I was depressed over the weekend to read leaked reports of a new book by five ‘rising stars’ of the Tory party in which they accuse Britons of being among the worst ‘idlers’ in the world. Apparently they contend that we work among the lowest hours and argue that, instead, we should model ourselves on the workers of South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Not surprisingly immediate comment has focused on criticising the way in which this insults us and on questioning whether it is factually correct that we work among the lowest hours. Certainly it’s not correct with regard to full time working hours in a European context, where they are among the highest.
But I want to raise a different question. What I found so dispiriting is the vision of society implicit in their tirade. It conjures up an image of us all as units of production whose primary function is to perform to our maximum to the greater good of GB plc. This is on the lines of living to work rather than working to live.
Of course, we need a strong economy (albeit one that reduces its carbon footprint) and paid work is important to our lives. But I see the economy as a means to an end not an end in itself. The end is surely building a good society in which we can all flourish? And a long hours culture is in my view inimical to such a society. ‘The toad work’ (as Philip Larkin described it) squats too heavily on our lives as it is. We need more time: to care for our families (men as well as women); to be good friends, neighbours and citizens; and to have fun. And what was it another poet said about time ‘to stand and stare’? No time for that in the stakhanovite future painted by these Tory MPs. Do you agree that we should work longer or would you like to see a gradual move towards a shorter working week, as proposed for instance by the New Economics Foundation?
Catch-22, all the taxes and other costs (many due to other people’s high taxes) means that a lot of people have to work a lot, and families require both adults to have jobs in order to cope.
I would love to drop to a four-day week, but unless my outgoings can reduce to 80% of present amount, or I find someone prepared to pay me the same for 80% of the work, I don’t think that’ll happen.
Part of the problem is getting there from here – if four people went down to four days a week and a fifth person could then be employed to take up the slack, we’d reduce unemployment, reduce the number of people on benefits and reduce costs so that perhaps we could all cope with less money.
The trouble with the system as it is now, is that there’s no one who can afford to take the first step towards making that happen. People have no spare money, employers have no spare money and government has no spare money. therefore the only way it might happen is for people to produce more, which means work more (or work smarter). However, I fully expect the government and the EU to manage to absorb any extra income so generated and waste it, so I can understand why people don’t want to bother.
Lady Lister, I agree with your points about making time for family and friends etc. But it also seems that the basic premise of the book is flawed if it suggests that time spent at work is the best measure of productivity. This may have been the case when most of us were producing widgets on assembly lines, but work in the 21st century is in the process of significant change, it now needs to be measured by the value you produce and your effectiveness in your role. Besides this, many more of us are effective and productive while travelling to and from work, during evenings and weekends and on holidays… I’m not suggesting that we should always be available – we have to manage this sensibly, but remote and mobile connectivity makes it possible for many of us to be effective whether we’re at the office or not. ‘Working hours’ are now much harder to measure and are becoming less relevant anyway.
What do you expect? After all you’ve run up trillions in debts. Those debts are hidden off the books. You’ve handed out 170K a year, tax free for your action on poverty, and after that 170K a year those people are still in poverty.
However, the debt hasn’t gone away, its got bigger.
And now the state wants to carry on spending like there is no tomorrow. So its going to force people to work. After all someone has to pay the cost of you in the Lords. 2,700 quid a day.
About the same as min wage earner pays in tax in a year. So for every day you turn up, a British standard peasant has to slave for a year.
The whole parliament and the whole public should read the following before they harp on ”aid to remove poverty in the developing world”:
The Economic Impact and Effectiveness of Development Aid, House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, 20 March 2012: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldeconaf/278/27802.htm
The consensus of statistical opinion at the moment is that unlike the days when workers were campaigning for 40 or 35 hour weeks as a right, now many more people work part time,ie for 15-20hours, and work for themselves in their own time,but are still considered to have jobs because of their part time work.
conjures up an image of us all as units of production whose primary function is to perform to our maximum to the greater good of GB plc. This is on the lines of living to work rather than working to live.
Unfortunately not many cabinet minsters are good at statistics. The above is surely a quirk of committee thought!
One of the many tasks of a politican is to continue to build, maintain, encourage the unity of the nation state, but as the noble baroness rightly remarks,implying that we are
mere units of production a la mid 19thC cotton mills, is no way of going about it.
Clearly these four people do not have our best interests at heart and should be outed as soon as possible. They clearly have no idea how hard people have to work these days just to break even. Heck, my daughter has had to have two to three jobs going because of the tough times with no full time work going, making her pay up with part time jobs. I bet it’s more than they have done in their life time.
I used to work as a sewing machine operator, standing on my feet for 8 hours, 5 days a week on a hard concrete floor. It was hard manual labour for minimum wage, in a job I couldn’t stand and just did to keep my family fed and at the end of the day I would hobble home in utter pain from standing up all day. Why on earth would any sane person want to do more than that? We’re all minions to the likes of these four people. They don’t care what happens to us as long as their own pockets get lined for as little a work as possible. Why else would you be a pencil pusher? So you don’t have to do a proper manual labour job.
