1. The French miracle: a shorter week, more jobs and men doing the ironing
Official study finds that France's 35-hour week has boosted the economy and
proved a hit with both employees and their bosses
By John Lichfield in Paris 19 June 2001
The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=78940
"In the meantime, the 35-hour experiment had started to attract admiring
glances from across the Channel.
"Last week, the Industrial Society, a think-tank with broadly Blairist
views, painted a mostly positive picture of the reduction in working time in
France. By flying in the face of 'Anglo-Saxon economic orthodoxy', the
French seem to be winning the battle over how to give employees a better
balance between work and private life, the report said. 'The French seem to
be throwing away the textbook of labour market policies,' said the report's
author, the economist Charlotte Thorne. 'If the French experiment works then
the UK Government may be forced to look at France rather than the US for new
ideas about reforming the jobs market.
"'Britain is still in the mind-set that we have to work incredibly long
hours ...Practically, there is no reason why we shouldn't have a 35-hour
week here, but culturally we are a million miles away.'"
2. Another Country: France versus the Anglo-Saxon Economists"
by Charlotte Thorne
The Industrial Society: http://www.indsoc.co.uk/futures/FastFutures.htm
"Anglo-Saxon economists argue that to connect the new jobs created by the
French economy with the recycling of work occasioned by the 35 hour week is
to fall for the "lump of labour" fallacy.
"The lump of labour fallacy assumes that an economy supports a fixed level
of employment and that this lump of employment can be apportioned in
different ways according to the policy priorities of the time. Hence
France's attempt to redistribute jobs horizontally between the over-worked
and the under-worked. This is not very far from UK attempts, not so long
ago, at vertical redistribution (the redistribution of work from the old to
the young) with the introduction of early retirement programmes intended to
shift the old out of the labour market to make room for the young.
"Both attempts are equally misguided according to the Anglo-Saxon orthodoxy
which argues that economies do not support a fixed level of employment but
that the level of employment in an economy depends on the health of the
economy and its rate of growth. Attempting to create more employment without
tackling the growth question is like attempting to get more speed out of a
car without changing gear - an over-revving car can be persuaded to move
faster but ultimately the speed is unsustainable and overheating (inflation)
will result. For a traditional Anglo-Saxon economist, creating a sustainable
shift in employment levels requires a productivity shift in the real economy.
"And as any self-respecting free market economist knows, supply-side reforms
are the best way to achieve the flexibility required to produce sustainable
productivity shifts."
3. Reply to Charlotte Thorne
by Tom Walker
Dear Charlotte Thorne,
I saw mention of your name in a report by John Lichfield on the "French
miracle" of the 35-hour work week and was interested in your quoted view
that "The French seem to be throwing away the textbook of labour market
policies." I subsequently found the website of the Industrial Society and
had a look at your report, "Another Country: France versus the Anglo-Saxon
Economists". That report includes a section titled "Can you create jobs by
recycling hours?", which on page 4 discusses the "lump of labour" fallacy.
Having recently completed a historical study of the origins of the so-called
lump of labour fallacy, I would say there is a strong case for throwing away
the textbook of labour market policies. Essentially, "the textbook" with its
pet lump of labour fallacy claim has eschewed genuine orthodox (Anglo-Saxon)
economic theory and substituted for it a reactionary polemic publicized by
early 20th century employer groups such as the U.S. National Association of
Manufacturers.
Genuine orthodox economic theory (as opposed to the mainstream but ersatz
Anglo-American textbook creed) corroborates the counter-analysis that you
present on page 5 of your report. That theory was articulated in 1909 by Sir
Sidney Chapman in his presidential address to the Section on Economic
Science and Statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science.
My findings have been published as a chapter, "The 'lump of labor' case
against work sharing: populist fallacy or marginalist throwback" in _Working
Time: International trends, theory and policy perspectives_, edited by
Lonnie Golden and Deborah M. Figart (Routledge, London and New York, 2000).
I would urge you to have a look at a brief summary of the chapter that I
have posted on the web.
Lump-of-labor summary http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/execsum.htm
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
