Work less, and everyone works. Sounds more operatic and militant in Italian, no? We need to rethink work and consumption from the ground up.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/123345/The government could give employers an incentive to provide paid time off now by giving tax breaks to cover all or most of the paid time off. For example, if firms gave workers three additional weeks of paid vacation a year, the government could offer to provide a tax break for two years that would cover this cost up to $2,500 per worker for the two years covered by the stimulus package. This sum would be sufficient to fully cover three weeks of vacation for workers earning less than $40,000 a year, which would be most workers in the economy.
This is a neat form of stimulus because it directly gives employers an incentive to hire more workers, as can be easily shown. Suppose employers of 50 million workers take advantage of this deal, cutting their workers' time by an average of 6% as discussed in this example. These 50 million workers will have exactly as much money to spend as they did previously, so presumably their consumption will not be affected.
However, the employer will now be getting 6% less work performed because everyone is only working 49 weeks a year rather than 52 weeks. Since demand for the companies' products will not have changed, and the companies' labour costs have not changed (the additional cost was picked up by the government), they will presumably want to hire roughly 6% more workers to make up for the lost hours.
If employers of 50 million workers took up the deal, then this 6% would translate into three million jobs. This would be a very good start for getting the economy back toward full employment.
This worked very well for Kelloggs when they started doing in in our first Republican Depression
http://www.consciouschoice.com/1995-98/cc095/dump40hourweek.htmlExperiments in reduced work time have also taken place in the United States. Historian Benjamin Hunicutt has conducted an extensive study of the Kellogg Company of Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1930 this firm went to a six-hour day with no cut in salaries in an effort to combat Depression-Era unemployment, and found to its surprise that employees were three to four percent more productive. Kellogg’s maintained this program until 1985 when, according to Hunicutt, “status anxiety” on the part of managers and older male workers brought the experiment to an end.
Some companies that are currently experimenting with shorter work hours include Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, and United Services Automobile Association. United Services offers its employees a four-day, 38-hour week. Workers at Digital Equipment may cut back to as little as 30 hours per week and receive full benefits. Hewlett-Packard offers some employees a choice of how many and which hours they work.
The real stumbling block to shorter hours may lie in our second question — the political. Despite the positive examples of some innovative firms, many employers prefer long hours for a number of reasons which will not be easily conceded. These include the expense of fringe benefits, notions about workplace discipline, and the profitability of around-the-clock production at the lowest possible labor cost.
Cutting hours would also reduce unemployment. This touches a nerve among employers, who are aware of the part that a large unemployment pool plays in their balance of power with labor. Few of them — especially among those who have the ear of government — are likely to remain passive in the face of attempts to shake up the status quo.
And it works now in many other industrialized countries
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC37/Bush2.htmKim: What did you find out about the German approach to work and leisure? Is it similar to that of the US?
Vivia: The differences are very striking. We discovered this quickly in our interviews with Diana, a German worker in her late 20s. She's a single mother who was born in East Germany but currently puts in a six-hour day as a secretary/librarian with Schering, a large chemical company in Berlin.
She chose her company's flextime option in order to spend more time with her little boy. The plan also entitles her to six weeks of paid vacation, approximately 15 paid holidays and 18 days of sick leave, which she and others use quite freely in order to have time for shopping since stores are closed in the evenings and on Sundays and open only until noon on Saturdays.
Kim: What's the result of all that free time? How does Diana use it differently from her American counterpart?
Vivia: Well, first off she has several hours with her little boy every day, as compared to just minutes a day for Japanese and American workers.
Diana really did have a life outside of work; she studies languages, rides her bicycle, travels, and goes to movies - she's a real film buff. She and the other Germans we met seem to have created a real leisure society in which they don't live to work, but instead work to live. Even more important for her was that she never felt pressed, but had plenty of time for family and friends. We never heard this in the US. Never.
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