By JOHN CAST
The economic unit of time, and the inequalities in the distribution of free time, need to be talked about openly. This is particularly relevant now, since in late 2022 the Biden administration and the bosses of the rail companies conspired to crush a rail workers strike over issues that included being “on-call” 24/7.
Later, during its 2023 strike, UAW made landmark demands for a reduction in the workweek without a reduction in pay, and specifically, for the 32-hour workweek. Although they did not end up winning this specific demand, they won plenty of other concessions during their campaign against the auto bosses. It can be seen that the most militant workers in the U.S. are audibly questioning the primacy of the long workweek—and the whole working class needs to listen.
The epidemic of overwork
Time is money. Companies and businesses always prioritize their profits over the quality of workers’ lives and will fight to maintain their profits in any way they can get away with within the limits of the law. This is basic capitalist economics; businesses weigh the cost of hiring labor-power versus the potential return from using that labor-power. The less they must bear the cost of labor-power, without harming production, the better. Therefore, companies will exploit every possible avenue to reduce labor costs and increase profits.
One such way is by increasing the amount of time workers must work on the job. More and more, “overtime” at work is becoming mandatory, with 10-hour, 12-hour, and perhaps even longer shifts becoming normalized across production and warehousing. Increasingly, the freedom of the weekend (two full days of personal freedom) has been eroded, as six and even seven workdays in the week are made mandatory to satisfy production. Hiring more laborers means paying out more in health care and retirement (if these benefits even exist), and it is therefore cheaper both directly and administratively to have fewer workers working longer and more grueling hours.
Legally, U.S. companies have to pay the minimum of 1.5 times normal pay for all hours over 40 hours a week. But this regulation does not halt exploitation. More and more, it seems that in order to work in industries such as construction, warehousing, and logistics, working people must accept 60 to 70-hour weeks up front, before even taking a job. The earlier U.S. standard of five eight-hour shifts is slowly disappearing, and companies are standardizing a monopoly on our time as the needs of production increase. Part of this is due to the need to extend the number of hours that workers are able to do productive labor, without increasing the costs of benefits and administration.
The problem of life/work balance isn’t limited to “production” industries, either. Often the demands of work extend well beyond the office. As computers and online communication have become a staple of the workplace, so-called “white collar” jobs blur the line between working at home and working in the office, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Other bits of “homework” matter too, such as finding the right health insurance, figuring out your benefits, child and elder care (who will care for them while you are working?), etc. With few exceptions, the bosses refuse to compensate workers for this lost time.
In many ways, companies monopolize our personal time as a means of saving our contractual time for profits. For example, both blue-collar and white-collar jobs suffer from commute times. Workers are rarely compensated for their personal commute to work. This is a cost put onto the working class itself, whether we are talking about the expense of car insurance (generally the only viable option outside of the cities), or the time and money used on mass transit. So in reality, an eight-hour shift (segmented by an unpaid lunch break) may in fact take up as much as 10 or 12 hours of a working person’s day, depending on their personal commute. A whole waking day will be gone if you work a 12-hour shift.
Most larger companies these days will, as required by law, provide some form of paid vacation or personal time off. This is a basic right won through hard struggle in the history of the labor movement. However, the restrictions on this time are draconian in the extreme. Notwithstanding cultural intangibles in different companies, some workers may find themselves in a more laissez faire atmosphere where PTO (“Paid Time Off”) can be used on the spot if they wish. Others, however, may find it impossible to use even a couple of hours of PTO unless they follow an exact set of detailed rules about when to call, whom to contact, and in what increments. All the above assumes, of course, that Human Resources departments indeed follow labor law to a T.
Most insidiously, the bosses can use our own paid personal time against other workers. In many industries with two or more shifts in a given 24-hour period, workers who use paid personal time on one shift may inadvertently force mandatory overtime on workers in the previous or following shift. This is particularly relevant in industries with seasonal highs in orders and strict schedules.
The quality of our lives impaired
We do not live to work. We work so that we may live! The purpose of our lives is not to make the rich even richer at our expense. We are meant to live our own lives in freedom, and to do work that enriches our minds, our bodies, and our world!
