On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:39 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for the response. I don't see why cutting hours can't be > advanced on its own, and before other demands are won. Cutting hours has > been done repeatedly in the US -- pushed hard by the Abolishonists after the > Civil War, by labor unions, by churches, by women. Hours cut from 60 per > week to 50 per week, from 6 days to 5.5 days to 5.0 days. And there we have > been stuck for reasons well established -- e.g. by the attacks on Labor after > WWII. But now the environmental movement and women's groups are pushing > hours cuts once again. >
Don't you think the Puritanical work-ethic that disparages leisure, is a factor here? How else do you explain workaholic CEOs? Also it is one thing to demand a reduction in work hours for gruelling, hazardous, poorly-paid manual factory labor, quite another thing to demand such a reduction for well-compensated, white-collar workers. The argument for reduced work hours today is not that a human-being is physically unable to endure a 40 hour work-week, but rather that a shorter work-week leads to higher overall economic efficiency. That's a much more difficult argument to make because it contradicts the deeply-held Puritanical belief in the virtues of hard-work. -raghu. -- "There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." - George Carlin _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
