Utopia and the 21 hour working week

The authors of the New Economics Foundation’s report into the length of the working week have suggested that working hours should be limited to a maximum of 21 hours per week. But the unemployment data from the ONS last month shows that such a change is being imposed on thousands of workers whether they like it or not; part-time employment rose by 99,000 in the three months to November 2009, replacing most of the 113,000 full-time jobs lost over the same period.

The ’21 Hours’ report suggests that a shorter working week would reduce unemployment; they say it would “help distribute paid work more evenly across the population, reducing ill-being associated with unemployment, long working hours and too little control over time. It would make it possible for paid and unpaid work to be distributed more equally between women and men”. It would leave more time for looking after children or other dependents, more opportunity for civic duties, and older people could even delay retirement, and that the results would lead to less squandering of the earth’s resources – “people will be able to start doing things for themselves: growing their own food and cooking it rather than buying ready-meals, walking and cycling rather than using motorised transport, mending and repairing things that break rather than throwing them away.”

In this ideal world they also claim that it would improve productivity – but without taking account of the extra costs that would be incurred in arranging for more job-sharing, extra recruitment and training costs and accommodation and administration for all those extra employees. I would guess that there would also be increased unemployment amongst paid carers, both in child care and in adult home-based care, whose work would be replaced by unpaid domestic care instead. And what about all the people currently working in food processing, the domestic cleaners and gardeners, the electricians, decorators and handymen - who will be able to afford to employ them if working hours are cut to 21 hours and so pay has to be cut to match? What happens to the benefits of specialisation, division of labour, economies of scale and efficiency? They do ‘admit’ that people would earn less – but say that “the 21 hours plan would put an end to one of the main causes of the credit crunch – the consumer debt bubble – by moving from an economy based on consumerism and economic growth, to one based around stability, resilience and adaptability.”

Can we move away from an economy based on economic growth? The old soviet model tried something like that, but it didn’t work terribly well……