The desire to work is there. There will always be work that needs done. There will always be people willing to do it. That is not a question in dispute. But our work cannot come at the expense of our whole being. We should not be slaves to the profit drive, nor is production a virtue unto itself.
The issue of free time is a central demand of workers’ rights that must be taken up by the union movement. We must strive to provide human beings with a life that provides fulfilling work without sacrificing other avenues of their development.
This perspective, however, is fundamentally opposed to the perspective of the capitalists, who view working people as an input into the productive process. The primary drive of capitalism is to use production (whatever industry that may be) to generate profits. Dominating our time for the purposes of profits is an unavoidable by-product of the system. In addition, any change in our lives that would make it no longer necessary for us to work as hard, would have to be squelched.
Anarchy of production leads to overwork
The sheer waste of capitalism is obvious to any lucid observer. Much of the production actually carried out is wasteful. This includes military production (U.S. expenditure is over $800 billion yearly), advertising, luxury housing, over-packaging and its related phenomenon, redundant consumer goods—an even consumables meant to make us work harder for longer, like energy drinks. There is enough spare housing in the U.S. to wipe out homelessness and vagrancy overnight. Food waste, especially in the production of red meats, is enormous. Companies compete for profits and many go out of business, leading to the idleness or destruction of tools, machinery, and unemployment. So much else could be mentioned that goes beyond the scope of this article.
Suffice it to say, with a system of rational planning based on the needs of working people, overproduction could be eliminated, and with it, wasteful jobs as well. With planning, we could provide meaningful work to everyone and reduce working times dramatically. At the heart of all overwork is the need to produce for the sake of production itself. Put another way, when we produce to sell, we are not really providing what people need.
The propaganda of the bosses, given to us via the media giants, would balk at all of this and claim that the economy must always grow and grow. To stop growth is to lead to death, or so they say. But rather, it would mean the death of the system that makes them more money. For “growth” in this context is synonymous with “profit,” whether that means the number of monster cans sold or the size of arms deals. Economic growth is not a virtue unto itself. In general, whenever a new technology comes along that would supposedly make our lives better, we, as people, become more miserable. This is because, for example, when a new labor-saving technology arrives that would supposedly reduce our toil, the owner of that technology, the capitalist, saves labor costs by firing the unnecessary workers—and then makes the remaining workers work for even longer.
The economic religion of “growth” will never lead to us becoming happier, but will only lead to more 12-hour shifts and seven-day weeks.
“Thirty for forty!”
Some trade unions (and socialists) in the past put forward a demand that can point the way to how this can be accomplished— moving to the 30-hour week while receiving 40 hours pay (“30 for 40”). That’s five six-hour days per week. This would help to spread the jobs, by making room for an additional shift in industrial plants. It would also result in an overall decrease in the daily fatigue of the workers, opening up a couple of additional hours for rest.
Last year, the UAW raised a similar demand—institute a four-day workweek (32-hours), with no reduction in pay. The climate would benefit under this plan too, since with one whole working day gone, the pollution from the daily commute to work would be reduced substantially.
Overwork and overproduction is dangerous for the environment. Capitalism always wants to make more and more stuff, faster and cheaper. So mountains will be blown up, forests will be cut down, and diesel oil will be burnt, in larger and larger quantities, as long as capitalists exist and want to make a profit and “grow the economy.” In a very basic sense, working less is necessary for human survival on planet Earth.
The fundamental point is this: There are things that we can do as a society to improve our lives, reduce our toil, free up our time, and save the environment. But as long as governments are controlled by the capitalists, and as long as the economy is based on a growth model hostile to our very being, we will remain miserable. A government run by working people would open up a new era of democratic self-management by workers to decide how to carry on production, and in a way that is beneficial for our bodies and our world.
Reduce the workweek, without a reduction in pay! For the six-hour day at eight-hours’ pay! For the right to a life outside of work!
Photo: Nabisco bakery workers strike in Portland, Ore., in 2021.