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How much work?
23
HOW MUCH
WORK?
Christer Sanne
The future of work is a constant topic of discussion. This article approaches it with the deceptively simple notion of demand and supply: how much work is required to yield a reasonable standard of living? And how much work would people prefer to put in? Answers are given from two studies of a mature Welfare State, Sweden. The answers also point to the following underlying questions: What are the driving forces behind the present pattern of work? Is there a lagging self-understanding about needs, risks and possibilities in our type of society?
Work is man’s transformation of nature for his own needs. How much work does it take to satisfy these needs? And how much work is the working man (and woman) willing to put in? This approach may sound strange. In politics and planning, the recurring problem seems to be the oppposite: how to ‘create jobs’ in order to avoid unemployment. It is also unfamiliar because of the pervading influence of economic thinking, which assumes unlimited needs and limited resources. In this article I make use of major elements of economic theory and method, but I allow myself-and I encourage readers-to consider the problem from a different angle, probing into these more fundamental questions of our society. The focus is on work as an instrumental activity which can be paid or unpaid (although the latter appears only occasionally here), for the production of goods and services. The following two questions correspond to two studies carried out on Swedish society: l
l
‘How much work is needed?’ to secure a future reasonable standard of living; this is an input-output analysis of the economy projected forward 25 years from 1980.? ‘Longer or shorter working hours?‘: what do employees prefer in different time perspectives? This study relates to a survey of living conditions to provide comprehensive background information.*
To frame these studies, I briefly discuss the state of the Welfare State as perceived by Jurgen Habermas, and give some basic information on the Swedish economy, labour market and social and cultural conditions. In a final comment I suggest that the results indicate a lagging self-understanding in our type of society.
Christer Sanne is a researcher affiliated to LinkCjping Department of Technology and Social Change, S-58183,
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University, Sweden.
0016-3287/92/010023-14
Institute
of Tema
Research,
@ 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
24
How
Welfare
much
work?
State in crosswinds
Habermas analyses the modern democratic industrial nation3-in his parlance ‘the social state’, which I take as a slightly weaker variant of ‘the Welfare State’. It is basically a ‘work society’, legitimizing itself with the promise of full employment and better working conditions and, as a utopian goal, the abolishment of heteronomous work. To these ends, the state has strived to harness the spontaneous capitalist growth process-to bring democracy and capitalism into peaceful coexistence. Some see the problems of the state in the 1980s as an outcome of its success in this endeavour. Habermas also points to inherent difficulties arising from the state’s intervention in citizens’ everyday life. Furthermore, he claims that rapid development in technology and managerial capacity today makes full employment unattainable in most countries, giving capital the upper hand. Reaction to these problems follows three lines according to Habermas: l
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the defenders of the social state-now turned ‘conservative’-strive to save what has been attained even if it means giving up some of their long cherished goals; the new conservatives attempt to regain some of the lost economic and cultural control (Reagan and Thatcher are obvious examples); and the ‘dissidents of the industrial society’ question the form of economic growth which is the base of the two other groups.
Swedes like to think of their history as the success story of an undeveloped agricultural country of the 19th century that turned into an advanced industrial Welfare State. Many would consider this national project-for decades guided by the Social Democratic party-completed today (even if shortcomings are easy to find). Thus, it is not surprising that the most influential group in Sweden has been the first one, the defenders. There is a strong stress on work which is commonly explained as a heritage from Luther. Full employment is a primary goal (which has been accomplished so far). The role of ‘wage earner’ is assigned more and more importance for rights and dutiespensions, social benefits etc-to the point of rendering it comparable to the state of citizenship.” The 1991 tax reform had the explicit objective and expectation of creating an incentive to work more. Observers see Sweden as a model of successful labour market relations. Shorter working hours have recently been rejected by a government commission on the grounds that they are not affordable. This intervention in a field that according to market principles should be a matter of the concerned parties seems to follow a tradition of ‘mobilizing’ a ‘labour force’. This tradition can be traced back to the 18th century when the people (and their labouring capacity) were looked upon as the country’s major asset (in line with William Petty’s argument in England 300 years ago). Today it is part of the coexistence with capital. The following analysis of two ‘naive’ questions seeks to undermine the position of the two first groups from a genuinely democratic position: that the will of the people should shape the future. This will cannot be fully expressed by the labour and consumer markets of today’s hard-work-highconsumption societies. We must look for other signs for it and I have
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How much work!
25
chosen to examine information provided by sociological surveys. These support the view of authors like Andre Gorz:5 people prefer shorter working hours if given the opportunity to express a preference. The first step is to test whether shorter working hours is a realistic proposal. Cuts in material standards would probably be resisted by many or even most people. ‘Defenders’ and ‘new conservatives’ are likely to claim that respondents to sociological questions would change their opinion if faced by such a reality. But need we suffer such cuts? Or will technological progress allow a production which satisfies our demands even with shorter working hours? The question merits attention not only for the answer (some would say that a ‘yes’ is evident) but because it turns the spotlight on how we measure progress.
Swedish
economy,
labour market and social structure
More than in any other modern country, Swedish households earn dual incomes. The rate of participation in the labour force is high. Day care for children and leave opportunities allow most parents to keep up their work even during their children’s preschool years. Between the ages of 25 and 45 years, when most families have children, about 90% of Swedish women belong to the labour force. Women now make up 45% of the workforce and do about 40% of the paid working hours. On the other hand, a full-time industrial worker works relatively few hours per year compared to many countries. The 40-hour week is still standard but vacations and leave opportunities reduce average working time. Many women work part-time. Roughly, the (employed) workforce consists of 50% full-time working men, 25% full-time working women and 25% part-time working women. The result of these conflicting trends is that the number of working hours per person of working age is high in Sweden, with Swedes working 20% more hours than the (West) Germans or the French. This high participation rate and diligence are significant social and cultural traits. Flexible time (morning, lunch and departure) is common in offices. Shops, hospitals and even industrial plants tend to individualize time schedules to match work requirements with employees’ preferences. It has been suggested that Sweden’s high nativity-in contrast to falling birth rates in most of Europe-indicates a successful family policy. The opportunity to combine children and paid work is an important part of this policy. The number of worked hours (in paid work, ‘labour volumes’) decreased during the 1960s and 1970s but has increased since 1980. The latter tendency may be ascribed to falling real wages and, at times, a high demand for labour. The annual change, down and up, has been about 0.6%. Provision of welfare requires a substantial part of the labour. About 26% of worked hours are performed in the public sector, mainly medical and social services and education. At the same time Swedish industry is highly integrated in the world market. Several transnational companies are based in Sweden and foreign trade is substantial. Calculated as ‘embodied labour’-all the labour that goes into a sector’s end products-work serves three major purposes:
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26
l
l l
How
much
work?
public serv. Ices 35% (ie including work embodied sector); consumption (of domestic production) 40%; and export 25%.
in
deliveries
to the
As in other countries, services account for a growing part of all work among the sectors. This is mainly due to changing conditions of production and is not followed by a growth in output of services as end products. The public sector of care and education is largely staffed by women. This has given the labour market a marked gender division of Iabour-see Figure 1 which contains a ‘field’ of the labour market with 23 groups of occupations. The two dimensions illustrate male- v female-dominated occupations (up-down) and their degree of physical strain (left = hard work). Five broader blocks combine the 23 occupations into: male industrial jobs in the upper left corner, the ‘hard-core’ workers; female assistant jobs in care and services in the lower left corner-often equally taxing physically and in several cases mentally as well; leading white-collar jobs in the upper right part (mainly men, mainly light, also best paid category); intermediate white-collar jobs (mostly women); and mixed workers and service jobs (mixed gender, miscellaneous work but often manual jobs within service sectors).
