Charles Brown wrote: > Lets see , shorter work week with no cut in pay...
Here's where I need to point out that I'm a renegade on the "no cut in pay" slogan. The effect of this seemingly ideal formula is to push the drive for shorter working time into a rhetorical dead end. In the first place this slogan associates a shorter work week with a cut in pay and then, in response, it subordinates the demand for a shorter week to the demand for no cut. It hands the employer rhetorical leverage by identifying current income with a current length of the work week. "30 for 40" sounds like something for nothing, namely "10 hours pay" for zero hours work. Of course, it is not something for nothing because the shorter hours will accompany higher productivity. Over the long-term workers have every reason to expect shorter hours and higher pay. But that is provided they maintain bargaining and political power, which depends on the success of the struggle for shorter hours. Which is to say, that strategically it makes more sense to accept some temporary reduction in total pay -- albeit with an increase in hourly wages -- if that is what it takes to achieve the shorter hours in current negotiations. The total pay can be recovered later through even higher wages. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. > Or increase the number of jobs by cutting overtime. My qualms about the no loss in pay clause are multiplied by the logic of the coveted overtime premium. The premium creates the illusion that working overtime gives the long hours worker an increase in pay. This is an illusion. When overtime is regularly established, it simply drives down the base rate of pay. But the nominal pay for somebody working 40 regular hours and 10 hours overtime at time and a half is 55 hours. If you add another 10 hours at double time, it's "75 hours pay" for 60 hours work. With "30 for 40," the overtimer's nominal take becomes "85 for 60". The total pay for the overtime work now exceeds that for a standard week. What an incentive for going after the OT! But as I said, it's an illusion. The OT drives down the base wage so people are forced to work OT to recoup what they've given up on the base. If all this sounds either too arcane or too transparent a swindle, all I can recommend is for people to have a look at how unions cost out contract proposals. Typically they discount the value to the workers of an increase in leisure time and they assume regular OT as a given. The Sandwichman __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
