This morning I read that there have been fewer traffic jams on Britain’s motorways this past year, which the AA attributes to the recession. Put that alongside falling CO2 emissions, lower demand for electricity and a drop in oil consumption, and the recession seems to be leading the economy towards sustainability all by itself. If the recession were to continue, there would be no need for government targets or international agreement. Climate change would be averted. Peak oil would be mitigated.
Unfortunately, the G20 are meeting again right this moment to talk about how to get the global economy growing again. As it grows, it will no doubt wipe out all the above gains, and set us right back on the road to disaster.
The fact is, the global economy is overblown. It cannot continue into the long term, running as it does on ecological and financial debt. It is a humongous bubble, which can only pop, or be gradually deflated. If the recession has inadvertently begun the necessary work, is it possible to continue the deceleration, in a planned and controlled manner?
It might look good for the environment, but if it isn’t good for people too, the recession obviously has to be reversed as soon as possible. But what if we could keep the good aspects of the recession, the lower consumption, while fixing the problems?
The biggest problem would appear to be unemployment. As the economy contracts, investment is pulled, and businesses are forced to close or tighten their belts to avoid closing. Job losses are the most immediate and hard-hitting consequence of a recession, and if we are to keep the recession and move towards a smaller, steady state economy, employment has to be our first concern.
Luckily, we’ve been here before. In the 1920s, the American economy reached saturation point. Industry was providing everything that the country needed and more – more food, more cloth, more steel than could possibly be used. Those surpluses were to play an important part in the subsequent depression, but two schools of thought emerged to deal with surpluses and the over-efficiency that produces them. The first was to increase consumption. This, as you may have noticed, is the philosophy that prevailed. The alternative was ignored, but has ticked away on the margins, always the better solution: work less.
“Failure to shorten the length of the working day,” wrote Arthur Dahlberg in 1927, “is the primary cause of our rationing of opportunity, our excess industrial plant, our enormous wastes of competition, our high pressure advertising, our economic imperialism.” Dahlberg advocated a four-hour work day. As far as he was concerned, if industry could provide everything that we needed in that much time, why run the machines all day? The result would just be excess, waste.
The problem in the 1920s was too much efficiency. The problem now is not enough work, but the principle is the same – a ‘rationing of opportunity’ that means some work long hours against their will while others can’t get a job at all. 2.4 million people are unemployed in Britain right now. Capping the work week would create more jobs at the same level of production. If everyone worked a four-day week, you would need 20% more staff time to get the same amount of work done. Limiting the number of hours people could work would create thousands of jobs at a stroke. If that’s too much to ask, we have a long hours culture, with millions of unpaid extra hours being worked every year. If everyone arrived on time and went home on time, that in itself would create jobs.
Of course, if everyone worked four days a week, we’d all need to take a 20% pay cut. But since wealth is relative, and the whole country would be taking a 20% cut together, we’d actually all be exactly the same. Nobody would end up richer or poorer. With all that extra time for friends and family, hobbies, gardening, sport, art, volunteering, I’d actually argue that we’d be considerably better off.
Controlling the work week would redistribute the available work, allowing the economy to contract and level off. Aside from political cowardice, can anyone see any reason not to work less?
- Canada’s Work Less Party, campaigning for a shorter work week.
- Ecologist article: The Leisure Economy
I think that, apart from political cowardice, the fact that work defines the lives of so many people nowadays would make most of them sceptical, to say the least, about such proposal. I completely agree with it but whenever I have discussed it with people my age (25-30), their first and most common reaction is to ridicule the idea…
Sad…
That’s what people did in the 1920s too, although it’s interesting that some companies tried it. Kelloggs is the most famous example, and the limited working hours were so popular that they remained in place for decades, long after the great depression was over.
A third of Americans are overworked, apparently, so both the employed and the unemployed would benefit from a redistribution of working hours.
I can tell you that I am a overworked American. As I “need” to work 40hrs a week to make ends meat (thanks to some previous school debts and large overhead of city-living) I can tell you that I would very much rather work less if I could afford to do so. It would grant me the freedom to be with my son more, garden, read, and have a fuller “real life.”
Work is not everyone’s life, even those with careers like myself. More and more people are realizing this fact in my generation (mid-twenties), but the system makes it difficult to get back to a better, less work-hours life.
But, that’s “why we fight,” right? Nice post.
Working a shorter week sounds good in principle (and I’d definitely like it!) but what about those earning at the lower-end of the scale? Even as a professional in the media, I get paid very badly and taking a 20% cut would leave me scraping to pay the bills…
Surely the idea only works if your job happens to be decently-paid in the first place?
One step in moving to a shorter work week would be also be a fair distribution of wealth (maximum wages, minimum incomes, et cetera) as well as some serious debt repudiation. We should wipe out some debts, restructure our wealth distribution, and then living on less will be easier and acceptable.
We could also assume that if everyone took a 20% cut, costs of living would decrease accordingly. However, this assumes companies would distribute that savings back to the consumer (your electric utility, phone, etc).