Male manual workers r---.
white-collar
100
90 ‘80___,’ Share
-36-
40
30
who find the work physically
jobs
20
10
0%
strenuous
Figure 1. The field of the labour market with 23 occupations (or sets of occupations) and five broader blocks. Male-dominated jobs are at the top, female-dominated jobs at the bottom. To the left are jobs which a high percentage find physically strenuous. Size of circles corresponds to the number employed.
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How
There these hours.
much
are vast differences in working conditions and attitudes blocks, which are significant for their desires regarding
work?
27
between working
How much work is needed? To calculate the ‘needed work’ we must respond to the question: ‘needed for what?’ The market economy makes ‘needs’ equivalent to ‘demands’. Such ‘demands’ are supposed to drive the economy in a self-regulating manner-the work performed always corresponds to customers’ needs. Some objections can be raised to this which must be dealt with in an analysis of needed work: l
l
l
As shown above, a considerable portion of paid work is done in the public sector, providing services to ‘customers’ at little or no cost. It is the task of the political system to regulate input and output of this sector and a forecast must predict how the political system will behave. A worker-cum-consumer is seldom free to choose his income level upward or downward since he works according to a ‘hidden’ (or open) contract of expectations and norms. This also affects his spending-the ‘demands’ expressed in this spending are partly a result of the fact that earnings are mandatory due to inflexible employment conditions. In this situation it may be good sense to spend what your (regulated) work has earned you. But it does not vindicate that you really wanted to work for it in the first place. The situation is assymmetrical, a fact that economic theory seems to neglect. Each final service is the result of a chain of provisions combining paid and unpaid work in various ways. 6 A comprehensive view of work should include all kinds, for example, not only work that goes into the growing, manufacture and distribution of food (which illustrate various sectors of the ‘formal economy’) but also the time for purchase and preparation that goes into every meal. Estimates indicate that household and other ‘informal’ work amounts to half of the total work. Shifting technology leads to an interchange of tasks between formal and informal work but the quantitative effects of this are not known. Only formal work may be adequately analysed since it constitutes part of the national accounts.
Method Needed work is calculated in an input-output analysis of a conventional type but applied backwards compared to standard economic modelling.’ Thus, instead of starting with a labour supply to find out how much it can produce (in conjunction with equipment, ‘capital’; Figure 2 left), it begins with a specified output of goods and services from which to derive required work (Figure 2 right, hollow arrows from right to left). Assumptions about foreign trade, investments, production structure and productivity changes are introduced step by step, as illustrated in Figure 3. The question of foreign trade is crucial for a small open economy with high export and import (which contains embodied labour substituting domestic labour).
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How
much
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Consumption Import/export
Figure 2. Models of normal economic forecasting (left) and the track followed in this analysis (right). Labour and capital enter the ‘black box’ of production (the input-output matrix) which yields consumption and new capital. Here the process is analysed backwards to answer the question: ‘how much work is needed for a given level of consumption?’
Imports Exports Investments
Consumption
Structure productlon
,
Final demand
Labour structure
of
, Total output
demand
Figure 3. Structure of analysis
Public services are dealt with from the input side: a specified growth in worked hours is assumed. Its productivity change is set to zero but inputs to the sector grow proportionally to the worked hours. Some of the input assumptions are deliberately not prolongations of trends but are selected on other grounds. For a ‘forecast’ of such a long duration as here one can list good reasons for doing so: Overall consumption of goods and services was defined at two average growth levels, 2% and 1.35% annually for the period of 25 years. To observers who take a historical perspective these are low estimates. To others, who stress the environmental dangers of continued growth in consumption, they may appear high. The ‘moderate’ 1.35% corresponds to ‘50% higher standard in one generation’ which is a formula that could possibly be a political compromise. Consumption is composed of 11 groups which change at varying rates. In the higher estimate (average of 2%) the growth of each group is based on the trend of the last decades. In the lower estimate, certain groups were set for a higher growth than others as a matter of judgment rather than a mechanically prolonged trend. Again, food is an example: the budget slice for food has been shrinking for a long time but I chose to break this trend, assuming more concern with quality food, ‘green’ alternatives, etc (the same liberty of motivated deviations from trends characterizes the OTA analysis; however, assumptions in details like these affect the end results only marginally).
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l
l
much
work?
29
The scope of public services is a constant topic of public debate. Here I assumed an increase in inputs, adding 25% more worked hours during the 25-year period in the main alternative. In this case, no reference is made to output. The chosen level may be seen as a compromise. Many people claim that what public services offer-care, education, culture, etc-is what society needs most of all in the future. The line of the new conservatives is, on the other hand, that it cannot be afforded and that the public sector should be reduced. Financing more public services will undoubtedly cause problems.8 Labour requirements (‘productivity’) are assumed to follow the trend of past years. Again this is open to calculational manipulation if one wants to illustrate consequences of various policies. A possible case is a more labour-intensive agri- or horticulture to avoid some of the drawbacks in today’s chemical-dependent system.
Results Several alternatives have been tested. They show that productivity assumptions are a major determinant. This has repercussions on the whole enterprise. Every serious economist will admit that statistical data on productivity are often shaky. An even more disturbing fact is that in many service sectors it is impossible or difficult to measure productivity, due to the type of services offered. Consequently, national accounts-by agreement and convention-disregard productivity changes in public services. One could argue that this principle should be extended to similar types of work, eg in banks and similar offices or consulting. Instead, these are accounted for in terms adapted-more or less artificially-from goods production. The trade sector measures productivity in a counter-intuitive way-changes which in common parlance would be regarded as an improvement are recorded as reduced productivity! With a growing share of labour in the concerned sectors, all these oddities of productivity measuring become increasingly embarrassing for economic policy making.q The major trend of using less labour to accomplish more is still clear enough to yield a result in the dimensions that are measured: money value and working time. The ‘moderate’ growth-+50% in 30 years--in principle means 50% more rooms, more or better food, more or superior equipment, etc. However, looking backward at the price trends, one quickly realizes that the ‘real’ changes of quantity, quality and achievement vary immensely between types of consumption. Over a period of decades, consumers will adapt to this with changes in consumption. One example is that today we utilize tremendous amounts of communication and computing power, but often fewer personal services than in the 1950s. Thus, long-range economic forecasting has a limited bearing on changes in ‘real’, physical terms of everyday life. Figure 4 shows projections of labour embodied in various end products, based on three alternative growth rates. To accomplish the moderate growth in consumption-however vague in ‘real’ terms-in the year 2005 would require about 15% fewer work hours than in 1980. The ‘fast’ growth takes approximately the same total input of work as today. With a projected increase in the working population the decrease of 15% would allow for a
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How
much
work?
