1919-2019: CUT HOURS - NOT JOBS OR PAY!

A century ago, a mammoth crowd of 100,000 marched on Glasgow’s biggest ever May Day. An even more impressive 100,000 rallied in the substantially smaller city of Belfast.

At both mass rallies, motions were carried in solidarity with the Russian socialist revolution, still fresh and inspirational to workers on these islands - as the Bolshevik government fought off 21 invading imperialist armies, hell-bent on overthrowing their attempts to reconstruct society on socialist lines.

Revolt on the Clyde and the Lagan 

But the scale and power of these workers’ rallies was more than an outpouring of international solidarity. It was primarily fuelled by the momentous mass strikes and struggles just weeks before (in January/February 1919) when 100,000 on Clydeside and 60,000 in Belfast challenged the rule of the employers, government and their armed state, seizing temporary control of production, emergency services, to a degree transport. In Belfast, they formed their own, united Picket Peace Corps of 2,000 strikers, which established workers’ law and workers’ order for the two-week duration of a virtual general strike. A terrified ruling class feared socialist revolution, mobilising the media and police to try and bludgeon the strikers into submission. When that failed, they hesitantly resorted to use of troops to break the strikes.

What makes this glorious chapter of workers’ history so richly relevant in 2019 is the issue that Belfast and Glasgow workers fought on in 1919: they threw down the gauntlet with the clear-cut, unifying demand for a shorter working week, without loss of pay.

They dreaded mass unemployment, as hundreds of thousands of demobbed soldiers returned from the imperialist First World War. Equally, they revolted against the joyless drudgery of a 54-hour week, which lengthened further during war production. Matching the needs both of workers suffering the tyranny of endless work, and those facing the starvation of mass unemployment, Belfast workers downed tools, demanding a 44-hour week without loss of pay; on Clydeside it was the Forty Hour Strike.

The heroic exertions of these workers were undermined by national union treachery, ruthless deployment of military force by a terrified capitalist class, and tactical mistakes by the Strike Committees. However, they won a record-breaking seven hour cut to the working week in both cities – without loss of a penny’s pay. 

Order the pamphlet here: 

https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/1919-revolt-on-the-clyde-and-the-lagan/

Shorter Working Week – Without Loss of Pay

The demand for a shorter working week – but, critically, without loss of earnings - is as urgent today as 100 years ago, if not more so!

It should be vigorously fought for by the socialist and the trade union movement, with thorough preparation in workplaces and union forums, out on the streets, in collective bargaining with the employers, and through political struggle. Which is why I’m proud that my own Usdaw union branch, Glasgow no.1, is proposing precisely this policy and course of action at the Usdaw national conference (ADM), with the aim of then taking it into the wider trade union movement – just as we have the parallel policy of a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week.

Why? Just as in 1919, when workers took mass strike action to cut long hours of drudgery and simultaneously mop up mass unemployment, so too in 2019 we need policies to combat agonisingly long hours for millions, along with solutions to the dread of mass unemployment through automation - the ‘fourth industrial revolution'. 

Longest Hours in Europe

If capitalism was a person, it would be declared clinically insane. Whilst at least 3.8 million workers in the UK suffer insecure and short-hour contracts (with the attendant poverty pay and mental ill health), over 3.3 million work more than 48 hours a week. And 500,000 of them put in 60 hours or more!

It’s official; full-time workers in the UK work the longest hours in the whole of Europe. An average of 42.3 hours a week; 2 hours more than the EU average, and 4.5 hours more than Denmark’s 37.8 hours.  

Scotland’s last population Census recorded 39% of all workers - 984,000 – worked between 38-48 hours a week. Even more disturbing, 295,000 Scottish employees toiled for more than 49 hours... a century after our forebears fought and won a maximum 47-hour week!

Other sources show at least 54,000 people in Scotland chained to their work for over 60 hours a week.

But surely things are getting better? Well, very recent research for the British TUC found the number working over 48 hours has increased by 453,000 since 2010 – a 15% rise in ‘over-employed’ workers. And going back to the European averages for full-timers, Britain’s working week has only shortened by 18 minutes in the past decade. At that rate - assuming no reduction in hours worked in other countries - it would take the UK 63 years to catch up with the EU average!

The long hours culture that blights family life for millions isn’t even good for the economy. Danish workers have the shortest week in Europe but are 23% more productive than Britain’s. German workers have the shortest annual hours in Europe but are the most productive. 

Tiredness from overwork can kill

Burnout Britain

Exhaustion, stress and burnout are the increasingly common hallmarks of working life for workers – side-by-side with millions of others suffering poverty, anxiety and mental health problems as a result of mass under-employment and job insecurity. Numerous medical studies have linked overwork with heart disease, diabetes, stress, depression, and a five-fold increase in the risk of strokes.

Remember the tragic death last Christmas of 23-year-old junior doctor, Lauren Connelly, in a car crash after a 12-hour night shift? Even after that tragedy, Scottish Health boards still had rotas of over 90 hours a week – 104 hours in Glasgow. And we had the undercover journalist who filmed Amazon workers falling asleep literally standing up, during a 55-hour week, with relentless, impossible targets. Glimpses of the curse of long hours on workers’ wellbeing.

