[PEN-L] Productivity

[Eugene Coyle]

Further on productivity.  Here's a recent (?) experience in which productivity jumped when hours were cut.  Margaret Thatcher secured her political future by breaking the coal union during a strike.  But there was an earlier coal strike which the miners won.  The then prime minister, Edward Heath, thought he would end public support for the miners by cutting the pay of other workers through mandating a three day week.  Industry was to operate only three days a week to save fuel.  “  … in Britain … between 13 December 1973 and 11 March 1974 when Edward Heath’s Conservative government imposed a three-day working week, as an emergency response to fuel shortages and the national coal strike.  It was expected that the three-day week would cut output by 40 per cent and apply irresistible pressure to the strikers to give in, but to everyone’s surprise there was little (if any) fall in production and in some factories output actually increased.  This raised the question of why, if the demand for goods and services can be met by three days’ work instead of five, the two additional days should be worked.”          Page 202 of Sleepers, Wake!  Technology & the future of work, Barry Jones, Melbourne, Oxford University Press 1982. 285 pages. I recently checked this out with a British journalist who has written about coal strikes in the UK.  He says that it is well accepted that production held up during the three day weeks.  Factory workers were on piece work and preserved their income by producing as much during the three days as they previously produced in five.  After the regular five day week was restored, productivity returned to its previous state -- i. e. the output per hour dropped back. Gene Coyle