Why Some Employers Favour a Forty-Hour Week (1944)

From the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

More and more State and enlightened employers are realising that a shorter working week is needed if they are to hold their own in the world’s markets, and continue to reap profits from the labour of their workpeople.

In an article which appeared in the Daily Herald dated July 31st, 1944, entitled “Forty Hours Shalt Thou Labour,” George Thomas stated : “The standard working week in most industries within five years would be forty hours instead of the present 47 or 48 hours.” He also said: “They (the employers) know that in a highly mechanised industry it is much more important to get full employment for one’s costly machines than to get long hours of work from the individual workers.” Amongst other things a shorter working day will save the employer light and power, which mean more ease and comfort for them and additional profits into the bargain.

The writer continued : “Long before the war, one of the chiefs of a great Midland engineering firm told me we could introduce a four-hour working day here without difficulty and without any real (money) sacrifice by our men.” A more recent statement by another Midland factory chief, Mr. H. M. Crankshaw, this year’s president of the Birmingham Exchange : “As a practical industrialist I am perfectly satisfied that if every one really worked on an efficient basis for four days a week, we could keep the world going and have three days a week for recreation.” A shorter working week would be a real benefit to the workers if other things remained the same, but they do not. Herbert Tracey, writing in the “Labour Press Service” for June 28th, 1944. shows that the reduction in working hours increased production in a number of factories engaged on war production. On the workers’ side it is true they will have more time off, but this will be counter-balanced by the fact that they will be speeded up and will need more rest to recover from their tiredness.

As a machine minder in the bedding trade, I have realised by experience that I get tired more quickly tending a machine than, say, ripping a remakes by hand or filling mattresses by hand. The introduction of machinery has the effect of continually reducing the number of people needed to produce a given amount of wealth. Every advance of machinery at the same time makes greater the difference between what the worker produces and what he buys back (because his product increases while his wages remain stationary). The result is that production increases more rapidly than demand in the established trades, and consequently the workers find their labour-power unsaleable.

Machinery being introduced in the factory is not an evil in itself : it is because this machinery is privately owned by the employers, whilst the workers own nothing but their labour power. When articles are produced solely for use instead of for profit, when all are workers and there are no idlers, when wealth can be turned out quicker, shorter hours will be a real benefit to society as a whole instead of what we have to-day—two warring groups in the capitalists who want more profit, and the workers who want more wages.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” So when the workers decide to abolish the wages system, they will destroy once and for all time the last stage of human slavery, and introduce for the first time in history human happiness and freedom for all. Speed the day for classless society!

J. E. Roe

Editorial: Trade Union Congress re-affirms its Belief in Capitalism (1944)

Editorial from the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

While re-iterating trade union demands for a higher standard of living and for changes in the structure and control of industry, the T.U.C. at Blackpool accepted the continuance of capitalist industry and trade and the exploitation of the workers through the wages system. Always the formula is the same, that of condemning particular abuses and coining vague phrases asking for sweeping changes, while at the same time voting for detailed schemes which accept the fundamentals of capitalism.

One resolution called on the Governments of the United Nations to insert in the peace settlement a statement of social principles and objectives as recommended by the International Labour Conference at Philadelphia (Daily Herald, October 20th, 1944). We only need to concern ourselves with two points in the “Declaration of Philadelphia” to see what a fraudulent document it is from the standpoint of working-class emancipation. The first clause is the short affirmation “Labour is not a commodity.” Technically, of course, this is true since the commodity the worker sells is not “labour” itself but “labour-power”; but no doubt those who drafted the clause were only being slipshod in using the wrong word. What they thought they were doing was giving an answer to the Socialist charge that under the wages system the worker is merely the seller of a commodity, his own mental and physical energies. They thought that if in some formal document signed by the capitalist governments it is affirmed that labour-power is not a commodity, then it ceases to be a commodity. Yet every observer who looks at things as they are, including the Labour representatives who endorsed it at the I.L.O. and the T.U.C., knows that labour-power is and remains what it has always been under capitalism a commodity bought in the market, just like the other commodities the capitalist buys. In effect, the I.L.O.’s reply to the question, “Will you abolish the wages system?” is the assurance that there is no wages system. Just as if a fireman, asked if he would or would not put out a fire that is consuming a house, replies “There is no fire.”