Add to that the grand theft of wages through unpaid overtime - the equivalent of working for absolutely no pay until 1^st March this year!

And the employers’ robbery of statutory paid holidays – which unpublished government (ONS) figures reveal steals £3billion a year off workers who are dragged in to work when they should be on paid leave.

Plus the growing proportion of our lives taken up commuting to work, as capitalist employers ‘rationalise’ and centralise their workplaces; rocketing housing costs drive many further away from their place of work; and chaotic, privatised public transport shoves motorists into lengthening traffic queues, polluting our planet - and lengthening the working day (unpaid), by an average of 24 working days last year!

The demand for a shorter working week is an urgent answer to those devouring their lives at work – living to work, with little time for anything else - and for job-creation for those impoverished by the chronic under-employment of zero and short hours contracts, or simply unemployed.

Make Automation a Blessing, not a Curse

It’s also at the heart of the answer to one of the biggest challenges of the 21^st century: the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ of automation, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The scientists argue over the scale of impact on jobs, but all agree this threatens mass displacement of people in jobs as varied as retail, manufacturing, transport, fast food, logistics, office admin, carers, nurses, paralegals – even doctors, writers and composers!

New technology should be a blessing, a means of escaping endless hours of often unfulfilling work; a way for humans to be liberated into expanding their interests, skills, family and social life, participation in the democratic running of communities, workplaces and government. But under the rule of capitalism, the rule of profit, this new wave of technology is a dystopian nightmare, with the real and present threat of mass unemployment and impoverishment. For example, it is widely predicted that one million of the UK’s 3 million retail jobs could be obliterated within 10 years. 

Drive For 35!

An immediate, all-too-modest demand for a maximum working week of 35 hours – without loss of pay – would itself free up millions of new jobs, based on the obscenely long hours endured by several million UK workers (3.3 million on 48+ hours, for starters).

It would be good for workers’ health, physical and mental; reduce accidents at work, caused by fatigue; reduce sickness and absenteeism; and as several experiments here and abroad prove, it would boost productivity.

The CWU last year won a deal that will cut the working week for 120,000 Royal Mail workers from 39 to 35 by 2021, with the first hour reduction already implemented – without loss of pay. 

We need a generalised, immediate ‘Drive for 35’ across the unions.

We already have the technology to retain or boost output of goods and services whilst cutting the working week much more radically than that, for instance to a 4-day week, and a 6-hour day. That's in stark contrast with 1.4 million people working all seven days of the week right now, in Britain 2019! 

4 Days’ Work for 5 Days’ Pay

A 4-day week would not only enhance the quality of workers’ lives, and facilitate childcare (especially benefiting women, and encouraging more men to share caring and domestic responsibilities), but also reduce the damage to workers’ wallets and the environment, by slashing commuting times.

But reduced hours must be without reductions in earnings. With the odd, bizarre exception, workers aren’t chained to their jobs because they’re incurable workaholics. They work endless hours for two main reasons: to try and survive on the rotten hourly pay rates that have been systematically imposed to boost profits, and out of fear of losing their job, in a world of rampant job insecurity, leading to the modern phenomenon of ‘presenteeism’.

In 2018, the TUC found 81% of workers want to reduce working time; 45% of them want a 4-day week. But if it means an equivalent cut in wages, how can working people afford it?

Capitalist employers often use short-time working and layoffs – with equivalent cuts in pay – to offload a crisis in their business onto the shoulders of workers who have produced their profits for previous years. Or simply slash hours – and pay – to increase workload and turbocharge their profit margins – as the multi-billion Tesco's and ASDA are currently doing. That’s decidedly not what we mean by a shorter working week. 

The battle for an 8-hour day was at the heart of the international workers' movement & May Day since the 1880s

Gigantic leaps in technology make a 6-hour day eminently reasonable 

Cut Hours – Not Pay!

The socialist and trade union movement should make far more of an outcry for policies like 4 days’ work for 5 days’ pay, and a 6-hour day for 8 hours’ pay.

This would be a radical redistribution of wealth – from profit to wages. That’s precisely why most capitalist employers will resist, in the belief that such rational, humane change to the nature of work would take a slice off their profit margins.

Aside from the fact that’s debatable (given the potential for increased productivity), it’s not really the point. We can’t afford a system that condemns millions to working longer than the 47-hour week that was conceded in the teeth of mass workers’ revolts a century ago. We can’t afford to continue with a system that is wrecking the health of millions of workers and adding to pollution of the planet.

We need a society where an adequate, decent wage is earned in a far shorter working day, week and year, freeing up time for the pursuit of real democracy and human fulfilment. But it won’t be gifted to us by a benign class of capitalist vultures. The events of 1919 demonstrated the brutal lengths their class predecessors were prepared to go against the Forty Hour Strike.

We need to take our inspiration from the readiness to struggle displayed by masses of workers in Belfast and Glasgow a century ago.

We need to battle to cut hours, not jobs or pay, harnessing all the marvels of 21st century science for the benefit of people and planet, not profit for the plunderers.

These demands should become the battle-cries on and beyond May Day 2019, standing on the shoulders of the (extra)ordinary workers’ struggles of 1919.