Growth
alternatives
n
ref:
2000
1500
1000
500
”
Public services
Everyday goods
Private
Export
services
products
Figure 4. Embodied labour in four types of end products-public services, everyday living products (food, clothing and housing), private services and ‘export products’ (from industries mainly producing for export).
general working
30-hour week. time cuts.
Even
the
‘fast’-growing
alternative
would
allow
Of the total work volume, the public sector would grow absolutely and relatively (approaching 40% of the labour volume) while consumption would require less work than today. The total (embodied) labour in private services would remain more or less the same. The largest shift in sector and type of work would be a decrease in private blue-collar work and an increase in public white-collar work. There is also an obvious shift from ‘male’ occupations to ‘female’ (with today’s gender division).
Discussion Calculations show that radically shorter working hours are not contradicted: for all we can tell now, material standards could be upheld and increased with less input of work. Among the assumptions underlying this conclusion is that there are no drastic changes in the global economic structure. This should by no means be regarded as a blueprint for a planned economy. Production is supposed to correspond to citizens’ wants in terms of private goods, private services and public services. But in a modern state the market section of the economy cannot deal with all needs. The responsibility for some of them-notably the need for clean air or day care for all children, etc-is left with the state. This model has the advantage of analysing the total want structure in one. This uniform treatment of all sectors is an important point in discussing ‘work’ v ‘needs’ (or ‘wants’). It highlights the common miscomprehension
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much
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that the private sector-trade and industry-and the public sector deal with becomes distorted when you different ‘work’ and ‘needs’. The similarity look at it through economic glasses: taxes appear to be extracted out of the private sector in order to finance public services. Assuming a limit to the level of taxation leads to the notion that a certain scope of public services requires higher private consumption than the ‘real’ demand. This leads to a new kind of advocacy for material growth: ‘in order to have enough we have to consume more cars’. The practical and political hospitals, problems of paying for public services are evident but have to be solved in their own right, rather than giving in to undesired overproduction, especially as cars are likely to produce poor health.
Attitudes
to working
hours
If we establish that material standards may increase in the future, it is reasonable to turn to the surveys which solicit people’s opinions about working hours.
The attitude
question
One common question is ‘Would you prefer higher pay or shorter working hours?’ The pattern of replies is clear: a majority would give up more money for more free time. This goes for men as well as for women, for all ages but the youngest, and for most types of occupations. These results come from several surveys in Sweden. Internationally, the Scandinavian countries range higher than other European countries. France, the Benelux countries and Italy follow at a fairly high level, whereas in the UK and Ireland three out of four prefer higher salary.‘O This question does not spell out whether it refers to an individual choice in an otherwise unchanged situation or to a collective change. That is made clear in another question where respondents are asked to rank policy goals. Figure 5 gives the first choices. They support the impression that there is a widely shared interest in shorter working hours.ll Judging from these questions, there is a rather weak drive for more consumption.
The demanding
question
It may be claimed that these questions ‘only’ describe a non-committing attitude, not a desire and far less an intention. A more ‘demanding’ question, which would normally require that a person cut down on his spending (or savings), is the most commonly used one in surveys: ‘Would you like to work longer or shorter hours with a corresponding change in earnings?’ In most work places (except those where part-timers are in majority) a ‘yes’ to a decrease would also amount to an individual departure from the general pattern of behaviour. To this question, most people opt for ‘no change’ but approximately 15% of all employees want shorter hours. We can picture the wage earners as two opposing groups with contrary wishes: 18% of full-timers want to
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1992
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How
much
work?
Shorter hours
working
Undecided
Public services
Private consumption Figure 5. Most
important
policy goals resources.
for
the
use
of growing
shorten their working hours, 17% of part-timers want to increase them (see Figure 6). The total is strongly biased towards shorter hours. Attitudes are strikingly similar over the years, from the 1950s onwards, regardless of the absolute standard of living or shifting economic trends. Who are the employees desiring shorter hours? We can expect the reasons to be complex. There are vast differences in working conditions as well as in salaries and economic ability. Family reasons are likely to vary. Finally we may expect different lifestyles and attitudes to the job to influence replies. Respondents’ background has only been thoroughly examined for the demanding question. I2 Generally the results show a complicated picture of effects. People who want shorter hours are found in every conceivable group and often contrary to expectations. Thus, poor health, poor working conditions, lack of influence at work, etc, have no independent impact. Only one category stands out for its extreme views: full-time working
17% want to prolong
FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES
EMPLOYEES
18% want shorter hours Figure6. A simplified view of desired changes in working length. Size of squares corresponds to number of people cerned.
time con-
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much
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mothers with pre-school children. Half of them want to cut down on working time. Most mothers with pre-school children already work part-time (and few of them want to increase) and if they all worked according to their preference, the majority of part-timers would be overwhelming (78%). All the same, these women make up only one in eight of all those who prefer shorter hours. Seven out of eight have to be ‘explained’ in some other manner. Economic reasons are generally assumed to be decisive; for that reason they were examined thoroughly. The conclusion is that they have a clear impact in many instances but they are not decisive, particularly for men. Three different measured were tested: ‘salary’, ‘household economic means’ (total incomes/imputed needs according to family size) and ‘saving habits’. ‘Salary’ seems to be least important, ‘saving habits’ most.13 But the pattern is complicated by other co-varying variables: family types, occupational groups (see Figures 7 and 8) and attitudes to work. Generally the differences are at least as large between occupational groups as between income groups within an occupational group; similarly for family groups. But fathers of pre-school children are very income-sensitive in their preferences (mothers are not because they prefer shorter hours regardless of income!). Shorter hours (with less pay) are generally more often desired by women than men, even when there are no children in the household. There is also a higher interest in shorter hours in white-collar jobs, although in almost every sense these offer more agreeable working conditions. This cannot be attributed to the higher pay (even if salaries are higher) but may stem from different expectations and occupational cultures. Women in assistant occupations (the lower left corner in Figure 9) split into two groups. Those in care jobs often find it mentally taxing and are keen on
Men/Full P
Women/Part
Women/Full
HE
P
5
P
HE
s
0
l *
l 0
‘@
0
l e
*a
HE
S
Youth 16-24
Ir\ 25-44. no children
Families with small children Families with school children
l .
