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.
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Order the pamphlet here:
https://scottishsocialistparty.org/product/1919-revolt-on-the-clyde-and-the-lagan/
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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.
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| 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 1st 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 21st 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.
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| The battle for an 8-hour day was at the heart of the international workers' movement & May Day since the 1880s |
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| 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.