A later point in the precious Philadelphia Charter betrays the truth. Having declared that labour-power is not a commodity, the Charter goes on to define the conditions under which this allegedly non-existent commodity is to be sold, by demanding—

“Policies in regard to wages and earnings, hours and other conditions of work calculated to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress to all, and a minimum living wage to all employed and in need of such protection.”

Another T.U.C. resolution endorsed the General Council’s Report on Post-War Reconstruction. Although the Report attacks the existing organisation and control of industry it has nothing to offer but well-worn phrases about public ownership as a description of its proposed schemes of a slightly changed private ownership. Some industries are to be “publicly owned,” by which the Report means “taken over by a public corporation” (Daily Herald, October 3rd, 1944). The present owners will give up their shareholdings in the existing concerns and receive in return Government bonds. “Basis for buying out the present owners, it is suggested, should be ‘reasonable net maintainable revenue’— that is, on the actual earnings over a period of years and on the probability of their continuance” (Daily Herald, October 3rd, 1944).

Industries not ripe for the public corporation form of State capitalism are to be regulated by Industrial Boards set up by the Government. Workers and employers are to have equal representation on the Boards, but the chairman and a small number of other independent members are to be appointed by the Government. The chairman and his “independent” colleagues will be able to decide all issues on which employers and workers are equally divided, but in what way they will be independent the T.U.C. does not explain. They will, of course, be entirely dependent on the capitalist state, committed to trying to keep capitalist industry running smoothly.

This, by the way, is a familiar device by the Fascist countries. In the name of democracy, the workers, who outnumber the capitalists by, say, ten to one, are to have “equal” representation with them.

Congress decided by a 4 to 1 majority that the German people share the guilt of their Nazi rulers. Sir Walter Citrine, saying there has been too much mushy sentimentality about this business, told Congress that when the Allies march into Berlin “we shall find so many anti-Nazis full of assurances that they have always been against the Nazis that it will be difficult to know who has been carrying on the war in Germany” (News-Chronicle, October 19th, 1944).

Millions of German workers (but by no means all) have indeed supported the interests of their capitalist exploiters in the Nazi Party, but Sir W. Citrine and the majority of T.U.C. delegates are surely the least fitted to protest against people who support what they profess to oppose, for has not the T.U.C. for decades re-iterated its denunciations of capitalism while continually supporting capitalism, and on occasion (as at present) giving its backing to avowedly capitalist politicians and governments? Since capitalism is the cause of war, none who support capitalism can disclaim responsibility for war.

According to the Daily Mail (October 20th), one proposal accepted by Congress was that utility goods should be continued after the war. This very humble request just about typifies present relationship of the T.U.C. with the capitalist class “We are only poor workers,” the proposal says in effect “we don’t ask for the good things we make for the rich, but please see we have a regular supply of the second-rate, the substitute the cheap and nasty.”

With equal humility Congress passed about its 15th protest resolution against the 1927 Trades Dispute Act though at present it is only protesting because the Prime Minister has continued, like his predecessor in office the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain, to withhold even the token concession asked for. The T.U.C. missed the bus by not getting something done four years ago. As it is they have waited until the capitalists— free from preoccupation with Germany—can give them undivided attention. They will no doubt get what they deserve.

It is sometimes instructive to take notice of what your opponents say about you. The T.U.C. is allegedly anti-capitalist, while Lord Beaverbrook’s Evening Standard is openly in favour of capitalism. What the T.U.C. does ought on this assumption to meet with the disapproval and apprehension of the capitalist press.. Instead, the Evening Standard assures its readers that the T.U.C. (despite its attack on non-union journalists sent as reporters) is quite harmless. Any who think the T.U.C. has moved “to the left,” says the Standard can be comforted. Congress accepted policies that are satisfactory to many people on the right. Congress for example, agreed that labour should continue to be directed— in other words conscripted— after the war. Congress steered steadily towards that Trade Union-Big Business collaboration which is anathema to the left.” (Evening Standard, October 20th, 1944).

The millionaire Press may be comforted, but present T.U.C. policy will bring no comfort to men and women trade unionists in the hard years before them.