February 25, 2000 Roland G. Droitsch Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy U.S. Department of Labor 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. 20210 Dear Mr. Droitsch, Thank you for your reply on behalf of the Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman. In your letter you stated that the Department of Labor "has no right to intervene in the private publication of any theories or philosophies." You also named several historians who have lent support to the proposition that workers may indeed restrict work effort. May I ask that you show me the courtesy of not leaping to whimsical conclusions about my intentions or beliefs? Allow me first to clarify that I am not objecting to a theory or a philosophy. Nor am I disputing that workers sometimes withhold work effort. Instead, I am seeking to bring to the Secretary of Labor's attention the status of an unsubstantiated, unreasonable and pervasive smear against the efficacy of any and all policies or proposals for reducing working time and redistributing work. I do not presume to ask the Department of Labor to interfere with the freedom of the press. But surely it is within the Department's purview to ascertain independently, on behalf of the public, whether there is any substance to widely publicized claims made about the feasibility or otherwise of a crucial element of labor market regulation, especially when similar claims have been presented as expert testimony in congressional hearings. If those claims are demonstrably false, fraudulent and to the detriment of working people and the national welfare surely the Department is not proscribed from presenting corrective information? Calling the lump-of-labor claim a 'theory' is like calling anti-semitism a religious faith. It is not a theory in any recognized scientific sense. It is a hostile caricature that demeans the intelligence of working people and the motives of trade unions. To illustrate, I am enclosing for your information an editorial from the National Post of Canada ridiculing the Government of France and the Minister of Finance, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, over legislation to establish a 35-hour work week. Please note that the editorial does not simply theorize about the tendency of workers to slow down production. Rather, it accuses the government, the finance minister and French labor unions of "a thorough ignorance of economics". It also insinuates totalitarian motives behind the 35-hour workweek policy. Similar attacks appear routinely in the English language financial press and are echoed by employers' groups lobbying against proposals for reduced work time. Surely such belligerent rhetoric is not aimed at expressing a theory or philosophy but at forestalling debate on the issue of working time. If that is the intent, it has been remarkably successful in North America over the past 40 years or so. As I mentioned in my letter to Bill Emmott, editor of the Economist, I have recently completed a review of the literature on the multiple versions of the supposed fallacy. In "The 'Lump of Labor' Claim Against Work-Sharing: Populist Fallacy or Marginalist Throwback" I documented that there is no coherent and authoritative source in the economic literature for the claim of a fallacy regarding the reduction of the hours of work. That review is scheduled to be published in the fall by Routledge as a chapter in Working Time: International Trends, Theory and Policy Perspectives, edited by Lonnie Golden and Deborah Figart. I also have several hundred pages of notes and photocopies indicating very clearly that the sources for the fallacy claim were not economists but publicists hired by employers' organizations campaigning against an eight-hour day. I was disappointed that in your letter you didn't express any interest in hearing more about my research and I was somewhat surprised at your sweeping claim that you are "well aware of the National Association of Manufacturers campaigns at the beginning of the 20th century to thwart the organizing efforts of the American Federation of Labor." Aside from Marion Cotter Cahill's 1932 PhD thesis, most secondary sources that discuss the anti-labor offensive (e.g. Foner, Perlman, Taylor, Willoughby, Wright) give only passing mention specifically to the campaign against the eight-hour day legislation. None of the secondary sources has evaluated the N.A.M.'s adamant and self-serving economic rationales in light either of theories of classical political economy or of contemporaneously emerging marginalist and institutionalist thought regarding the economics of fatigue and productivity and the case for regulation. In my research, I am examining primary sources from the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Federation of Labor and contemporary journals and newspapers that have gone unmentioned in the secondary literature. It would be hard to overstate the pervasive influence that the N.A.M. material and its bogus claims have had on the teaching of economics in the United States, which in turn has created a research void and dangerous policy impasse in the U.S. with regard to regulation of the hours of work. Please note that I am forwarding a copy of this correspondence to the French Minister of Labor, Martine Aubry. Days after I wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Labor and the editor of the Economist, yet another article appeared in that magazine alleging once again the "economic fallacy" of the French 35-hour workweek policy. I want to state emphatically that I am not objecting to legitimate criticism of the 35-hour policy. What I am objecting to is the censorious, defamatory and ritualistic hue and cry of "economic fallacy" presented entirely without evidence, without foundation in economic analysis and without regard for the merits of the case. Yours sincerely, [signed] Tom Walker copies: Alexis Herman, U.S. Secretary of Labor Mme Martine Aubry, Ministre de l'emploi et de la solidarite, France
