Tom Walker wrote: > Roediger and Foner argue "The length of the workdays... has historically > been the central issue raised by the American labor movement during its most > dynamic periods of organization". That may be true, but there is some controversy among labor historians regarding how movements such as the "10 hour day" and the "8 hour day" are to be interpreted. One school emphasizes the primary slogan of the 8 hr. day movement: "8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will." From that perspective, the demand for leisure time was central. Another interpretation stresses the connection between hours of work and employment in the presence of labor-displacing technological change. I think that much more evidence supports the former interpretation. > 'Thirty for forty' is a slogan, not a politics. It was both a slogan and a demand -- primarily of CIO unions. It can be a demand in collective bargaining or a political demand. Clearly, there are many instances of slogans which were part of political movements. > Again, I'll return to my argument that perhaps the long losing > streak of the left stems from its virtual abandonment of the working > time issue. I'm not sure what you mean by the "left" here. Clearly, many groups on the left still have short workweek slogans. However, it is the unions which have -- with few exceptions -- given up the demand for a short workweek. One of the clearest examples of this was the 1982 concessionary GM-UAW agreement which eliminated the Paid Personal Holidays (PPH) program -- which, interestingly, had been negotiated by Walter Reuther as a "step" towards a short workweek. After the contract was ratified (by slightly over 50% and under 51%) about 3,000 workers were laid-off because of that concession. > To make a very long story short: I would argue that current changes in the > organization of the labour process (flexible manufacture, contingent > workforces, etc.) strive toward a unique combination of absolute and > relative surplus value. So the length of the working day is not simply an > important issue, it is the central issue for a progressive politics. How do these technologies increase absolute surplus value, i.e. an increase in the length of the working day? Jerry
