At the present time, throughout the world, there is much talk about the shorter working week. Mussolini has made some suggestions to the League of Nations .on the question; President Roosevelt has intimated that he intends taking steps to reduce the working week in the United States; the Australian Trade Union Congress carried resolutions calling upon workers to organise to bring about a reduction in hours so that unemployment might be decreased. Recently the workers in Queensland applied to the State authorities for a forty-hour week.
In addition to the above the Communists have been agitating for a thirty-hour week of five days. In a pamphlet issued by the Communist Party of Australia, in 1931, entitled “The Communist way out of the Crisis," we find the following: —
By introducing the seven-hour day and the five-day week, and by raising the purchasing power of the masses, we will abolish unemployment. (Page 6.)
The shallowness of the Communist Party's economics is revealed here; even the Trades Union Congress did not propose to abolish unemployment with its thirty-hour week.
Less Hours—More Wealth
The history of capitalism shows that the introduction of a shorter working week does not mean the absorption of more workers to keep up the output. When the factory system began there were few regulations governing the length of time a worker could be kept on the job. Sixteen and eighteen hours per day in English factories was a common occurrence; workers were worked even longer, and such conditions exist in many workshops in Japan to-day.
In England the twelve-hour day became general and, subsequently, by legislative enactment, the ten-hour day was introduced. In Australia, for many years, there has been a legally-fixed eight-hour working day, and it is a proud boast of many old-timers that they participated in the fight for eight hours’ work, eight hours’ recreation, and eight hours’ rest. In some individual workshops such as Lever Bros., Port Sunlight, there is a six-hour working day.
Recently, in Sydney, New South Wales, the Industrial Commission inquired into the question of the working week. The Government desired to restore the forty-eight instead of the existing forty-four-hour week. The President of the Trade Union Secretaries’ Association presented the following remarkable facts at the inquiry:—
“The productive capacity of the industries of this State was greater than those in Victoria before the introduction of the 44-hour week in New South Wales, and was greater since the introduction of the shorter working week; also that for a given amount of goods the percentage outlay on wages in New South Wales was less than in Victoria (48-hour week) and the margin available for profit and interest was greater in New South Wales than in Victoria prior to and during the operation of the 44-hour week.“A table of statistics from official sources showed that the percentage of wages to value of output in 1930-31 was 21.7 in New South Wales, and 22.86 in Victoria. The average value of production per employee was:"The average production in New South Wales had been considerably higher in this period, which included the depression year, than in Victoria. In the years 1926-7 to 1929-80, when the 44-hour Act was enforced in New South Wales, the production per employee rose by £21 in New South Wales and by £3 in Victoria—SEVEN TIMES GREATER."These figures demonstrated that a reduction in standard hours not only maintained but improved the productive capacity of employees”(Labour Daily, 17/3/33.)
Yet, in the same issue of the Labour Daily, Alderman J. S. Garden, of Sydney City Council, Secretary of the Trades Hall Council, prominent member of the Australian Labour Party, and one of Mr Lang’s foremost boosters, while speaking on unemployment, stated: —
“ . . . the people who were advocating 'complete socialism or nothing’ were talking absolute nonsense. . . . The basis on which the forthcoming campaign is to be waged will be a thirty-hour working week, restoration of wage cuts, etc. . .(Labour Daily, 17/3/33.)
The knowledge that the “forthcoming campaign” will be based upon the advocacy of a shorter working week will bring little consolation to the workless after they glance through the statistics set out above.
These statistics reflect the result of the application of more up-to-date machinery to the productive process. The employers invariably find ways and means of adjusting their plant and methods when such concessions are forced from them. When we point this out we are not to be taken as being against the introduction of a shorter working week; we merely stress its ineffectiveness as a solution for unemployment.
As long as the means of production are owned and controlled by the capitalist class, that class will reap the benefits of the increased application of machinery. They own the products and decide how they will be distributed.
The lesson to be learned is that if the workers, as a class, are to gain from improvements in the means of production, they must organise on a class basis for the conquest of political power to bring about the common ownership of the means of wealth production. This is the aim of the Socialist Party. What about falling into line with us, fellow-workers?
W. J. Clarke,
Socialist Party of Australia, Melbourne.
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