Saturdays
and Sundays)
reduction of hours with equal pay to live better and for greater employment
Throughout the industrialized world, effective working hours, despite
increased productivity, have not decreased at all, and in some cases
have even increased. And the life time dedicated to work has absolutely
increased through the extension of the retirement age, which has grown
from the nineties of the last century to today, from 4 to 7 years.
Throughout the period, which the economic literature calls the "glorious
thirty", from 1945 to 1973, which was characterized by exceptional
economic growth, linked to post-war reconstruction, working hours, as we
have seen, remained practically unchanged, if not even increased. The
end of this period and the economic crisis of 1974/5 was the starting
point of a new employers' offensive against paid work, aimed at
increasing profit and productivity which were declining at the time.
From then until today, all the results obtained by the struggle of the
workers' movement have been called into question and thanks also to the
compliance and subservience of the major trade union organisations, an
employer strategy based on the de facto extension of working hours, the
increase in overtime, the increase in precariousness and flexibility of
the workforce, the decrease in breaks, the increase in intensity with
the suspension of holidays, the massive use of an easily blackmailable
immigrant workforce, "ad personam" salary incentives " and finally the
significant increase in the retirement age. The massive introduction of
new automated systems into the production system has not had at all the
effect predicted by Keynes. The higher the level of production,
determined by strong investments in industry, the more the improvement
in the living conditions of the workforce decreases. Technical progress
and mechanization are not used to reduce working hours, but to fragment
the production cycle, reduce wages for the same amount of working time
employed and discipline and subject the working class to company needs.
Capitalism has always used machines to produce the goods placed on the
market in the shortest possible time, replacing wage earners with
machines and new technologies, extending working times and working hours
for workers who remained employed. In addition to the imposition of high
work rates, capitalism, with the introduction of information technology
and robotics, reduces personnel, creating high levels of unemployment.
The more capital invests in new technologies, the more it must recover
and valorise its investment, and it has only one way to increase its
profit; compressing employment and increasing working times. In a world
that, thanks to mechanization and increased productivity, could
progressively free itself from the slavery of work, a working day of
over 8 hours and the existence of unemployment clearly appears to be a
contradiction and defines the need to overcome the current capitalist
form of production . In fact, the worker, in the first part of his
working day which varies depending on the level of technological
development and the balance of power between the workers and the owners,
creates a value equal to the sum paid to him as wages for the entire
working day; in the remaining part he continues to work for free and
creates surplus work and therefore surplus value which is confiscated by
the boss. If the working day corresponded only to the creation of a
value equal to the salary, that is, if it were entirely composed of paid
work, the decrease in hours corresponding to an increase in productivity
would be a natural and practically automatic fact; in the given
conditions, however, the increase in productivity only causes a
reduction in the hours in which the worker works for himself, to the
full advantage of the hours in which the worker works for free for the
boss. But the employers also have other means of increasing the hours of
free work in their favor; reduce the salary, the value of which will
therefore be rebuilt by the worker in less time; increase the degree of
saturation of production capacity, even without technological
transformations, by making the individual worker work more quickly,
increase his work pace,increase the percentage of hourly use of the
machinery necessary to satisfy the required performance; finally,
increase the duration of the working day with the use of overtime as
these, although paid, are not burdened with a whole series of
contributions which instead weigh on the ordinary hours of a
hypothetical new job. Similarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on
the reduction of formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in
France, not connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and
evaded by the bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various
elements in the organization of work, thus re-establishing to his
advantage the unpaid time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a
factor of great importance is the relationship that must be built and
pursued between the employed and the unemployed, including the new
generations and women. The presence of a significant number of
workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to live and suffer low
wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in addition to the
unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a
compression of wages and therefore increases the share of labor that the
bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle
for the reduction of working hours must call for not only the reduction
of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common
practice in all working environments, the abolition of night shifts
where production and work do not require continuity of work as in some
services, the abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the
absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of
workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers'
movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on the reduction of
formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in France, not
connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the
bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various elements in the
organization of work, thus re-establishing to his advantage the unpaid
time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a factor of great
importance is the relationship that must be built and pursued between
the employed and the unemployed, including the new generations and
women. The presence of a significant number of workforce, such as youth
