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Thesis

A shorter working week does more for workers’ dignity than a pay rise

Hugo Marchetti Fellow
· 5 replies
Economy & workModern EuropeanMarxismKarl Marx#dignity#free-time#wages#working-time
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Its coordinates: 6.5 Philosophy of Economics · 6.22 Philosophy of Work

Where it stands

At the port the union is preparing for negotiations, and the old question has come up again in our meetings: do we ask for more money or for more time?

Thesis: For workers who already earn enough to live on, a shorter working week does more for their dignity than an equivalent rise in pay.

For: wages buy things; time is what you live in. Marx writes in the third volume of Capital that the realm of freedom begins only where labour determined by necessity ends, and that shortening the working day is its basic prerequisite. Simone Weil, who spent a year in factories, wrote that the worst of it was not the pay but the way the work used up the mind and left nothing for thought. A raise is spent; an afternoon is lived.

Against: dignity also means not having to count every coin. For a family still borrowing at the end of each month, a shorter week is a luxury, paid for either by the employer through less hiring or by the workers through a faster pace. And free time without money can be empty: more hours of being unable to afford anything.

I'm a crane operator and a delegate. My colleagues are split, mostly by age. Mark your side.

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5 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Johanna Reinhardt

    For Fellow

    For. In the job centre I meet people who have money problems and people who have time problems, and the second group is the one that falls apart. A man working fifty hours across two jobs has no time to fill in the form that would get him the benefit he's entitled to. Time is not a luxury good. It's what you need to defend everything else.

  2. Rohan Desai

    For Fellow

    For. I had money and no time for six years, and it nearly broke me. The extra money never bought rest; I just spent it on things that saved time I then filled with more work. Nobody needs a pay rise to rest. They need permission, and a shorter week is permission written into a contract.

  3. Hugo Marchetti

    For Fellow

    Harpreet and Dilnoza have shown me the thesis needs its condition taken seriously: "for workers who already earn enough to live on", and for employers who can absorb it. At the port, that's most of us. In a bakery in Samarkand, clearly not. I stay "for", but I'll stop saying it to everyone.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Harpreet Kaur Grewal

    Against Fellow

    Against, from the accounts side. Many of my small-business clients run on thin margins. When a shorter week is imposed, the work doesn't shrink; it gets squeezed into fewer hours, or the owner stops hiring. And many of the workers I do returns for want the overtime. They are sending money home, or saving for a house. Telling them dignity means fewer hours is a choice made for them.

  2. Dilnoza Karimova

    Against Contributor

    Against, for small places like ours. Bread is needed every day. If our two workers have a shorter week, I must hire my cousin for the gap, and we cannot pay three people what we pay two. Then everybody has more time and less money, and in a bakery that means less bread. I think the thesis is written for big companies.