-
0V
0
//
0
/-
\J_-
\ 0
@O
00
0-0
I/-/--
45-64 ~ no children
Figure 7. Working hour preferences after economy in five family categories. Separate accounts for sex and full/part-timers. The level and slope of line in each box indicates how interest in shorter hours in different groups varies with pay (P), household economic means (HE), and saving habits (S). Upward slope = expected ‘economic’ effect.
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How much work?
Men/Full P
HE
Women/Full
Women/Part
S
P
HE
s
*
Male workers Mixed workers services Female assistant jobs Intermediate white-collar
Leading white-collar
Figure&
/
cl-lWorking
hour
preferences
/
~ after
economyin Figure
five occupational 7 for key).
categories
(see
caption
to
shortening. Shop assistants, cleaners, etc, in contrast, want more work (both sub-groups contain many part-timers, 50% or even more in some occupations). Those who want to work less (or more) generally opt for a change of 10 hours per week. The overall labour supply, if all desired changes were effected, would decrease in the order of 2% (in some occupations twice as much). Such a moderate change, resulting from the unleashing of employees from the standardized pattern of working times, should not present any problem to the economy as it corresponds to just a few years of spontanindividual working times are hardly eous change. In practice, however, conceivable. Such an idea must be seen as a theoretical approach. A lagging self-understanding? The two main questions on shorter hours beg for separate comments; comparing them begs for a third. A ‘yes’ to shorter hours in the demanding question reflects a concrete and acute desire to change one’s living conditions. The inertia of habit keeps the majority from considering it. But it is obvious that the dual employment of husband and wife creates great problems in some family types. Women with small children are most sensitive to this and few of them want to work full-time. Their husbands are less sensitive. Among men with jobs of higher education and with better pay (it is difficult to tell if ‘pay’ only tells but ‘leading white-collar jobs’ do) there is an evident understandThe BO-hour week for families with ing that children must take time. children is an unresolved monstrosity of our age. The attitude question requires a choice between alternatives so there is no inertia effect but it is also more hypothetical. The preference for more free time rather than more pay is equally distributed among men and
FUTURES January/February 1992
How
Male
manual workers c -._ . \ ,__\
much
work?
35
,;-. ‘i
I
and service
jobs
\
c 60140
E" P :
40/60
; 5,
Sharewhofindtheworkphysicallystrenuous
Figure 9. Desire for shorter/longer working hours in five occupational categories. Separate full-timers (MF), women full-timers (WF) and women part-timers (WP).
for men
women. Nor does is differ clearly between family or occupational groups. It indicates-in my view-a general attitude that assigns ‘progress’ and economic growth a limited importance among human goals. This confirms what a number of other studies have shown: that feelings of happiness are not correlated to the absolute level of national or personal income.14 We may discuss it in terms of saturation of demands, the proliferation of ‘false needs’15 and the notion of ‘radical needs’, the satisfaction of which is denied by the present system.16 But income has a practical side to it. Once you have adjusted to a level of income and spending, it is very hard to withdraw from it. Demands have turned into habits and habits are perceived as needs-what has been called a ‘ratchet effect’ of income: the wheel will only turn one way, upward. This can explain why there are three or four times more people ready to refrain from more money than those willing to reduce their income. The ratchet effect also happens to be the behaviour that the economic system feeds on and constantly promotes. The ultimate limit to material growth may be our physical environment. This is part of what the ‘dissidents of the industrial society’ claim. The responses here indicate that a great part of the general public is also aware of the impossibility of further depletion of natural resources. Perhaps most of us are even mentally prepared to adjust as necessary. But paid work is only offered on certain conditions. The tradition to count work in heads, not in hours, turns our attention the wrong way. It makes a threat out of a development that might as well be regarded as a promise. People seem to
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How
much
work?
object to these conditions individually but not as a united force. Many institutions also lag behind due to an ideological inertia or vested interests; in this respect labour unions do not differ from employers. The high social esteem of ‘work’ obscures the fact that some work is detrimental to society. To reappraise this fact may be a first step in a discussion of ‘how much work is needed’.
Notes and references 1. Christer Sanne, ‘Hur mycket arbete behavs?’ (How much work is needed?), Stockholm, Council of Building Research, 1989. hours? Employees’ views’, Living Conditions Report, 70 (Stock2. ‘Longer or shorter working holm, Statistics Sweden, 1991). Die neue Untibersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985). 3. J. Habermas, Wage Labour as Social Order and ideology (Stockholm, Secretariat for 4. See A. Christensen, Futures Studies, 1984). to the Working C/ass (London, Pluto Press, 1982). 5. Andre Gorz, farewell Social Innovation and the Division of Labour (Oxford, Oxford Univer6. Jonathan Cershuny, sity Press, 1983). The future impact of Automation on Workers 7. But in line with W. Leontieff and F. Duchin, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986); Office of Technology Assessment, Technology and the American Economic Transition: Choices for the Future (Washington, DC, Congress of the United States, 1988). 8. Handling work in the public sector in this manner makes it incomparable to the rest of the economy and precludes the standard calculation of economic growth in GNP terms. I welcome this opportunity to avoid a measure which is in any case grossly misleading. 9. F. Block, ‘Postindustrial development and the obsolescence of economic categories’, Politics and Society, 74 (I), 1985, pages 71-104. 10. Source reference from EC not available. all appear in a survey from 1988 presented by the government Committee 11. These questions on Working Time (Stockholm, ‘Arbetstidskommitten’, SOU, 53, 1989). the same question was asked in the above-mentioned 12. 0~ tit, reference 2. Approximately survey, 1988. amount regularly from those who save 13. This measure separates those who save a substantial less or none at all or who fail to pay their bills without outside assistance. Working Paper 70, 1972, Joint 14. L. Rainwater, ‘Poverty, living standards and family well-being’, Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard: R. Easterlin, ‘Does money buy happiness?’ Public Interest, 30, Winter 1973, pages 3-10. One-dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society 15. H. Marcuse, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1964). The Theory of Need in Marx (New York, St Martins Press, ‘1976). It is 16. See A. Heller, common to ridicule people’s answers in surveys by pointing out that they also may have other, uncompatible claims. Among ‘responsible’ politicians and administrators this is known as the Christmas Present Theorem: ‘asked to choose between a heart surgery clinic and a vacation trip to Florida, people will take both’. It is instructive to contrast this to the equally often discussed phenomenon of contempt for professional politicians-and politics behaviour, in Sweden as well as in other at large-which supposedly explains voters’ mature democracies: voters concerned with what they view as serious problems despise party squabbling over trivial matters. It certainly reflects a serious gap of understanding between rulers and the ruled.