or gender, the first to live and suffer low wages and precarious
regulatory conditions, in addition to the unemployed, the classic
industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a compression of wages and
therefore increases the share of labor that the bosses appropriate,
increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle for the reduction
of working hours must call for not only the reduction of hours with
equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common practice in all
working environments, the abolition of night shifts where production and
work do not require continuity of work as in some services, the
abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the absolute
prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of workers and
unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers' movementThe
historic demand of the workers' movementThe historic demand of the
workers' movement" eight hours of work, eight of leisure, eight to
sleep" , launched in 1886 in Chicago and subsequently became the
international battle of the workers' movement for the reduction of
working hours, culminating in the recognition of the anniversary of May
1st, must be declined today for an effective reduction in daily and
weekly hours. No flexibility must be granted with respect to the actual
hours of work to be carried out, rather it is necessary to recover a
sort of rigidity in the daily and weekly schedules, in order to have
more and more time available free from work. A consequent generalized
economic battle and not for individual categories must be set up so as
not to divide and shatter the proletarian front. Every victory in a
single product sector or company, if not generalized, is destined to be
revoked by the blackmail and divisive policies of the employers. The
world proletariat must with strength and determination relaunch and
claim the battle for the reduction of working hours with equal pay, to
redistribute work and increase the number of people employed and to
reclaim their time stolen by the intrinsic logic of capitalist profit.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
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technology and the very recent production technology linked to
artificial intelligence, the reduction of working hours should be the
natural objective of the workers' movement organisations . After the
global economic crisis of the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes, English
economist, one of the greatest references of the schools of economic
thought in the capitalist field and still today a reference of the
so-called "progressive and democratic" thought, in his collection of
essays published between the two world wars, warned public opinion and
governments against the ideology of "laissez-faire" , that is, the
abolition of any constraints or planning by the State on economic and
stated that workers' working time would be greatly reduced: "Three-hour
shifts per fifteen-hour workweek can keep the problem at bay for a good
period of time. Three hours a day " (Keynes, Exhortations and Prophecies)
This calculation was done with the machinery and technologies available
at the time. Today, given the new technologies, one might think of a
working week of just four hours, but the real trends of the global
economic system tend instead to increase working hours. In the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, despite a growing capacity for investments
aimed at increasing productivity, despite the fact that more industrial
machinery has been modernized, reaching the complete replacement of
human manual skills in some processes, it has been impossible for
workers to acquire new and significant reductions in their working
hours. A contradiction has thus been created between the high level of
production, which sees a quantity of goods never reached before being
placed on the world market, and on the other hand, increased working
times, with wages that are unable to cover the needs of direct workers.
producers.
Far from decreasing, working hours are continually increasing thanks to
new forms of exploitation of the workforce with production organizations
that are increasingly sophisticated and coercive compared to those
adopted in the past. In the twenty-first century, working time, with its
increased rhythms, with its organization spread out throughout the
working week, remains the tyrant of workers' life time, capable of
conditioning their entire existence. The capitalist mode of production
has its own laws, the main of which is the law of maximum profit. The
purpose of the economic system is not to generate goods for use to
satisfy the fundamental needs of humanity, but to create production
aimed at the simple profit obtained with the extension of the working
day and the increased productive intensity of the performance.
The China
The first clear increase in working time and decreased living conditions
in the workplace can be seen in the so-called former developing
countries, especially in China, which has now become one of the major
economic and political powers in the world, where in just a few decades
we have seen a notable increase in hourly production and equally the
increased working hours of each individual worker. Despite the fact that
by law work in China should be carried out weekly for five days of work,
with Saturday and Sunday rest, with an 8-hour working day from 8am to
6pm with a two-hour canteen break, and for a maximum of 44 hours a week,
in practice the boom in the Chinese economy has its basis in the super
exploitation of workers with an illegal and criminal extension of
working hours. In reality, working hours in the vast majority of
production sites, in particular in state-owned industrial plants and in
the numerous Western multinationals present, comply with the "996" rule;
that is, work goes from 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening, 6 days
a week, so much so that last August the Supreme People's Court of
Beijing, also following growing workers' protests, declared the "996"
working hours a serious violation of labor regulations, indicating that
overtime must not exceed thirty-six hours per month and defined as
illegal the widespread agreements imposed by bosses so that workers and
employees "voluntarily" give up overtime pay. This ruling is a direct
consequence of the various lawsuits brought against the numerous cases
of dismissals of workers who had refused to extend their working hours
with overtime, in particular due to the umpteenth death of two workers
due to stress and overwork.
