Cut the working week to a maximum of 20 hours, urge top economists

[CHIMO]

Britain is struggling to shrug off the credit crisis; overworked parents are stricken with guilt about barely seeing their offspring; carbon dioxide is belching into the atmosphere from our power-hungry offices and homes. In London on Wednesday, experts will gather to offer a novel solution to all of these problems at once: a shorter working week.

A thinktank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which has organised the event with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, argues that if everyone worked fewer hours – say, 20 or so a week – there would be more jobs to go round, employees could spend more time with their families and energy-hungry excess consumption would be curbed. Anna Coote, of NEF, said: "There's a great disequilibrium between people who have got too much paid work, and those who have got too little or none."

She argued that we need to think again about what constitutes economic success, and whether aiming to boost Britain's GDP growth rate should be the government's first priority: "Are we just living to work, and working to earn, and earning to consume? There's no evidence that if you have shorter working hours as the norm, you have a less successful economy: quite the reverse." She cited Germany and the Netherlands.

Robert Skidelsky, the Keynesian economist, who has written a forthcoming book with his son, Edward, entitled How Much Is Enough?, argued that rapid technological change means that even when the downturn is over there will be fewer jobs to go around in the years ahead. "The civilised answer should be work-sharing. The government should legislate a maximum working week."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/08/cut-working-week-urges-thinktank

[Warpy]

1. I'd like to see them try to sell that here

with the Protestant work ethic at the bottom and all those golf games written off as business at the top.

It would make a great deal of sense, but employers would shriek about benefits cost.

Of course, if we'd gotten single payer health insurance, that shriek might have been a whimper.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I have seen this promoted by other authors

it is an intriguing theory (and one that France in particular sorta puts into play quite effectively with time off regulations).

Unfortunately, it would never work here what with health insurance being wedded to employment. Premiums wouldn't go down, costs would double to cover the same 'shifts' and most aren't even eligible (by law) unless they are at 32 hours minimum.

[Wait Wut]

3. I get customers bitching because I don't work on Saturdays...

...and that "occasionally" I actually go to lunch. They'd burn the place down if I only worked 20 hours.

[PassingFair]

6. I think the idea is that you hire someone else to work the other 20 hours....

I think that's the idea....

[Wait Wut]

7. We couldn't afford it.

Either that or my pay would be cut in half. I can't afford that.

[PassingFair]

8. I don't think your small business of 1 employee is what the study is concerned with.

I don't think the "job sharing" they're talking about is for such a small business.

[Wait Wut]

9. Well now, doesn't that seem a bit unfair?

It's more than 1 employee, but it is a small business. I work harder now than I did when I worked for a "real" company.

It doesn't matter, anyway. I live in Arizona. If anything like this were to pass it would be the straw that would force Arizona to put up walls and force us little people into slavery.

[limpyhobbler]

4. 20 hour work week, Brilliant of course.

Reducing the standard work week, let me say to 30 or 35 hours, seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Alot of people would be against it though because they would lose money that way, if they lose work hours. Maybe it also needs to be accompanied by wage increases?

I really do think though that increased leisure time(aka family time/personal time) is one of the most important goals we can have as a society.

I have never heard any Democrat or Republican talk about increasing leisure time for people. They usually talk about getting us more jobs.

Why isn't reducing the standard work-week from 40 to 30 hours ever mentioned, except by third parties? This is never discussed in mainstream politics.

I think that demonstrates that our political system has some fundamental flaws that keep certain types of solutions from ever being considered.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

5. I agree with much of what you just said,

but the KEY would be that wages would have to go up. And that ain't gonna happen.

Really much of our 'protestant work ethic' is as outdated as the agrarian society that spawned it. Realistically, the industrial revolution is over, and many jobs have already been lost due to automation, and many more could be eliminated with further automation. But the whole global economy is based upon endless and (ultimately unsustainable) growth; growth of consumption and growth of debt and capital. If our values were truly as genuine as many like to delude themselves into belief, then basically there would be even less employment, for instance: no banker or wall street jobs, no MIC, no Prison industrial complex, government funded health care would cut the insurance industry in half, etc.

The PTB have no interest in personal growth, or leisure time invested with ones family, or betterment of a community or the environment. We'd really have to give our heads a collective shake and start re-assessing our priorities and (Gasp) start embracing values that would typically be called "Socialist".

[TalkingDog]

10. When this was implemented by Kellogg in the 1930' it worked well

except for that whole time off to sit around and organize labor thing.