FUTURES
January/February
1992
HOW MUCH
WORK?
Christer Sanne
The future of work is a constant topic of discussion. This article approaches it with the deceptively simple notion of demand and supply: how much work is required to yield a reasonable standard of living? And how much work would people prefer to put in? Answers are given from two studies of a mature Welfare State, Sweden. The answers also point to the following underlying questions: What are the driving forces behind the present pattern of work? Is there a lagging self-understanding about needs, risks and possibilities in our type of society?
Work is man’s transformation of nature for his own needs. How much work does it take to satisfy these needs? And how much work is the working man (and woman) willing to put in? This approach may sound strange. In politics and planning, the recurring problem seems to be the oppposite: how to ‘create jobs’ in order to avoid unemployment. It is also unfamiliar because of the pervading influence of economic thinking, which assumes unlimited needs and limited resources. In this article I make use of major elements of economic theory and method, but I allow myself-and I encourage readers-to consider the problem from a different angle, probing into these more fundamental questions of our society. The focus is on work as an instrumental activity which can be paid or unpaid (although the latter appears only occasionally here), for the production of goods and services. The following two questions correspond to two studies carried out on Swedish society: l
l
‘How much work is needed?’ to secure a future reasonable standard of living; this is an input-output analysis of the economy projected forward 25 years from 1980.? ‘Longer or shorter working hours?‘: what do employees prefer in different time perspectives? This study relates to a survey of living conditions to provide comprehensive background information.*
To frame these studies, I briefly discuss the state of the Welfare State as perceived by Jurgen Habermas, and give some basic information on the Swedish economy, labour market and social and cultural conditions. In a final comment I suggest that the results indicate a lagging self-understanding in our type of society.
Christer Sanne is a researcher affiliated to LinkCjping Department of Technology and Social Change, S-58183,
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University, Sweden.
0016-3287/92/010023-14
Institute
of Tema
Research,
@ 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
24
How
Welfare
much
work?
State in crosswinds
Habermas analyses the modern democratic industrial nation3-in his parlance ‘the social state’, which I take as a slightly weaker variant of ‘the Welfare State’. It is basically a ‘work society’, legitimizing itself with the promise of full employment and better working conditions and, as a utopian goal, the abolishment of heteronomous work. To these ends, the state has strived to harness the spontaneous capitalist growth process-to bring democracy and capitalism into peaceful coexistence. Some see the problems of the state in the 1980s as an outcome of its success in this endeavour. Habermas also points to inherent difficulties arising from the state’s intervention in citizens’ everyday life. Furthermore, he claims that rapid development in technology and managerial capacity today makes full employment unattainable in most countries, giving capital the upper hand. Reaction to these problems follows three lines according to Habermas: l
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the defenders of the social state-now turned ‘conservative’-strive to save what has been attained even if it means giving up some of their long cherished goals; the new conservatives attempt to regain some of the lost economic and cultural control (Reagan and Thatcher are obvious examples); and the ‘dissidents of the industrial society’ question the form of economic growth which is the base of the two other groups.
Swedes like to think of their history as the success story of an undeveloped agricultural country of the 19th century that turned into an advanced industrial Welfare State. Many would consider this national project-for decades guided by the Social Democratic party-completed today (even if shortcomings are easy to find). Thus, it is not surprising that the most influential group in Sweden has been the first one, the defenders. There is a strong stress on work which is commonly explained as a heritage from Luther. Full employment is a primary goal (which has been accomplished so far). The role of ‘wage earner’ is assigned more and more importance for rights and dutiespensions, social benefits etc-to the point of rendering it comparable to the state of citizenship.” The 1991 tax reform had the explicit objective and expectation of creating an incentive to work more. Observers see Sweden as a model of successful labour market relations. Shorter working hours have recently been rejected by a government commission on the grounds that they are not affordable. This intervention in a field that according to market principles should be a matter of the concerned parties seems to follow a tradition of ‘mobilizing’ a ‘labour force’. This tradition can be traced back to the 18th century when the people (and their labouring capacity) were looked upon as the country’s major asset (in line with William Petty’s argument in England 300 years ago). Today it is part of the coexistence with capital. The following analysis of two ‘naive’ questions seeks to undermine the position of the two first groups from a genuinely democratic position: that the will of the people should shape the future. This will cannot be fully expressed by the labour and consumer markets of today’s hard-work-highconsumption societies. We must look for other signs for it and I have
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How much work!
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chosen to examine information provided by sociological surveys. These support the view of authors like Andre Gorz:5 people prefer shorter working hours if given the opportunity to express a preference. The first step is to test whether shorter working hours is a realistic proposal. Cuts in material standards would probably be resisted by many or even most people. ‘Defenders’ and ‘new conservatives’ are likely to claim that respondents to sociological questions would change their opinion if faced by such a reality. But need we suffer such cuts? Or will technological progress allow a production which satisfies our demands even with shorter working hours? The question merits attention not only for the answer (some would say that a ‘yes’ is evident) but because it turns the spotlight on how we measure progress.
Swedish
economy,
labour market and social structure
More than in any other modern country, Swedish households earn dual incomes. The rate of participation in the labour force is high. Day care for children and leave opportunities allow most parents to keep up their work even during their children’s preschool years. Between the ages of 25 and 45 years, when most families have children, about 90% of Swedish women belong to the labour force. Women now make up 45% of the workforce and do about 40% of the paid working hours. On the other hand, a full-time industrial worker works relatively few hours per year compared to many countries. The 40-hour week is still standard but vacations and leave opportunities reduce average working time. Many women work part-time. Roughly, the (employed) workforce consists of 50% full-time working men, 25% full-time working women and 25% part-time working women. The result of these conflicting trends is that the number of working hours per person of working age is high in Sweden, with Swedes working 20% more hours than the (West) Germans or the French. This high participation rate and diligence are significant social and cultural traits. Flexible time (morning, lunch and departure) is common in offices. Shops, hospitals and even industrial plants tend to individualize time schedules to match work requirements with employees’ preferences. It has been suggested that Sweden’s high nativity-in contrast to falling birth rates in most of Europe-indicates a successful family policy. The opportunity to combine children and paid work is an important part of this policy. The number of worked hours (in paid work, ‘labour volumes’) decreased during the 1960s and 1970s but has increased since 1980. The latter tendency may be ascribed to falling real wages and, at times, a high demand for labour. The annual change, down and up, has been about 0.6%. Provision of welfare requires a substantial part of the labour. About 26% of worked hours are performed in the public sector, mainly medical and social services and education. At the same time Swedish industry is highly integrated in the world market. Several transnational companies are based in Sweden and foreign trade is substantial. Calculated as ‘embodied labour’-all the labour that goes into a sector’s end products-work serves three major purposes:
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l
l l
How
much
work?
public serv. Ices 35% (ie including work embodied sector); consumption (of domestic production) 40%; and export 25%.
in
deliveries
to the
As in other countries, services account for a growing part of all work among the sectors. This is mainly due to changing conditions of production and is not followed by a growth in output of services as end products. The public sector of care and education is largely staffed by women. This has given the labour market a marked gender division of Iabour-see Figure 1 which contains a ‘field’ of the labour market with 23 groups of occupations. The two dimensions illustrate male- v female-dominated occupations (up-down) and their degree of physical strain (left = hard work). Five broader blocks combine the 23 occupations into: male industrial jobs in the upper left corner, the ‘hard-core’ workers; female assistant jobs in care and services in the lower left corner-often equally taxing physically and in several cases mentally as well; leading white-collar jobs in the upper right part (mainly men, mainly light, also best paid category); intermediate white-collar jobs (mostly women); and mixed workers and service jobs (mixed gender, miscellaneous work but often manual jobs within service sectors).
