We work less, much less. 200 years ago, the average was around 3,000 hours of hard work per year in Western societies where the great industrial revolution was beginning. The proletarians of the 19th centurye century, including children, could remain chained to their infernal steel monsters 10, 12, even 14 hours a day, six days a week.
The division of the day into three thirds of eight hours (for work, sleep and the rest) was won in a fierce struggle by the workers’ movements, a violent struggle concentrated in the Haymarket massacre, which occurred in Chicago in 1886. France adopted the 40-hour week and paid leave “for all” in 1936 thanks to the Popular Front. It moved to 35 hours in 2000 in order to share work in a context of high unemployment, the opposite of the current situation of generalized labor shortage.
In fact, everywhere in the West, have we never worked so little. In 2022, in Quebec, men worked 36.8 hours per week, and women, 32.3 hours. A Quebec adult works in the office or factory half as many hours per year (1,625 on average) as their ancestor in 1823.
Should we do even less?
“There is great interest in reducing working hours, going from 35 to 32 hours a week or from five to four days,” responds sociologist Julia Posca, who has just published the essay, in an interview. Working less is not enough (Ecosociety). “The strong trend is going in this direction. Overall, working hours have been halved over the past two centuries. However, this activity still occupies a central place in our lives and our societies, and this central occupation is experienced by many as a burden. So I wanted to understand why, even if we work less, there is still a demand to work even less. »
Hence the formula used in the title. Mme Posca means that it would not be enough to reduce one’s time at work a little or even significantly to suddenly improve one’s quality of life and fulfill one’s existence.
“When we approach the reduction of working hours, we cannot avoid a broader reflection on the form that a social and economic organization could take which guarantees everyone to live free and emancipated rather than overworked and alienated, writes the author. Too many lives have been – and still are – squandered, crushed, lost for us not to be interested in the contours that work could take if it were organized according to principles other than capitalist. »
The specter of Marx
The c-word is dropped. Normal. Sociologist Julia Posca conducts her investigations within the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS), a left-wing laboratory of ideas. The shadow of Marx, a major theoretician of capitalism, could therefore hover over the reflection, and it is indeed there, but in an underground way.
“I was trained by reading Marx, but I am not a Marxist,” explains the sociology graduate, who does not cite the old German in her essay and who prefers contemporary Frenchmen Dominique Meda and André Gorz. “Society has evolved since Marx, for example to place consumption at the center of the economic system. In truth, if working time stagnates in rich countries, it is also because people need income to consume ever more, like the wealthiest, and to pay their debts. But hey, I remember from Marx’s reading of capitalism that workers remain in a subordinate situation in which they have very little power over the object of their work. This is what is still missing. »
We must question the objectives that companies currently pursue. Individual, collective and environmental well-being are at stake.
The fall strikes in the public service are not aimed at reducing the time spent at school or in the hospital. They concern salaries, organization and quality of jobs. The strikers want to improve their hours, promote family life, change the asymmetry of decision-making powers.
We should not generalize either. Not all jobs are alienating and mindless. There are not only bullshit jobs, bullshit jobs, according to the title of a famous essay by David Graeber. Mme Posca talks about IRIS, where she works, a self-managed organization where decisions are made collectively and horizontally, without bosses. “We try to embody this value of the autonomy of well-treated employees to keep them as long as possible and keep them happy,” she summarizes. I consider myself very lucky to be at the Institute. »
HR rush
Public and private employers are increasing their attempts to at least pretend to take into account the distress of their “human resources” and thus get their employees to join the company. Jobboom, a labor market information site, recently offered a list of the ten most sought-after professions in Canada in 2023. Website developer came first, followed by human resources advisor. This profession “ensures to establish good working relationships between the managers and the staff of an organization and to improve the quality of life of employees”.
The Anglos speak of workism to describe this ideology situating work not only at the center of economic activity, but also at the heart of the existence of the person defined first and foremost by their professional function. We know the refrain: “I work therefore I am and I am my work”, a formula taken up by many older citizens while younger ones are beginning to detach themselves from this blinding ideology of the only self-realization through work.
“Companies have every interest in seeing their employees adhere to this vision,” says M.me Posca. Employees may feel invested, the employer may well offer them leisure in the workplace, but in reality, workers have little power over their job or decisions that directly concern them. »
What to do, then, if working less is not enough? “There is a problem with the nature of our jobs,” replies M.me Posca. We must ask ourselves what needs our economies meet. We are in a world where jobs are created to generate profits for companies. Instead, the economy should be reoriented around satisfying useful needs and offering more satisfactory working conditions. »
She does not believe that it is possible to escape from fairly generalized alienation on an individual basis. The solutions will necessarily be collective, she asserts, proposing three axes of reorganization: giving more power to employees over the purpose of their work as well as to citizens over the economy; adopt social and environmental standards; and reduce consumption, a great destroyer of resources, including time.
“We have to get out of the unsatisfactory circle that is emptying our lives,” says the sociologist, well aware of the radical nature of the desired reforms. We must question the objectives that companies currently pursue. Individual, collective and environmental well-being are at stake. That said, any positive reform will be welcome, including the reduction of working hours. There is a need to work less. But that’s not necessarily enough. And in the current context, many people cannot afford to reduce their working hours because they live in precarious conditions. »