The three-day week

So, the new economics foundation (why the no capital letters?) has published "21 hours: Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century".  The idea is that moving to a three-day working week would reduce income inequality and increase quality of life.

Would it?

Anna Coote, one of the authors, said at the launch today that they are 'still working' on how people would pay their mortgages.  It would also be dependent on a more progressive tax system, a higher minimum wage, a de-facto monetization of non-'work' time, a change to employers' National Insurance contributions in order to facilitate having greater numbers of employees rather than fewer, and reductions in the desire for consumer goods - "a change to what we think is enough", partly through self-production of goods in 'leisure time'.  The authors want to change the way we value all our time, paid and unpaid.

A certain amount of the following discussion was really a reaction to the prescriptive nature of the ideas and the implicit call for regulation contained in the report.

Mark Littlewood (Director General of the IEA), replying, pointed out that there are people who work 50-hour weeks and there are people who barely work at all, and that over a person's life, the number of hours varies dramatically.   He also contended that workshare doesn't, ah, work, and that Mitterand's government in France, and an experiment in Germany by IG Metall in the 1980s, prove it.  And he suggested that 'self-production' is highly inefficient - far better to do that which one is good at, no? - and, finally, he pointed to OECD figures showing that working hours in the UK have dropped by about one-sixth since 1970.

John Philpott, chief economist at the CIPD, welcomed the vision but not much of the detail regarding the solutions, saying they're "not the right ones", and pointing to the old Keynesian idea that increased riches will lead to greater leisure.  He thinks that 'low-growth-low-consumption' doesn't work, favouring flexibility in working practices and greater choice in how we produce and consume.  (That's all very well, except for what Hank Sohota calls 'fat, sugar, and salt' - when the choices people make aren't the ones they perhaps ought to.)

Perhaps the issue is that the nef folks are trying to push too hard, that these kinds of changes could happen over a century or more - but that structural shifts take time, a lot of it. The authors contend that they understand it; but if they do, why the call for prescriptive regualtion?  With something this complex - we're talking about a fundamental re-working of our economy here - any policy intervention is going to have unintended consequences.  Nonetheless, the aims are laudable, and as a bid to start discussion, this is a good beginning.

(As an aside - if the problem is that we don't sufficiently value what is currently unpaid time, why don't we find ways to remunerate it?  Not to sound Panglossian, but the logic of capital would, I think, always drive us to the current economic system.  The big question is:  Can we combine markets with an economic model which is not predicated upon eternal growth, natural resource use, and measures of GDP?)

Comments

[reader]

interesting ...

[reader]

interesting ...

[SKL]

I think this is a cause worth campaigning for. What does the rest of the EU say about this matter? I believe that 21hours could be the basic working week as opposed to the massive 40hours (or a lot more). It is too much and cannot be sustained for a lifetime. People are not machines.

However, I think this really depends upon the sector. In manufacturing (blue collar jobs) 21 hours a week would not sustain the company or the worker. As it is, people all over the world in office (or white collar jobs) enjoy greater flexibility in work and the labour process - though some would say that office work brings its own sort of dissatisfaction.

In this case there has to be benefits (should such a decrease in the hours of a working week occur) for people in production.

http://www.ceridian.co.uk/hr/content/1,4099,1300-712,00.html

The moral basis for 21hours a week is based on the idea (I believe) that if living standards are improved (for example - time for leisure, health, good food, family etc.) that people will get by with less money. There may be some middle way between the existing system and an imposed 21 hour working week. Germany would entertain this idea at least as their culture is very family orientated (for instance - they do not open their shops on a Sunday so people who work in the retail sector do not have to work on this day). Here in Britain, on the other hand, this would never wash. We work the most hours in Europe.

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