Male manual workers r---.
white-collar
100
90 ‘80___,’ Share
-36-
40
30
who find the work physically
jobs
20
10
0%
strenuous
Figure 1. The field of the labour market with 23 occupations (or sets of occupations) and five broader blocks. Male-dominated jobs are at the top, female-dominated jobs at the bottom. To the left are jobs which a high percentage find physically strenuous. Size of circles corresponds to the number employed.
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How
There these hours.
much
are vast differences in working conditions and attitudes blocks, which are significant for their desires regarding
work?
27
between working
How much work is needed? To calculate the ‘needed work’ we must respond to the question: ‘needed for what?’ The market economy makes ‘needs’ equivalent to ‘demands’. Such ‘demands’ are supposed to drive the economy in a self-regulating manner-the work performed always corresponds to customers’ needs. Some objections can be raised to this which must be dealt with in an analysis of needed work: l
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As shown above, a considerable portion of paid work is done in the public sector, providing services to ‘customers’ at little or no cost. It is the task of the political system to regulate input and output of this sector and a forecast must predict how the political system will behave. A worker-cum-consumer is seldom free to choose his income level upward or downward since he works according to a ‘hidden’ (or open) contract of expectations and norms. This also affects his spending-the ‘demands’ expressed in this spending are partly a result of the fact that earnings are mandatory due to inflexible employment conditions. In this situation it may be good sense to spend what your (regulated) work has earned you. But it does not vindicate that you really wanted to work for it in the first place. The situation is assymmetrical, a fact that economic theory seems to neglect. Each final service is the result of a chain of provisions combining paid and unpaid work in various ways. 6 A comprehensive view of work should include all kinds, for example, not only work that goes into the growing, manufacture and distribution of food (which illustrate various sectors of the ‘formal economy’) but also the time for purchase and preparation that goes into every meal. Estimates indicate that household and other ‘informal’ work amounts to half of the total work. Shifting technology leads to an interchange of tasks between formal and informal work but the quantitative effects of this are not known. Only formal work may be adequately analysed since it constitutes part of the national accounts.
Method Needed work is calculated in an input-output analysis of a conventional type but applied backwards compared to standard economic modelling.’ Thus, instead of starting with a labour supply to find out how much it can produce (in conjunction with equipment, ‘capital’; Figure 2 left), it begins with a specified output of goods and services from which to derive required work (Figure 2 right, hollow arrows from right to left). Assumptions about foreign trade, investments, production structure and productivity changes are introduced step by step, as illustrated in Figure 3. The question of foreign trade is crucial for a small open economy with high export and import (which contains embodied labour substituting domestic labour).
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How
much
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Consumption Import/export
Figure 2. Models of normal economic forecasting (left) and the track followed in this analysis (right). Labour and capital enter the ‘black box’ of production (the input-output matrix) which yields consumption and new capital. Here the process is analysed backwards to answer the question: ‘how much work is needed for a given level of consumption?’
Imports Exports Investments
Consumption
Structure productlon
,
Final demand
Labour structure
of
, Total output
demand
Figure 3. Structure of analysis
Public services are dealt with from the input side: a specified growth in worked hours is assumed. Its productivity change is set to zero but inputs to the sector grow proportionally to the worked hours. Some of the input assumptions are deliberately not prolongations of trends but are selected on other grounds. For a ‘forecast’ of such a long duration as here one can list good reasons for doing so: Overall consumption of goods and services was defined at two average growth levels, 2% and 1.35% annually for the period of 25 years. To observers who take a historical perspective these are low estimates. To others, who stress the environmental dangers of continued growth in consumption, they may appear high. The ‘moderate’ 1.35% corresponds to ‘50% higher standard in one generation’ which is a formula that could possibly be a political compromise. Consumption is composed of 11 groups which change at varying rates. In the higher estimate (average of 2%) the growth of each group is based on the trend of the last decades. In the lower estimate, certain groups were set for a higher growth than others as a matter of judgment rather than a mechanically prolonged trend. Again, food is an example: the budget slice for food has been shrinking for a long time but I chose to break this trend, assuming more concern with quality food, ‘green’ alternatives, etc (the same liberty of motivated deviations from trends characterizes the OTA analysis; however, assumptions in details like these affect the end results only marginally).
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The scope of public services is a constant topic of public debate. Here I assumed an increase in inputs, adding 25% more worked hours during the 25-year period in the main alternative. In this case, no reference is made to output. The chosen level may be seen as a compromise. Many people claim that what public services offer-care, education, culture, etc-is what society needs most of all in the future. The line of the new conservatives is, on the other hand, that it cannot be afforded and that the public sector should be reduced. Financing more public services will undoubtedly cause problems.8 Labour requirements (‘productivity’) are assumed to follow the trend of past years. Again this is open to calculational manipulation if one wants to illustrate consequences of various policies. A possible case is a more labour-intensive agri- or horticulture to avoid some of the drawbacks in today’s chemical-dependent system.
