On 2010-08-08, at 11:54 AM, Carrol Cox wrote: > ...shorter hours is > probably the ONLY demand that can fuel a revolutionary struggle (whether > one sees "revolution" as requiring an insurrction or as achievable by > "constitutional" means.
======================= The demand for shorter hours can fuel militant - though not always revolutionary - struggles when they are initiated by class conscious workers in an expanding economy, as the great battles for the 8 hour day in the heyday of the labour and socialist movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries demonstrated. But the demand loses its potency and is drained of its original meaning when workers are lacking in class consciousness and on the defensive in a stagnant or contracting economy. It's tempting to say they are easily bamboozled by employers who inevitably conflate reduced hours with reduced pay, but when confronted by the prospect of losing their job or a portion of their pay, fearful and desperate workers will almost always, however reluctantly, accept whatever reduced hours and pay their employers offer. I suppose that's why I can't offhand think of any contemporary workplace struggles in the advanced capitalist countries where workers have been fighting for shorter hours at no loss in pay. They've been instead asking their employers to cushion the effect of threatened layoffs through early retirement, sweetened severance packages, job cuts by attrition, and pay and benefit concessions. Some states provide tax relief to compensate employers who reduce hours but maintain pay levels, but that is not the same thing as making employers, many of whom are cash-rich and highly profitable, foot the extra costs rather than the public. Dean Baker is a prominent proponent of these work reduction schemes. But the battle seems to be joined over the urgent need for more and better programs aimed at job creation, pitting liberal economists like Krugman, Reich and others against the Obama administration's policies to date. Here is Robert Shiller making the case for a New Deal type stimulus aimed at creating labor-intensive service jobs in education, public health and safety, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation, arts and letters, and scientific research: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/business/01view.html The debate over further stimulus is the one which trade unionists, the unemployed, and the insecure working masses are being most exposed to, and I'm partial to focusing on, and intervening where possible, in battles which are actually joined, not ones we wish were being joined. (As an aside, I can't think of an historical instance where a ruling class has been overthrown, ie. had its property and power wrested away from it, by constitutional means.) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
