John M. Keynes expected that around the year 2030 people would
only work fifteen hours a week. In the mid-1960s, Jean Fourastie
still anticipated the introduction of the thirty-five hour week in
the year 2000 when productivity would continue to grow at the
established pace. Productivity growth slowed down somewhat in the
1970s and 80s, but rebounded in the 1990s with the spread of new
information and communication technologies. The knowledge economy,
however, did not bring about a jobless future or a world without
work as some scholars had predicted. With few exceptions, work
hours of full-time employees have hardly fallen in the advanced
capitalist countries in the last three decades, while in a number
of countries they have actually increased since the 1980s.
This book takes the persistence of long work hours as starting
point to investigate the relationship between capitalism and work
time. It does so by discussing major theoretical schools and their
explanations for the length and distribution of work hours, as well
as tracing major changes in production and reproduction systems,
and analyzing their consequences for work hours.
Furthermore, this volume explores the struggle for shorter work
hours starting from the introduction of the ten-hour work day in
the 19th century to the introduction of the thirty-five hour week
in France and Germany at the end of the 20th century. However, the
book also shows how neoliberalism has eroded collective work time
regulations and resulted in an increase and polarization of work
hours since the 1980s. Finally, the book argues that shorter work
hours not only means more free-time for workers, but also reduces
inequality and improves human and ecological sustainability. "
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