Results Several alternatives have been tested. They show that productivity assumptions are a major determinant. This has repercussions on the whole enterprise. Every serious economist will admit that statistical data on productivity are often shaky. An even more disturbing fact is that in many service sectors it is impossible or difficult to measure productivity, due to the type of services offered. Consequently, national accounts-by agreement and convention-disregard productivity changes in public services. One could argue that this principle should be extended to similar types of work, eg in banks and similar offices or consulting. Instead, these are accounted for in terms adapted-more or less artificially-from goods production. The trade sector measures productivity in a counter-intuitive way-changes which in common parlance would be regarded as an improvement are recorded as reduced productivity! With a growing share of labour in the concerned sectors, all these oddities of productivity measuring become increasingly embarrassing for economic policy making.q The major trend of using less labour to accomplish more is still clear enough to yield a result in the dimensions that are measured: money value and working time. The ‘moderate’ growth-+50% in 30 years--in principle means 50% more rooms, more or better food, more or superior equipment, etc. However, looking backward at the price trends, one quickly realizes that the ‘real’ changes of quantity, quality and achievement vary immensely between types of consumption. Over a period of decades, consumers will adapt to this with changes in consumption. One example is that today we utilize tremendous amounts of communication and computing power, but often fewer personal services than in the 1950s. Thus, long-range economic forecasting has a limited bearing on changes in ‘real’, physical terms of everyday life. Figure 4 shows projections of labour embodied in various end products, based on three alternative growth rates. To accomplish the moderate growth in consumption-however vague in ‘real’ terms-in the year 2005 would require about 15% fewer work hours than in 1980. The ‘fast’ growth takes approximately the same total input of work as today. With a projected increase in the working population the decrease of 15% would allow for a
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How
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Growth
alternatives
n
ref:
2000
1500
1000
500
”
Public services
Everyday goods
Private
Export
services
products
Figure 4. Embodied labour in four types of end products-public services, everyday living products (food, clothing and housing), private services and ‘export products’ (from industries mainly producing for export).
general working
30-hour week. time cuts.
Even
the
‘fast’-growing
alternative
would
allow
Of the total work volume, the public sector would grow absolutely and relatively (approaching 40% of the labour volume) while consumption would require less work than today. The total (embodied) labour in private services would remain more or less the same. The largest shift in sector and type of work would be a decrease in private blue-collar work and an increase in public white-collar work. There is also an obvious shift from ‘male’ occupations to ‘female’ (with today’s gender division).
Discussion Calculations show that radically shorter working hours are not contradicted: for all we can tell now, material standards could be upheld and increased with less input of work. Among the assumptions underlying this conclusion is that there are no drastic changes in the global economic structure. This should by no means be regarded as a blueprint for a planned economy. Production is supposed to correspond to citizens’ wants in terms of private goods, private services and public services. But in a modern state the market section of the economy cannot deal with all needs. The responsibility for some of them-notably the need for clean air or day care for all children, etc-is left with the state. This model has the advantage of analysing the total want structure in one. This uniform treatment of all sectors is an important point in discussing ‘work’ v ‘needs’ (or ‘wants’). It highlights the common miscomprehension
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that the private sector-trade and industry-and the public sector deal with becomes distorted when you different ‘work’ and ‘needs’. The similarity look at it through economic glasses: taxes appear to be extracted out of the private sector in order to finance public services. Assuming a limit to the level of taxation leads to the notion that a certain scope of public services requires higher private consumption than the ‘real’ demand. This leads to a new kind of advocacy for material growth: ‘in order to have enough we have to consume more cars’. The practical and political hospitals, problems of paying for public services are evident but have to be solved in their own right, rather than giving in to undesired overproduction, especially as cars are likely to produce poor health.
Attitudes
to working
hours
If we establish that material standards may increase in the future, it is reasonable to turn to the surveys which solicit people’s opinions about working hours.
The attitude
question
One common question is ‘Would you prefer higher pay or shorter working hours?’ The pattern of replies is clear: a majority would give up more money for more free time. This goes for men as well as for women, for all ages but the youngest, and for most types of occupations. These results come from several surveys in Sweden. Internationally, the Scandinavian countries range higher than other European countries. France, the Benelux countries and Italy follow at a fairly high level, whereas in the UK and Ireland three out of four prefer higher salary.‘O This question does not spell out whether it refers to an individual choice in an otherwise unchanged situation or to a collective change. That is made clear in another question where respondents are asked to rank policy goals. Figure 5 gives the first choices. They support the impression that there is a widely shared interest in shorter working hours.ll Judging from these questions, there is a rather weak drive for more consumption.
The demanding
question
It may be claimed that these questions ‘only’ describe a non-committing attitude, not a desire and far less an intention. A more ‘demanding’ question, which would normally require that a person cut down on his spending (or savings), is the most commonly used one in surveys: ‘Would you like to work longer or shorter hours with a corresponding change in earnings?’ In most work places (except those where part-timers are in majority) a ‘yes’ to a decrease would also amount to an individual departure from the general pattern of behaviour. To this question, most people opt for ‘no change’ but approximately 15% of all employees want shorter hours. We can picture the wage earners as two opposing groups with contrary wishes: 18% of full-timers want to
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How
much
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Shorter hours
working
Undecided
Public services
Private consumption Figure 5. Most
important
policy goals resources.
for
the
use
of growing
shorten their working hours, 17% of part-timers want to increase them (see Figure 6). The total is strongly biased towards shorter hours. Attitudes are strikingly similar over the years, from the 1950s onwards, regardless of the absolute standard of living or shifting economic trends. Who are the employees desiring shorter hours? We can expect the reasons to be complex. There are vast differences in working conditions as well as in salaries and economic ability. Family reasons are likely to vary. Finally we may expect different lifestyles and attitudes to the job to influence replies. Respondents’ background has only been thoroughly examined for the demanding question. I2 Generally the results show a complicated picture of effects. People who want shorter hours are found in every conceivable group and often contrary to expectations. Thus, poor health, poor working conditions, lack of influence at work, etc, have no independent impact. Only one category stands out for its extreme views: full-time working
17% want to prolong
FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES
EMPLOYEES
18% want shorter hours Figure6. A simplified view of desired changes in working length. Size of squares corresponds to number of people cerned.
time con-
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mothers with pre-school children. Half of them want to cut down on working time. Most mothers with pre-school children already work part-time (and few of them want to increase) and if they all worked according to their preference, the majority of part-timers would be overwhelming (78%). All the same, these women make up only one in eight of all those who prefer shorter hours. Seven out of eight have to be ‘explained’ in some other manner. Economic reasons are generally assumed to be decisive; for that reason they were examined thoroughly. The conclusion is that they have a clear impact in many instances but they are not decisive, particularly for men. Three different measured were tested: ‘salary’, ‘household economic means’ (total incomes/imputed needs according to family size) and ‘saving habits’. ‘Salary’ seems to be least important, ‘saving habits’ most.13 But the pattern is complicated by other co-varying variables: family types, occupational groups (see Figures 7 and 8) and attitudes to work. Generally the differences are at least as large between occupational groups as between income groups within an occupational group; similarly for family groups. But fathers of pre-school children are very income-sensitive in their preferences (mothers are not because they prefer shorter hours regardless of income!). Shorter hours (with less pay) are generally more often desired by women than men, even when there are no children in the household. There is also a higher interest in shorter hours in white-collar jobs, although in almost every sense these offer more agreeable working conditions. This cannot be attributed to the higher pay (even if salaries are higher) but may stem from different expectations and occupational cultures. Women in assistant occupations (the lower left corner in Figure 9) split into two groups. Those in care jobs often find it mentally taxing and are keen on
Men/Full P
Women/Part
Women/Full
HE
P
5
P
HE
s
0
l *
l 0
‘@
0
l e
*a
HE
S
Youth 16-24
Ir\ 25-44. no children
Families with small children Families with school children
l .
