Mann also intended to establish closer cooperation between socialist and trade union advocates of the eight-hour day. This negated the core argument of those in favor of shorter working hours, who believed in the job-creating potential of short-time working.
SHORTER WORKING HOURS IN THE USA
Achieving eight-hour work became an important part of the American Federation of Labor program in 1886, with carpenters leading the way. Since the severity of unemployment in the country was particularly severe in the second half of the 19th century, the 23
SUMMARY
Important within the spectrum of intellectuals concerned with leisure, however, is the way in which the problem of the shorter working day has been posed over the past hundred years, with similar motivations recurring despite the progress of history. It is believed that a reorganization of working time will somehow contribute to bridging this gap.
REDUCTION
SHORTER WORKING HOURS
INTERNATIONAL TRENDS
In the United States, economic policy was geared to the crisis of the Great Depression. Since 1932, the ILO has been actively investigating the reduction of working hours as one of several ways to combat unemployment.
2,2 INTENTIONS AND OUTCOMES
SUMMARY
This lent credence to the argument that state interference in this arena leads to the failure of its intended goals. However, the uneven nature of reductions in working hours, especially in the hotel and tourist industry and in industries dominated by small businesses such as the construction industry, still leaves room for statutory mechanisms to justify their presence. Furthermore, structural forces also contributed to the gradual reduction in working hours during the 20th century.
This calls for consideration when we come to terms with the South African evidence on working time levels. It may even require bold and new ways of responding to the challenge posed by the nature of working time. This explains why the campaign to reduce working hours for industrial workers cannot overemphasize legislation that will be difficult.
THE NEED FOR WORKING TIME REDUCTIONS AND WAYS OF BRINGING THEM ABOUT
- MOTIVATIONAL ARGUMENTS
- WAYS OF REDUCING WORKING HOURS
- AN ABSOLUTE REDUCTION IN WORKING HOURS
- WORK-SHARING
- INCREASED HOLIDAYS AND LEAVE
- EARLY RETIREMENT
- NEW PATTERNS IN WORKING TIME
- FLEXIBLE WORKING SCHEDULES
- COMPRESSED WORKING TIME
- SUMMARY
73 Consequently, the most basic social consideration that can be advanced to motivate shorter working hours is that they. Shorter working hours will represent a tangible improvement in living standards and will not be subject to depreciation over time. It is for this reason that a campaign for shorter working hours is an important object of struggle.
The variety of ways in which shorter working hours can be achieved include: a higher school leaving age; An absolute reduction in working hours, and this includes overtime, is the most direct and generally most preferred method of introducing shorter working hours. However, a number of different working time reduction methods can be developed to meet the needs of both employees and the business.
However, this implies the multitude of mechanisms that can be used to reduce working hours. These models do not necessarily involve shorter working hours, but create tailored flexibility to suit.
PRODUCTIVITY
PRODUCTIVITY
Production or output refers to the process of converting resources into final products and services. Output therefore refers to the end products and services that result from a particular production process – in short, to what is produced. Productivity, on the other hand, is simply a measure of the relationship between the output of a process and the input of resources required to achieve it.
Productivity refers to a holistic concept, and productivity measurements can be applied to capital, labor, or 100. Because productivity depends on so many variables, accurate, realistic, and comparable measurements of i t are extremely difficult to come up with.
PRODUCTIVITY AND SHORTER WORKING HOURS
The UK Trade Union Congress's Trade Union Research Unit believes that cutting working hours can encourage Working hours that are too long reduce worker morale and productivity and increase absenteeism; they can encourage a company to continue using outdated machinery, thus inhibiting investment in new and more efficient processes. We must remember that the optimal level of working time is not inexorable or static.
From a slightly different angle, studies have been carried out to show the effect shorter working hours had on the company's organization and output. Also in the Federal Republic of Germany, an optical goods factory offered a 45-hour week on the condition that production increased by 6.7 percent; in fact, I increased by 9.2% for men and 8.2% for women. Where the short-term increases in production are unimpressive, the long-term production rate is an optimistic barometer of the economic benefits of shorter working hours.
SUMMARY
Even the influential South African Labor Bulletin contains only one article specifically dealing with part-time work, consisting of a brief one-page informational summary highlighting the struggle of the German metalworkers' unions to obtain a 35-hour working week. 111 With the exception of two editorials on hours and overtime appearing in the Institute of Industrial Relations newsletter, no other influential industrial relations journal published in the country since the Wiehahn Commission contains anything similar. Estimates from the Labor Research Service show that in 1988, the average worker in the manufacturing sector worked 4.7 hours per week, while the average construction worker worked 3.2 hours per week.
