USA: Shorter hours possible and overdue
by Fred Gaboury May 1, 2000, found US workers working longer than their counterparts in other industrialised nations. A recent study by the International Labour Organisation says the increase in the annual number of working hours in the US from 1,883 in 1980 to 1,966 in 1997 "runs contrary to a worldwide trend that has seen hours of work remaining steady or declining in recent years". While annual working hours in the US has increased by 83 hours since the 1980s, they have declined to 1,889 in Japan, to 1,560 in Germany and to 1,656 in France, with workers in Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands working some 1,675 hours annually. According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), workers in US manufacturing industry put in even longer hours than those reported in the ILO study. Taken as a whole, the average US worker employed in the manufacture of durable goods worked 43.5 hours (5.3 of them overtime) per week in December 1999, for a total of 2,262 hours a year. It's even worse in the nation's auto plants and steel mills. Last December the men and women who build motor vehicles and car bodies worked an average of 46.2 hours per week (7.5 hours overtime) equal to 2,400 hours per year. Their counterparts in the nation's steel mills worked an average of 43.5 hours per week (6.8 hours overtime) or 2,262 hours per year. Employers like overtime because it's cheaper than hiring and training new workers despite the time-and-a-half penalty for hours worked in excess of 40 hours in any week. The BLS says that in March 1999 wages made up 67.5 percent of the total compensation costs of machine operators, fabricators and labourers. The rest represents the combined cost of vacations, health insurance, retirement benefits and payroll taxes. Almost all of these are "capped", meaning that employers only pay for a fixed number of hours or on a fixed amount of wages. Add fixed costs for plant maintenance and property taxes and it's easy to see why employers opt for paying overtime rather than adding new workers. And there is another, more basic, reason. A large number of unemployed workers knocking at the factory gate does wonders to curb militancy and hold down wages and other costs. And there's a bonus as well — it gives employers additional opportunity to divide the working class by pitting the unemployed against the employed. So what is to be done? First some arithmetic: some 18.8 million production workers are employed in US manufacturing industries today, each working an average of 5.3 hours overtime per week. That comes to nearly nine billion hours per year. Divide that figure by the average weekly straight time hours of production workers (37.8), it gives the equivalent of 2.6 million full-time jobs. Just think how many jobs could be created if the workweek was reduced to 35-or even 30-hours with no cut in income! It's possible — and long over due. Labour costs for machine operators, fabricators and labourers rose by 36 per cent between 1987 and March 1999. In the same period the value of manufactured goods increased by more than 55 percent. All of which means that for labour to get back the same share of value it produced in 1987 would require the creation of 1.3 million new jobs at today's wages. That would go far in paying for the 2.5 million jobs that would be created by the elimination of overtime. The rest could come from the profits of corporations. After all, profits are created by workers who have just as much right to them as do those who own the factories and mills! True, the demand for shorter work time is not high on the agenda of US workers. But the seeds are there as recent strikes in the auto industry demanding the hiring of more workers show.* * * People's Weekly World, paper of Communist Party, USA (abridged)