-
0V
0
//
0
/-
\J_-
\ 0
@O
00
0-0
I/-/--
45-64 ~ no children
Figure 7. Working hour preferences after economy in five family categories. Separate accounts for sex and full/part-timers. The level and slope of line in each box indicates how interest in shorter hours in different groups varies with pay (P), household economic means (HE), and saving habits (S). Upward slope = expected ‘economic’ effect.
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How much work?
Men/Full P
HE
Women/Full
Women/Part
S
P
HE
s
*
Male workers Mixed workers services Female assistant jobs Intermediate white-collar
Leading white-collar
Figure&
/
cl-lWorking
hour
preferences
/
~ after
economyin Figure
five occupational 7 for key).
categories
(see
caption
to
shortening. Shop assistants, cleaners, etc, in contrast, want more work (both sub-groups contain many part-timers, 50% or even more in some occupations). Those who want to work less (or more) generally opt for a change of 10 hours per week. The overall labour supply, if all desired changes were effected, would decrease in the order of 2% (in some occupations twice as much). Such a moderate change, resulting from the unleashing of employees from the standardized pattern of working times, should not present any problem to the economy as it corresponds to just a few years of spontanindividual working times are hardly eous change. In practice, however, conceivable. Such an idea must be seen as a theoretical approach. A lagging self-understanding? The two main questions on shorter hours beg for separate comments; comparing them begs for a third. A ‘yes’ to shorter hours in the demanding question reflects a concrete and acute desire to change one’s living conditions. The inertia of habit keeps the majority from considering it. But it is obvious that the dual employment of husband and wife creates great problems in some family types. Women with small children are most sensitive to this and few of them want to work full-time. Their husbands are less sensitive. Among men with jobs of higher education and with better pay (it is difficult to tell if ‘pay’ only tells but ‘leading white-collar jobs’ do) there is an evident understandThe BO-hour week for families with ing that children must take time. children is an unresolved monstrosity of our age. The attitude question requires a choice between alternatives so there is no inertia effect but it is also more hypothetical. The preference for more free time rather than more pay is equally distributed among men and
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How
Male
manual workers c -._ . \ ,__\
much
work?
35
,;-. ‘i
I
and service
jobs
\
c 60140
E" P :
40/60
; 5,
Sharewhofindtheworkphysicallystrenuous
Figure 9. Desire for shorter/longer working hours in five occupational categories. Separate full-timers (MF), women full-timers (WF) and women part-timers (WP).
for men
women. Nor does is differ clearly between family or occupational groups. It indicates-in my view-a general attitude that assigns ‘progress’ and economic growth a limited importance among human goals. This confirms what a number of other studies have shown: that feelings of happiness are not correlated to the absolute level of national or personal income.14 We may discuss it in terms of saturation of demands, the proliferation of ‘false needs’15 and the notion of ‘radical needs’, the satisfaction of which is denied by the present system.16 But income has a practical side to it. Once you have adjusted to a level of income and spending, it is very hard to withdraw from it. Demands have turned into habits and habits are perceived as needs-what has been called a ‘ratchet effect’ of income: the wheel will only turn one way, upward. This can explain why there are three or four times more people ready to refrain from more money than those willing to reduce their income. The ratchet effect also happens to be the behaviour that the economic system feeds on and constantly promotes. The ultimate limit to material growth may be our physical environment. This is part of what the ‘dissidents of the industrial society’ claim. The responses here indicate that a great part of the general public is also aware of the impossibility of further depletion of natural resources. Perhaps most of us are even mentally prepared to adjust as necessary. But paid work is only offered on certain conditions. The tradition to count work in heads, not in hours, turns our attention the wrong way. It makes a threat out of a development that might as well be regarded as a promise. People seem to
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How
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object to these conditions individually but not as a united force. Many institutions also lag behind due to an ideological inertia or vested interests; in this respect labour unions do not differ from employers. The high social esteem of ‘work’ obscures the fact that some work is detrimental to society. To reappraise this fact may be a first step in a discussion of ‘how much work is needed’.
Notes and references 1. Christer Sanne, ‘Hur mycket arbete behavs?’ (How much work is needed?), Stockholm, Council of Building Research, 1989. hours? Employees’ views’, Living Conditions Report, 70 (Stock2. ‘Longer or shorter working holm, Statistics Sweden, 1991). Die neue Untibersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985). 3. J. Habermas, Wage Labour as Social Order and ideology (Stockholm, Secretariat for 4. See A. Christensen, Futures Studies, 1984). to the Working C/ass (London, Pluto Press, 1982). 5. Andre Gorz, farewell Social Innovation and the Division of Labour (Oxford, Oxford Univer6. Jonathan Cershuny, sity Press, 1983). The future impact of Automation on Workers 7. But in line with W. Leontieff and F. Duchin, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986); Office of Technology Assessment, Technology and the American Economic Transition: Choices for the Future (Washington, DC, Congress of the United States, 1988). 8. Handling work in the public sector in this manner makes it incomparable to the rest of the economy and precludes the standard calculation of economic growth in GNP terms. I welcome this opportunity to avoid a measure which is in any case grossly misleading. 9. F. Block, ‘Postindustrial development and the obsolescence of economic categories’, Politics and Society, 74 (I), 1985, pages 71-104. 10. Source reference from EC not available. all appear in a survey from 1988 presented by the government Committee 11. These questions on Working Time (Stockholm, ‘Arbetstidskommitten’, SOU, 53, 1989). the same question was asked in the above-mentioned 12. 0~ tit, reference 2. Approximately survey, 1988. amount regularly from those who save 13. This measure separates those who save a substantial less or none at all or who fail to pay their bills without outside assistance. Working Paper 70, 1972, Joint 14. L. Rainwater, ‘Poverty, living standards and family well-being’, Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard: R. Easterlin, ‘Does money buy happiness?’ Public Interest, 30, Winter 1973, pages 3-10. One-dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society 15. H. Marcuse, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1964). The Theory of Need in Marx (New York, St Martins Press, ‘1976). It is 16. See A. Heller, common to ridicule people’s answers in surveys by pointing out that they also may have other, uncompatible claims. Among ‘responsible’ politicians and administrators this is known as the Christmas Present Theorem: ‘asked to choose between a heart surgery clinic and a vacation trip to Florida, people will take both’. It is instructive to contrast this to the equally often discussed phenomenon of contempt for professional politicians-and politics behaviour, in Sweden as well as in other at large-which supposedly explains voters’ mature democracies: voters concerned with what they view as serious problems despise party squabbling over trivial matters. It certainly reflects a serious gap of understanding between rulers and the ruled.
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