In number no. 129 of its fact sheet, the IIR states that 'reliance on overtime earnings can lead to significant financial deprivation in the event of an economic downturn' (p.5). This lack of literature may be due to the low importance of working hours, as a matter of war has taken. The court also showed that this right not to work overtime was an important weapon that the workers possessed in the negotiation process. 118.
HOURS OF WORK CAMPAIGNS IN SOUTH AFRICA
But the state of war was the deception for organized capital to march its forces and sharp efforts to reduce working hours. Ironically, one of the first trade union federations to direct attention to shorter working hours in South Africa recently was TUCSA. Although not a priority on its agenda, the initiative in terms of the fight for shorter working hours was to eventually pass into the hands of the emerging progressive trade union movement, especially where overtime work prevailed.
It is undoubtedly true that the emerging progressive unions tended to give shorter working hours a lower priority as they struggled to raise living wages and ensure job security. Our primary objective is a minimum living wage and a reduction of the gap between skilled and'. Among the demands made by COSATU in relation to working hours was a 40-hour week without loss of pay.
WORKING HOURS AND INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION
The working hours of 7.7% of the subdivisions (i.e. 11 out of 142) are longer than the 46 maximum weekly hours laid down in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act 1983. Since 1978 there has been a minor attempt to reduce the length of working hours under some industrial council agreements as table 5.3 shows. Some industry council subdivisions, such as those affecting Liquor and Catering Witwatersrand and Liquor and Catering South Western Cape, have been downsized more than once but still prescribe notoriously long working hours.
The Wage Act implies direct state intervention in the economy in the form of a Wage Council and wage determinations. The Wage Council consists of state-appointed officials who respond to the initiatives of the Minister of Labor. It consolidates the provisions regarding employment conditions previously included in the.
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF LONG WORKING HOURS
The South African version of the sweat shop starts long before the dawn of the apartheid omnibus and stops again only long after dark. Transport and Road Research (NITRR) in 1985 attributed the travel problem in South Africa to legislatively entrenched policies such as the Group Areas Act. Ensenberg (1986), a researcher at the National Institute for Transport and Road Research drew a direct correlation between the long travel times black workers were and still have to spend on their way to and from work with the low productivity of labor in South Africa.
The fact that low labor productivity in South Africa is seen as a hallmark and is criticized everywhere. Ensenberg indicates that a number of studies show that commuting distances in Europe are generally much shorter than in South Africa: 71% travel less than 10 km and 75% travel less than 30 minutes from home to work. Nevertheless, these studies still consider 'commuting to be a stressful and disruptive factor that can affect the work situation'. 160 In South.
DEVISING A STRATEGY FOR HOURS REDUCTION
The implications are that a reduction in working hours is supported if it is accompanied by growth. Trying to imitate European arguments and impose them on a different contextual terrain, it is likely to be used as a tactic to oppose the reduction of working hours. Organized labor in Africa will have less difficulty effectively challenging and unblocking the premises of this position because long working hours are.
These two approaches are for a drastic reduction in working hours or a gradual reduction in working hours. That working hours reduction applies to a wider constituency and is immediately beneficial to a. By framing a claim according to the functions and capacities of the law, the working hours issue can become a 167 .
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Henry Ford managed to shorten the working day in his factories based on intensive rationalization and reorganization of the production process. International trends in the scope of working time have decreased significantly over the past fifty years. In South Africa, legislation has had little effect on the extent of working hours.
Shorter working hours in South Africa are likely to contribute to substantial increases in productivity, as discussed in Chapter Four. A further point to consider in cases where there are different levels of working time internationally, particularly between countries whose economies are at similar levels of capital intensity, is unequal competitive advantage. 168 Furthermore, the extent to which longer working hours in South Africa has facilitated its ability to compete in international commodity markets remains a question for more thorough research.
Bibliography
Strikes Lock-Outs and~ Arbitration in South African Labor Law: Proceedings of the South African Labor Law Conference 1988. Why we must reduce work time' in Background to the discussion at the IMF Central Committee special session held on 18 November 1983; Geneva: 1983. Reduction and Adjustment of Working Time: Lessons from the French Experience' in Labor and Society 10.
Productivity and Financial Discipline: Natural Bedfellows'; Address at the National Productivity Institute Productivity Seminar on August 1; 1984. Trends in Hours and Working Time Arrangements in the United States, l830-198S' in New Trends in Working Time Arrangements. New trends in working time regulation" in New trends in working time regulation; 7. Worla-- Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association; Hamburg 1-4 September 1986.
