Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

The "right" to work hard

The Japanese know all about the problem of employees being made to work 
excessively long hours. Over a decade ago they recognised "death by 
overworking" as a phenomenon of modern commercial and industrial life, a 
health and safety issue that the government should be addressing like any 
other.

Of course, Australians, in common with working people in other countries, 
recognised it as a reprehensible feature of capitalism a century or more 
ago. They waged courageous and often bitter struggles to secure shorter 
working hours, so that workers didn't have to kill themselves just to earn 
a "living" wage.

It was a momentous victory for workers in this country when they won the 
forty-hour week. That happy occasion occurred before I was born, and yet 
last week at the ACTU Congress unions were calling for working hours to be 
capped at 48 hours a week.

According to ACTU Secretary Greg Combet, conditions have gone backwards so 
far that today "about three-million Australians now work more than 45 hours 
per week, with about two-million of them working more than 50 hours per 
week".

To add insult to injury, most workers apparently work overtime, with much 
of it not paid, which suits the employer class down to the ground.

Essentially, as Guardian readers would all be aware, bosses pay 
their employees just enough to provide them with food and shelter and allow 
them to raise families (thus ensuring new generations of workers). It takes 
only part of the worker's production for the week to cover the cost of his 
or her wage; everything else the worker produces that week is sheer cop for 
the employer.

The more hours an employee works each week, the greater the part of the 
week where everything produced goes exclusively to benefit the boss. Hence 
employers are always trying to get workers to not only accept lower wages 
but to work longer hours for them.

If workers are physically unable to work six or more days a week, for ten 
hours a day, while subsisting on an Egg McMuffin for breakfast and a small 
tin of baked beans for dinner, well there are plenty of young unemployed to 
take their place. And if the supply of willing workers dries up (or dies 
out?) then the factory or office can always be moved to Asia where there 
are even more unemployed people desperate for work who can be made to slave 
for the smell of an oily rag.

Such is the reasoning of the capitalist class, and don't for one moment be 
fooled into thinking it's too extreme to be true. The working conditions, 
wages and hours (and consequently the reasonably comfortable lifestyle) 
enjoyed by working people in Australia at present or at least in the recent 
past were wrung from a highly indignant ruling class after fierce struggle.

Moreover, those victories were won in conditions of economic growth, when 
the capitalist class felt it could afford to be generous because it stood 
to make a lot more money. It was cheaper to buy off the workers than waste 
money on major industrial disputes.

But that was then; now is now. And now, the bosses are going to make the 
workers pay for every dip in the Dow Jones — and pay heavily.

When the ACTU announced its push for a cap on working hours, one of 
Howard's Ministers with responsibility in this area (I think it was Mal 
Brough) was interviewed on Channel Seven's Sunrise show. He sputtered with 
fury and outrage at the horror of the union body's proposal.

"They want government [here he sought for an evil, pejorative term and came 
up with] regulation! That's what the ACTU wants."

You could tell from his expression as well as his tone of voice that he 
assumed that the interviewer and the television audience were positively 
reeling at this shocking news. That government regulation might not be as 
shocking to the rest of the population as it clearly was to him was 
obviously not an idea he considered worth entertaining.

For a laissez-faire capitalist it probably is just about the worst thing he 
can think of, at that.

But Howard's man had another bon mot to toss off: "People should have the 
right [sic] to work as long or as hard as they want. or not."

The last two words were added as an afterthought, but they give the game 
away, don't they? I mean, if the boss wants you to work 56 hours and you 
only want to work 36, guess whose "rights" the Howard Government will 
support?

And as for having the "right" to work as long or as hard as you like: it's 
not the employee but the employer who sets the hours and the pace of the 
work. The "right" to work yourself to death for the enrichment of your boss 
is no right at all — it's an offence against human dignity and human 
rights.