The latter were employees of the e-commerce company Pinduoduo, the
largest agriculture-focused technology platform, which connects farmers
and distributors with consumers through interactive purchasing.
If this is the current situation of the working class in China, think of
the working conditions in areas and states of south-east Asia such as
Vietnam or Cambodia, where workers' resistance is even less than in
China, which in turn has begun has long been relocating its production
to these territories which have even lower labor costs and even longer
working hours.
The West
The working situation in the developed West does not present substantial
differences. In Europe, in industry, the working day is still eight
hours, it has been since 1919. The conquest of the eight hours became
definitive, throughout the old continent, between 1917 and 1919, thanks
to the revolutionary push of Russia and of Germany. But the conquests of
workers' struggles, in capitalism, are never definitive, and already in
the crisis of 1929 and in the subsequent Second World War, entrepreneurs
and various democratic and totalitarian governments increased working
hours. Once the war was over, the return to the eight-hour working day
was by no means automatic. In America people even worked 70 hours a week
in the mechanical industry. Throughout Europe, despite the restructuring
of production plants and the spread of new industrial technologies,
working hours did not decrease; indeed, in some sectors, with the
employers' demand for reconstruction, working times and rhythms remained
those imposed during the war period.
After the war, the only significant reduction in working time occurred
with the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, imposing and generalizing the
eight-hour working day for five days a week. Years later, despite the
increase in production capacity made possible by new technologies,
workers in the industry of the European powers and in general in the
developed West are still required to work eight hours a day for 40 or
more hours a week, albeit compared to the early twentieth century, the
hours worked contain more productivity and more intensity, effectively
increasing the surplus value and therefore the profit. From the 1980s
onwards, massive investment in new technologies has seen an increase in
unemployment, an increase in productivity and a corresponding increase
in work intensity. In the United States after the "Reaganomics" of the
1980s, union activities were harshly opposed, leading to an effective
increase in working hours. In the manufacturing industry it was
increased to 41 hours and to these we must add the notable increase in
overtime, bringing working hours above the levels reached in the 1950s
and 1960s. Furthermore, as a direct consequence of low wages, the
continuous threats from entrepreneurs of closing down companies due to
international competition and the numerous relocations to countries
where labor was paid below subsistence, double work or working on
Saturdays and Sunday. After the economic crisis of 2007/2008, wages
decreased significantly due to employment blackmail, aspects which have
not yet been overcome despite the " reshoring" policy of recent years
(the return of some previously delocalized American productions) and the
organizational and of struggle of some unions, such as that of the auto
sector, the UAW ( United Auto Workers) which with its tenacious and
partly successful fight of 46 days of strike against the Big Three
(Ford, General Motors and Stellantis) achieved last year a notable
improvement in wages, greater guarantees for new hires, while failing to
affect and reduce actual working hours.
Japan
In the country of the Rising Sun, Japan, weekly working hours usually go
beyond 40 hours per week, both as a result of the lengthening of the
daily working hours and because, in small and medium-sized Japanese
businesses, made up of 2/3 of the entire workforce, working Saturdays
have now become part of normal working hours. Even in large industry,
72% of workers work at least one Saturday a month while the daily hours
are 15/30% higher than those in North America and the workers' vacation
days are 7.5 days a year. The peculiar form of organization of Japanese
industry, identified with "Toyotism" , which is nothing other than a
further form of control and command borrowed from "Taylorism" , was
established at all production levels following the defeat suffered by
Japanese trade unionism since the 1950s and the still absence of a large
militant trade union and political fabric. " Toyotism", especially
through the principle of zero stocks, has reduced and eliminated
warehouse expenses, saved time, space and work, minimized production
costs, maximized work productivity, going so far as to plan the
introduction of the workforce into production processes in order to
further increase working times, requiring more overtime hours and at the
same time creating with the so-called "quality circles" a sense of
loyalty and corporate belonging on the part of the workers. In fact, the
workers are involved in participating in some company decisions, albeit
the vast majority of which are fictitious, taken in "quality circles" or
they are called to join professional training courses outside of working
hours, "voluntarily" giving up part of their holidays, thus managing to
extract and impose complete collaboration and submission to the
company's will. It is in this way that Japanese capitalism, in addition
to taking away all the mental and muscular energies of workers, leads
workers to real physical exhaustion, even to death. In Japan it is in
fact customary to work well beyond one's working hours, to the point of
recording cases of workers with unpaid overtime that well exceed 100
hours per month. This reality constantly fuels that tragic phenomenon
known as "karoshi" which means deaths due to overwork, deaths which are
estimated at around 200 per year, even if the real and unofficial
estimates seem to be even higher.
