Front page editorial in the February 1994 issue of the CWU
Newsletter, published by the Communication Workers Union of
Australia -- Victoria
Telecommunications & Services Branch:
PRODUCTIVITY: SHORTER HOURS, JOBS
Productivity has been elevated to a religion by the corporate
sector. More productivity, less employment, lower worker
purchasing power. What sort of formula is this for the future?
The corporate sector continues to berate us with the need for
more productivity, more redundancies and more constraints on
wages and labour costs. Telecom Management are in this mould.
If the world constantly works to life productivity, and
continuously makes a growing percentage of the population
unemployed, and continues to attack the purchasing power of the
bulk of the workforce, then the only outcome will be more chronic
economic crisis.
What is the use of the increased production of goods and services
if purchasing power of the working class, the biggest market in
each country, is constantly reduced by unemployment and real wage
cuts? Jobs will not be created by this formula.
On the contrary, we will have (and many sectors already have)
chronic overproduction, a reduced need for employed workers, more
lay-offs and deepening economic crisis.
Not to mention a so-called underclass of long term unemployed
even more deprived of human and democratic rights than the
majority of workers. Jobs will be created, not by worshipping
the market, private enterprise, and productivity, but by a
programme of shorter hours, controls on overtime, voluntary early
retirement on the maximum pension, government spending,
intervention and control of trade, industry and commerce, and by
increased purchasing power for the bulk of consumers.
In Telecommunications we are at the leading edge of technological
change and business growth. Our workers are facing probably more
job losses, and more work intensity and upheavals, than any other
industry on earth.
Shorter hours, with no reduction in income, controls on the
amount of overtime worked, and voluntary early retirement are the
most effective means of creating jobs on the one hand, and on the
other, they are a means of sharing the huge increases in
productivity by providing less time at work and more leisure time
etc.
....The huge increases in productivity, increased profitability
and business growth will ensure that share holders are well
looked after. But what about the workers?
Sid Shniad