How do they expect to get respect from those abroad who might invest in our country when at every opportunity we have members of parliament bad mouthing us? So we’re not only a country of cheats and scroungers now, we’re also lazy? Seriously… we need rid of these negative people, we really do.
The tories are doing an awesome job of alienating every single group of people out there. Next they will have no one else to annoy but each other. It’s already started…
Just wait until you get the bill Sharon. Your share of their debts is 230,000 pounds, rising each year as well.
Here we see the next drip of propaganda into how to make the public accept a ten hour day six day a week working requirement.
Remember one of the these same members of the Lords not so long ago telling us what she wanted to see was a sixty hour a week as mandatory.Because on her visit to the US she saw just how wonderful it was for the country, which you will note is complete bull. They are in the sewer up to their neck but hiding it well as the guy in the White House has to sing for his supper this year.
Members of my family already work from 7am to 8 pm six days a week. And even some Sundays, and no they are not self employed they work for companies. However, the fear of losing their positions if they cannot work all those hours sets them on fire with fear. Fear of being unable to met the mortgage payments, fear of not being able to find another job as they are few and far between. Fear on every level.
One of these people is expecting a baby in December and with the utter delight, first child, goes the horrendous fear of the working full time 36 year old mother knowing she will have to farm him/her out in order to pay the bills of necessity. And these are middle class people.
We have become the mirror image of the US economy, in place there since the eighties. Where the tax rate on the rich is pennies to the rate on the Hispanic cleaning lady.
And we are being sold the line that we don’t work hard enough. Have you ooked at the hours those who are telling us this work? Didn’t Mensch work only three days a week and they don’t roll into the Commons before 11am. But of course they will tell you they leave late. And the reason for that is, it’s the old boys club cheap booze and grub with great company to plot by.
And have you noticed the holidays they have. Three months in the summer, well over a month at midwinter and another at Easter. ROTFWL. And yet the average citizen doesn’t work hard enough.
Again we have the ‘pendulum swung too far t’other way,’ brigade. ‘He can afford a dog on what I pay him,’ Put a check on that now.
We need real Unions to return, not the stooges presently set up with fat pay packets and a ‘keep mouth shut’ on their foreheads should we be in to lose our nice little lifestyle.
Here is a few of the reasons we are still in this mess and why they wnt to keep it going.
http://rdwolff.com/content/five-reasons-why-crisis-persists
And then we have to wonder, where are all these ten hour jobs to come from? Perhaps instead of the three jobs for a living wage, why not five, making the full night shift fit around the others as well. Don’t laugh they do it in the States if they can get it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19263787
Watch out Newsnight you will be accused of being too ‘left wing’ if you discuss the situation as it really is, rather than join the Duncan Smith of bring back the days of the Edwardian chimneys, that will straighten them out. And this is said when they pegged it so easily and didn’t show the reality of it all by half. What he needs to consider is, what will straighten him out?
Here is an American radio station talking about the problems of secrecy in government and Capitalism. In the main, it tells it as it is and is an eye opener on what this thread here addresses.
http://rdwolff.com/content/economist-richard-wolff-democracyatworkinfo-clearing-fog
It’s high time we
i.started planning to share working hours with the unemployed and
ii.stopped ”bonus’ in any job – we are all hired for certain skills for certain jobs. I’ve just heard that my friend’s daughter working for a bank has bought 4 flats in the last 11 yrs on her ”bonus”. There are some employees who work extra hours without asking for extra pay!!
I’ve just heard that my friend’s daughter working for a bank has bought 4 flats in the last 11 yrs on her ”bonus”.
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1. It will be with borrowed cash.
2. Assuming she is a trader, then she will be on 10% of profits.
So she’s ended up with 5% of profits, because 50% of her bonus has gone to the tax man.
Of the 90% of profits, that’s going to be taxed, so another chunk is going to go to the tax man.
So far, when it comes to something for nothing, its not her that’s bilking the system, its the government.
The ultimate something for nothing villian.
Just catching up with the posts.
Dave H: I agree that part of the problem is how to get there from here and that is something the New Economics Foundation report discusses. Clearly many people simply can’t afford to drop their hours at present.
And that links to the posts from Sharon and Maude Elwes who point out just how hard some people have to work now simply to make ends meet. As some have commented elsewhere, it is insulting to such people to suggest that workers are idle and if only they pulled their socks up our economy would improve. And as Martin Casey points out, in some kinds of work time actually spent at work is no measure of productivity.
The problem is that they end up with little money on which to live.
Their major cost is you. You take a huge percentage of their earnings, and give bugger all in return.
That’s why they can’t afford to do much.
It’s going to get worse. You’ve hidden the debts off the books, like Bernie Maddoff for the same reasons. So you will resort to more extortion and violence to keep the money coming in.