Work sharing is just the job

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I am glad the suggestion (Jan 17) to lower working hours (from a 5 day week, to a 4.5 day week) to increase employment, is causing ripples.

It is a pity though that such ripples radiate out from Ray Richardson’s tiny pebble cast into the letters’ section of the Irish Examiner.

This is an excellent idea and one that has been supported by Germany’s labour force since the 2008 downturn. Between 2008 and 2010, Germany’s employment rate increased, while its average work hours declined. Of course, part of this stability must be due to Germany’s strong trade links with booming China.

However, it is worth examining how much of the rate of employment and reduced working hours are due to stricter German laws, which make it harder to fire. There are experts in the margins who have been advocating such a policy.

Professor Juliet Schor sees it as part of a series of mechanisms to resolve the economic crisis. She sees the crisis as the outcome of the massive contradictions of the economic system.

We have an infinite-growth economy in a finite world. This evidence-based interpretation not only refers to the clash of the economy and finite resources — a serious concern often wrongly associated only with environmentalists — but also to finite markets into which the economy needs to expand.

The renowned (in academic circles) social commentator, Professor David Harvey, links the recent disastrous opening of the financial market to the crash: there was a falling rate of return on investment in production. Crony capitalism got its way and a chaotic derivatives market was opened.

Although it seems that I’ve digressed, I mention these names to show how there are other experts towards which the media world has yet to turn. Regardless of the failings of mainstream economists in the lead up to, and resolution, of the crisis, the media still publicises their limited, theory-based sound-bites. Mr Richardson’s ‘breath of fresh air’ (to quote a letter from Jan 25) is welcome, but not an idea that hasn’t been thought of before.

Unfortunately, such radical ideas are anathema to right-wing economists, who still occupy the playing field despite being beaten into the dirt. As long as the media remains blinkered, work-sharing shall be condemned to the margins along with alternative and critical-thinking experts, such as the aforementioned zero-growth sociologist and the Marxist geographer.

Emmet Fox
Kilfinane,
Co. Limerick

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, January 28, 2012