Editorial: Shorter Hours No Cure for Unemployment (1932)

Editorial from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Large numbers of people have been impressed with the suggestion that unemployment can be abolished or much reduced by shortening the hours of work while retaining capitalism. The argument takes the form that the overproduction of goods in relation to the demands of the market (with consequent falling prices and profits, and growing unemployment) can be met by reducing the hours of work. Now it is obvious that if wages were reduced along with hours (and assuming no intensification of work) the total volume of goods being produced would be smaller, but so would the total amount of wages. The problem would remain essentially the same as before, because the workers would have less money to spend, and this would off-set the smaller output.

Alternatively, the employers might pay the reduced wages to a larger number of workers, giving work to some unemployed. But in that case the total amount of wages would be the same as before (but spread over more workers) and the total output of goods would be the same as before (i.e., the shortening of hours would be off-set by the larger number of workers).

So that if wages are reduced along with hours the problem, of “overproduction” is not solved and unemployment is only reduced by reducing the wages of the workers generally.

Various labour leaders, having therefore rejected the idea of shorter hours with reduced wages, have stood firmly by the notion that the problem can be solved if hours are reduced and wages left unchanged. The Transport and General Workers’ Union have made much of an agreement fixed up with Mander Brothers, paint manufacturers, of Wolverhampton, under which hours are reduced from 47 to 40 without reduction of the minimum rates of pay. The agreement may or may not be a satisfactory one in other respects, but it certainly does not show a way of remedying unemployment, for the change is accompanied by a reorganisation of the works and the introduction of a new system of piece-rates winch will increase the output per head of the workers and will result in eventual dismissal of redundant staff. The only guarantee is that no dismissals shall take place for six months and that the dismissed men will then receive some “compensation.” (See Record, published by Transport Workers’ Union, October.)

In the meantime, the increased output at smaller costs will enable Manders to undersell their competitors and throw their workers into the ranks of the unemployed.

While the means of production and distribution remain in the ownership and control of a class instead of being the property of society, there is no solution of the poverty problem.