Posted by John, January 10th, 2011 - under rate of profit, Unions.

Tags: 30 hour week, ACTU

It’s time for a campaign for a 30 hour week without loss of pay.

Such a week merely returns to workers some of the gains in productivity we have made over the last 30 years, and which the bosses have stolen from us. It will also help reduce unemployment and underemployment.

Calls for cutting the working week have a long tradition. In 1931, the Australian Council of Trade Unions called for a 35 hour week to combat 30 per cent unemployment. A year later they called for a 30 hour week. At the time it was 48 hours.

Both Labor and the Liberals have put in place industrial and other laws which have transferred more and more of the value our increased productivity has created over the last 30 years to the bosses, not us.

While real wages have increased the share of national product going to labour has fallen markedly. According to a recent ACTU Economic Bulletin: ‘The profit share of national income is now near the record highs it reached in 2008, while the wages share of income is the lowest since 1964.’

Australia has a long working week. According to the Australia Institute in its recent study Long time, No See : ‘Australian employees work the longest hours in the western world; whereas the average for full-time employees in developed countries is 41 hours a week, in Australia it is 44 hours.’

The standard working week in Australia is 38 hours. So we are, to generalise, working 6 hours a week extra. Much of it is unpaid. In the same report The Australia Institute said, based on research they had carried out in 2009, ‘each year Australians work more than two billion hours of unpaid overtime, worth the equivalent of $72 billion or six per cent of GDP.’

Why are we working longer and longer unpaid hours when productivity and investment in labour saving devices are increasing?

The drive for profit and its reinvestment in more and more expensive capital compared to labour creates a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

The logic of the system is to pour more and more money into capital at the expense of labour. Since only labour creates value this means, all other things being equal, that the rate of profit will fall. It is the very way capitalism is organised which creates its fundamental economic crises.

Increased productivity, reductions in the price of necessities, reduced pay and living standards, cuts in social spending and a longer working day (plus the devalorisation of capital in crises) can counteract that tendency for profit rates to fall for some time.

The more value we create the more it goes to capital and the more voracious the system becomes to work longer and produce even more to counteract declining profit rates. Capital sucks more and more life out of us for its own survival.

It’s time to kill the vampire and reclaim life.

That of course is for the future. What about the here and now?

Certainly a 30 hour week and retirement for all on the average wage at sixty is affordable.

In 1947 miners lodged claims for among other things a 35 hour week. The ALP in fact supported, in its platform, a 30 hour week for miners in recognition of the nature of their work.

It has been ACTU policy for over 50 years for a 35 hour week. In 1957 it even talked about a national campaign for 35 hours without loss of pay to “secure a just share of gain from technological progress and to maintain employment”.

Let me just emphasise that again. For more than 50 years the policy of the peak union body in Australia has been for a 35 hour week. We now have a 38 hour week which is really a 44 hour week. In fact we have in reality gone backwards in terms of working hours. The ACTU moves in slow and mysterious ways.

The time for a union campaign for a 30 hour week without loss of pay has come. That will win back some of the gains capital have made out of our work.

According to the Australia Institute, and based on the French experience, cutting the working week by 2.5 hours per week would create an extra 390,000 jobs. Cutting it by 8 hours with no loss of pay as I am proposing would create even more jobs as well as win back the gains the bosses have stolen from us.

It would also address at least partially, to use management speak, work life balance issues. Things like anxiety, depression, suicide, alcoholism.

And simple matters like never seeing your kids or having time to play cricket with them and taking them to practice and games. So our kids never develop a love for the game your Dad and Mum used to play with you, let alone have the time to develop the skills necessary to create great players.

Let’ start the campaign for justice now. Demand a 30 hour week with no loss of pay.