Great Britain
In Great Britain workers obtained a small reduction in working hours
between 1979 and 1981, but in the following period, the so-called
"Thatcherite" period, named after the first female minister Margaret
Thacter, leader of the British Conservative Party and first Minister of
the United Kingdom from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990, with an
insignificant increase in investment in machinery there was a notable
increase in productivity and a 30% decrease in industrial employment.
This situation of blackmail and weakness of the trade union structures
in Great Britain and the United Kingdom led to an increase in working
hours with an increase in overtime hours; 10 hours a week for male
workers and 6 hours for female workers. The current contractual working
hours of English workers are 45 hours which, with overtime, reaches 50
hours per week, while for women it exceeds 45 hours.
Germany
In Germany, although there had been massive investment in industrial
technologies and machinery since the 1980s, working hours did not
decrease at all. Since the first achievement by the German working class
of the 40 hour week, nothing had changed in terms of work improvement;
on the contrary, German democratic legislation continued until 1994 to
be based, in the matter of working hours, on a law of 1938, which
provided for a weekly duration of 48 hours, excluding overtime. The
increased productivity had coincided with a massive increase in
processing times, consequently increasing the degree of worker fatigue
and causing, in many cases, serious mental and physical disorders. This
was one of the causes of a long and harsh workers' protest, which
resulted in the request, by IG Metal, the largest German metallurgy
union, for 35 hour working weeks. But even after the formal reduction of
working hours in 1995, the average working hours in German industry
remained at 40 hours due to the increase in the usual overtime hours. In
the latest agreement of 2018, applied for now only to the Stuttgart
region (which still has around 900 thousand employees in the sector,
including those of Daimler, Porsche and Bosch, and which will pave the
way for the entire sector which at national sector has 3.9 million
employees) the possibility is envisaged for workers who have particular
family needs to request a 28-hour working week for a period of time
ranging from 6 months to 2 years, with a relative salary reduction ,
after which we return to the regime of 35 nominal hours, but as we were
saying, 40 effective hours. Those who reduce their hours to 28 hours and
have children up to 14 years of age will be able to have a bonus of 8
more days of holiday, but will have to give up the wage subsidy that the
company partly offers to those who reduce their hours. Finally, since
2009, the so-called "mini jobs" have been introduced with wages of
EUR450/500 per month and with an hour limit (at least formally) of
around 15 hours per week. The companies that hire with this system
receive an incentive from the State and the worker called upon to
replace the absent worker is forced, given the miserable pay, to further
squeeze by the employer with the use of hours in excess of the his
normal working hours. France is the European country where working hours
have decreased the most. Nominally reduced to 35 hours per week already
at the end of the nineties, but the subsequent laws issued in 1990,
which give companies the opportunity to operate their plants at maximum
capacity, requiring greater flexibility from the employee, actually lead
to an increase in working hours through an incentive for overtime; over
35 hours you pay at least 10% more, after the first 8 hours of overtime
you pay 25% more, for the subsequent hours you pay 50%.
