Twenty Hour Week
“Make the twenty-hour week the new full-time.”
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2. How does it fit with Compass’ core beliefs of equality, solidarity, democracy, freedom, sustainability and well being?
It leads to equality between the sexes and means that parenting can be equally shared. It frees people up to contribute properly to their communities at the same time as making work accessible to all, even young mothers, and allows all to participate more fully in democracy. It would halve traffic and employer overheads allowing them to pay the same wages as for today’s 40-hour week.
3. How does it build the institutions of social democracy, like social groups and collective and cooperative forms of ownership and control?
By allowing participation for all in both the community and the workplace as well as the home.
4. How much will it cost or raise and where will any cost come from?
It could be paid for by halving the PAYE tax on the first 20 hours worked incentivising employers to train more workers and preventing the greedy from taking two jobs. This would mean employers still have operational flexibility if they need it. It will lead to full employment. It would halve the capital investment needed in buildings and IT in for instance government buildings if say half the workforce came in Monday to Wednesday and the other half Wednesday to Friday or mornings and afternoons etc.
5. Which groups in the electorate are likely to support or oppose this measure? Is there any polling evidence you have on this?
Nobody should oppose it as it doesn’t prevent people working long hours if they want to and full employment is in everybody’s interests as are fully functioning communities and families.
6. Is there a place or country where it’s worked? Please provide some information.
Not to my knowledge but the shorter working week has been discussed in many countries I believe.
7. What are the three main arguments in favour/against it?
In favour:
1. Sexual equality in the home and the workplace;
2. Full community and family participation;
3. Full employment without jeopardising the above.
Against:
1. Vested interests like police and social workers who require a dysfunctional society to justify their jobs;
2. Old people’s homes who look after the neglected;
3. Manufacturers of anti-depressants.
Of course I’m joking about those who would oppose. I’m sure the police and our hard-pressed, hard-working social workers would love to have their burden reduced and old peoples’ homes can be very nice places.
Restrictions on working hours is a distinct limitation of personal freedom. We should be allowed to work as many hours as our employers wish us to, and to be paid in direct relationship to what the reults of our labour produce in terms of the resulting product or service.
Presumably the idea behind this proposal is one of ensuring that there are greater sharing of employment opportunities, even if it causes lower efficiency in the production process and even if the resulting products costs the producer more so when he sells it the price has to be raised and the demand subsequently drop.
This philosophy is typical of the old style socialism which has been found to be unworkable in this age. Better to raise the demand for employment by the kinds of incitive taxes that have been proposed in other suggestions on these columns, and to accepth that the resulting reductions in cost and raises in dfemand will level out the playing field of monopoly and land speculation which presently prevails.
`Restrictions on working hours is a distinct limitation of personal freedom. We should be allowed to work as many hours as our employers wish us to.’
If you notice, I have proposed no legislation to impose a limit on what hours one can or cannot work but a reduction of PAYE tax on the first 20 hours. This should ensure that we only work `as many hours as our employers wish us to’ whilst at the same time giving industry operational freedom should it need it at no extra cost. If you can persuade your employer that paying the additional PAYE tax to keep you working longer is worth his while then good luck to you. And yes, it is old fashioned socialism but I don’t think it has been tried before and found wanting (where has a twenty-hour week been tried before?) and it is not as old fashioned as your old-fashioned inflationary policies which have done nothing to prevent monopoly.
A very interesting suggestion. You do not mention the sustainability aspects, but voluntary reductions in working time have enormous potential to address one of the key conflicts facing society today - how to reduce consumption to sustainable limits without losing jobs. It is impossible to keep growing the size of our economy forever, but if we stop growing then improvements to productivity will lead to job losses in the long term. One solution is the concept of Buy Less, Work Less. In other words, start to take productivity improvements as increases in leisure time or time spent helping the community, rather than increases in income and consumption. Readers might like to check out the website of the Work Less party http://worklessparty.org/ for more background.
This seems a little harsh! I really don’t think the police and social workers desire a dysfunctional society, they are the product of one. You are implying that such groups are in some way a drag on progression of a harmonious society.
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