Tom,
I'm changing the subject of the thread again because I think something very
interesting is emerging in this discussion.
You made quite a number of interesting insights in your posting but I'm
going to cut through to your last (postscript) sentence where you appear to
have summarised your overall ideas very neatly.
At 15:33 05/09/02 -0700, TW wrote:
<<<<
I'm for shorter hours because, as a consequence of research over more than
20 years I have become convinced that the expansion of working hours has
come from our society's refusal to confront its social, economic and
spiritual problems -- that is to say that the longer hours, like
alcoholism, are as much a symptom of malaise as a source.
>>>>
I'd agree with that. Holding that in mind, let me now backtrack to
something earlier that I wrote and you replied to:
(KH)
<<<<
Thus, unfortunately, the working week will always tend to expand well above
the necessary minimum -- the hours demanded being pulled and pushed from
both employers and employees.
>>>>
(TW)
<<<<
This is a recent phenomenon since the 1980s for the U.S., the 1960s for
manufacturing. Until then, the trend since the mid-nineteenth century was
reduction of the work week.
>>>>
I'm glad you made reference to the 19th century because two things can be
said about this period: (a) the ordinary working man in the cities was
working immensely long hours up until about 1850 -- far longer than he was
a few decades earlier in a mainly agrarian economy ('tho we must bear in
mind that many people came to the factories of the cities from the
countryside voluntarily and not all of them because they were forced out by
landlord enclosures); (b) despite the ordinary factory worker being
exploited pretty ruthlessly, his hours nevertheless declined in the course
of the century.
I suggest that the workers' hours didn't decline because of trade union
activity. This featured strongly, of course, during the century, but I
suggest that the underlying reason was that as productivity (and the
profitability of British exports) improved, some of it was bound to spill
over into higher wages so that, as the average wage of the worker increased
above the basic costs of survival (food, clothes, house-rent), then a
proportion of disposable income was bound to be spent on leisure activities
as well as in the pubs.
We can instance the immense growth of spectator sports during the latter
decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th (soccer,
rugby and cricket mainly). We can also instance the music halls and also
immense growth of radio. These alone would account for at least 15-20 hours
a week of the average adult male worker's leisure time.
Any particular type of economy cannot be sustained for long if the goods
that the working man produces cannot also be purchased by him. But also --
and very importantly -- the working man must also have the leisure time (as
well as the money) to use them (in this case, the spectator leisure goods).
This, I suggest, is the real underlying reason why the working week came
down so spectacularly from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century --
say, from 70-90 hours a week to 40-60.
Now let me nip forward to the present. There's an awful lot written about
immensely long working hours and yet, at the same time, as I quoted a few
days ago, opinion polls in America say that most people are reasonably
content with their working week. I suggest that this apparent anomaly can
be reconciled by the fact that those who complain and write about the long
working weeks are the middle-class meritocrats, not the workers. And the
meritocrats, generally, have much more interesting jobs than the workers --
so interesting, in fact, that their work is more satisfying than much of
the passive entertainment that's available to them in their leisure time.
This polarity in the use of time is, I suggest, self-reinforcing. And one
result of this is that the quality of what's available by way of passive
entertainment -- TV and radio -- continues to decline. But I won't continue
along this particular vein because I'll be tempted into discussing one of
my strongest beliefs (that society and the job structure is dividing into
two parts).
Instead, let me just instance one interesting case in point -- the one that
started this thread. This is that it's not surprising that the French, more
than most European cultures, and certainly more than America, still retain
a healthier and more satisying notion of what leisure should be about. They
take enormously long holidays in the summer -- often returning to their
countryside families localities. They still believe in a caf� society.
Families dine out for long meals (it's an eye-opener to watch such in a
restaurant and the enjoyment and fun that goes on!). In short, they're
still hanging onto some sort of community life -- and it's *active* at
that, and not passive.
So let me summarise. If leisure "goods" are a significant part of an
economy, then the average worker must also have sufficient time as well as
money in order to keep the show going. I don't know what the figures in
terms of GDP, but the leisure industry (that is, passive entertainment) is
substantial. This has a strong, albeit hardly visible, effect on the length
of the working week.
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