Spain
In Spain, until the end of Francoism, working hours exceeded 40 per
week. It was the socialist government of Felipe González that changed,
in 1983, the working week from 43-44 hours to the legal 40 hours in
force until today, normally distributed over five days of eight hours
each. From 1978 to 1991, thanks to the resumption of workers' protests,
working hours were reduced by 10%, approaching the European average, but
the employers immediately returned to imposing all possible forms of
precariousness experienced in all production sectors of the
industrialized world. By 2022 there were more than 18 types of
fixed-term contracts, and the regular use of overtime had led to a
substantial increase in working hours. Although the last decree approved
in December 2021 and validated by parliament in February 2022 provides
for only two types of fixed-term relationships, the structural one, for
circumstances related to production, and that of replacing another
worker, the overall duration of the Effective working hours are still
more than 40 hours per week.
Italy
In Italy, after the Second World War there was no substantial reduction
in average working hours; 7.95 hours per day in 1948 and 7.77 hours in
1984. The workers' struggles of the sixties and seventies, which led to
the conquest of the Workers' Statute, protecting and conquering rights
that were unimaginable before those years, however, failed to
materialize in a daily hourly reduction, but the five-day week was
generalized, from Monday to Friday with the Saturday holiday, remaining
at the levels of 40 hours per week. However, working times expanded with
a massive use of overtime and piece work, particularly in related
industries, far exceeding those of large industry.
Between 1976 and 1989, overtime hours in large industry increased by
4.7%, increasing the weekly working hours from 42 to 44 hours at Fiat
Mirafiori and 47-48 hours at the former Alfa Lancia in Pomigliano. The
debate on the reduction of working hours to 35 hours began in the 1990s
and in particular during the first Prodi government 1996 - 1998. The
failure of the political debate first, the failure to approve this bill
afterwards, but above all the launch in 1997 of the infamous "Treu
Package" formally introduced temporary work on a large scale, arriving
in subsequent stages in 2001 and 2003 to generalize project contracts,
vouchers and intermittent contracts. If on the side of our business
organisations, consistently with their class interests, the use of
greater flexibility in working hours was hoped for , it should be
highlighted that from the trade union point of view , there was a wide
willingness to consider the matter of working hours, not in a dry and
substantial reduction of daily and weekly hours, but in terms of a
process of flexibility through the modulation of hours, the use of work
shifts and a greater development of part-time. This unfortunate trade
union strategy, called "concertation" and defined by the trade union
leaders since the early 90s of the last century, is constantly
re-proposed to this day with more or less similar formulas, despite the
fact that the fate of the workers' movement is always unchanging and
increasingly difficult with regards to actual working hours and their
general condition of exploitation. Analyzing the data relating to
working hours in Italy , we can actually see how a substantial stability
of actual working hours was accompanied in the second half of the 1990s
by a greater use of so-called atypical hours, with a relative increase
in evening work . and on public holidays, including May 1st, on
weekends, as well as a large diffusion of non-voluntary part-time work,
including vertical part-time work (i.e. work concentrated on Saturdays
and Sundays)
reduction of hours with equal pay to live better and for greater employment
Throughout the industrialized world, effective working hours, despite
increased productivity, have not decreased at all, and in some cases
have even increased. And the life time dedicated to work has absolutely
increased through the extension of the retirement age, which has grown
from the nineties of the last century to today, from 4 to 7 years.
Throughout the period, which the economic literature calls the "glorious
thirty", from 1945 to 1973, which was characterized by exceptional
economic growth, linked to post-war reconstruction, working hours, as we
have seen, remained practically unchanged, if not even increased. The
end of this period and the economic crisis of 1974/5 was the starting
point of a new employers' offensive against paid work, aimed at
increasing profit and productivity which were declining at the time.
From then until today, all the results obtained by the struggle of the
workers' movement have been called into question and thanks also to the
compliance and subservience of the major trade union organisations, an
employer strategy based on the de facto extension of working hours, the
increase in overtime, the increase in precariousness and flexibility of
the workforce, the decrease in breaks, the increase in intensity with
the suspension of holidays, the massive use of an easily blackmailable
immigrant workforce, "ad personam" salary incentives " and finally the
significant increase in the retirement age. The massive introduction of
new automated systems into the production system has not had at all the
effect predicted by Keynes. The higher the level of production,
determined by strong investments in industry, the more the improvement
in the living conditions of the workforce decreases. Technical progress
and mechanization are not used to reduce working hours, but to fragment
the production cycle, reduce wages for the same amount of working time
employed and discipline and subject the working class to company needs.
Capitalism has always used machines to produce the goods placed on the
market in the shortest possible time, replacing wage earners with
machines and new technologies, extending working times and working hours
for workers who remained employed. In addition to the imposition of high
work rates, capitalism, with the introduction of information technology
and robotics, reduces personnel, creating high levels of unemployment.
The more capital invests in new technologies, the more it must recover
and valorise its investment, and it has only one way to increase its
profit; compressing employment and increasing working times. In a world
that, thanks to mechanization and increased productivity, could
progressively free itself from the slavery of work, a working day of
over 8 hours and the existence of unemployment clearly appears to be a
contradiction and defines the need to overcome the current capitalist
form of production . In fact, the worker, in the first part of his
working day which varies depending on the level of technological
development and the balance of power between the workers and the owners,
creates a value equal to the sum paid to him as wages for the entire
working day; in the remaining part he continues to work for free and
creates surplus work and therefore surplus value which is confiscated by
the boss. If the working day corresponded only to the creation of a
value equal to the salary, that is, if it were entirely composed of paid
work, the decrease in hours corresponding to an increase in productivity
would be a natural and practically automatic fact; in the given
conditions, however, the increase in productivity only causes a
reduction in the hours in which the worker works for himself, to the
full advantage of the hours in which the worker works for free for the
boss. But the employers also have other means of increasing the hours of
free work in their favor; reduce the salary, the value of which will
therefore be rebuilt by the worker in less time; increase the degree of
saturation of production capacity, even without technological
transformations, by making the individual worker work more quickly,
increase his work pace,increase the percentage of hourly use of the
machinery necessary to satisfy the required performance; finally,
increase the duration of the working day with the use of overtime as
these, although paid, are not burdened with a whole series of
contributions which instead weigh on the ordinary hours of a
hypothetical new job. Similarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value.
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations,
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours,
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army,
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand
of the workers' movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on
the reduction of formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in
France, not connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and
evaded by the bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various
elements in the organization of work, thus re-establishing to his
advantage the unpaid time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a
factor of great importance is the relationship that must be built and
pursued between the employed and the unemployed, including the new
generations and women. The presence of a significant number of
workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to live and suffer low
wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in addition to the
unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a
compression of wages and therefore increases the share of labor that the
bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle
for the reduction of working hours must call for not only the reduction
of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common
practice in all working environments, the abolition of night shifts
where production and work do not require continuity of work as in some
services, the abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the
absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of
workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers'
movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on the reduction of
formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in France, not
connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the
bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various elements in the
organization of work, thus re-establishing to his advantage the unpaid
time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a factor of great
importance is the relationship that must be built and pursued between
the employed and the unemployed, including the new generations and
women. The presence of a significant number of workforce, such as youth
or gender, the first to live and suffer low wages and precarious
regulatory conditions, in addition to the unemployed, the classic
industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a compression of wages and
therefore increases the share of labor that the bosses appropriate,
increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle for the reduction
of working hours must call for not only the reduction of hours with
equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common practice in all
working environments, the abolition of night shifts where production and
work do not require continuity of work as in some services, the
abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the absolute
prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of workers and
unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers' movementThe
historic demand of the workers' movementThe historic demand of the
workers' movement" eight hours of work, eight of leisure, eight to
sleep" , launched in 1886 in Chicago and subsequently became the
international battle of the workers' movement for the reduction of
working hours, culminating in the recognition of the anniversary of May
1st, must be declined today for an effective reduction in daily and
weekly hours. No flexibility must be granted with respect to the actual
hours of work to be carried out, rather it is necessary to recover a
sort of rigidity in the daily and weekly schedules, in order to have
more and more time available free from work. A consequent generalized
economic battle and not for individual categories must be set up so as
not to divide and shatter the proletarian front. Every victory in a
single product sector or company, if not generalized, is destined to be
revoked by the blackmail and divisive policies of the employers. The
world proletariat must with strength and determination relaunch and
claim the battle for the reduction of working hours with equal pay, to
redistribute work and increase the number of people employed and to
reclaim their time stolen by the intrinsic logic of capitalist profit.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
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