The issue has been troubling people for decades. It was right to want to reduce it when Sunday rest did not yet exist and its weekly duration was seventy-two hours. But today, is it still a justified demand?
Strasbourg, 21 october 2013
Dear father,
I received your handwritten letter and the newspaper excerpt that came with it to illustrate your thoughts on the length of the weekly working time.
Allow me first to thank you for taking the time to write to me on a subject that is obviously very dear to your heart. I still remember our passionate, even stormy discussions on the matter.
From this approach I deduce that you remain faithful to the notion of fairness among humans and that for you, this value goes through a fair distribution of working time. I think we fully share this aspiration toward social justice: I cannot explain it otherwise than by having dedicated my entire professional life to the service of others, in particular for 26 years within the health insurance system.
However, to be completely frank, and no doubt because I was a sort of manual craftsman between 1981-82 (the year of my thesis in dental surgery) and the end of 2007, I feel this desire to reduce the length of the workweek as a completely counter-intuitive proposal. Perhaps the handyman that you are will understand.
Indeed, although I know as well as you do the considerable rise in machine productivity over the past century, I also know that during the same time, humans have not been idle under the covers and I also note upon reading a few statistics the impressive increase in the world population (from 1 billion individuals in early 1900 to about 7 billion today). Which of the two caused the other? Did need (more inhabitants on earth) spark imagination and technical development? Or did the development of techniques free the libido?
Furthermore, as the individual need for comfort keeps growing, the minimum threshold of material well-being in 2013 is most likely much higher than that of 1900. If, at that time, a daily wage, a roof, clothing, and health undoubtedly represented the fair minimum social aspirations of the worker... such is no longer the case today. Everyone, in addition to the basic package mentioned previously, wants comprehensive social security (health, unemployment, old-age...), their washing machine, dishwasher, car, radio, TV, landline phone and another mobile one, computer, etc.
Thus, I readily believe you regarding the increase in industrial yields (that was your world), but I remain doubtful about their ability to cover the needs felt as minimum by a growing number of individuals. And then, it is not just industry and mass production that counts in modern human activity. Services provide an essential added value and contribute precisely to this improved social well-being. The common sense that I believe I am endowed with would therefore tend to make me believe that we will have to work even more to cover all these honorable desires.
The fact that the article talks about shortened weeks, even in countries thought to be industrialized and rich like the United States, neither impresses me nor reassures me. My argument for this is the inescapable fact that the number of hours worked does not signify the accession to wealth of the peoples to whom these statistics apply.
Simply put, we are not working less because we have collectively reached the threshold of wealth covering the minimum needs of 2013 mentioned above. We are working less because those who own investment capital place it in countries where people are ready to work more... for less... simply because these are the eternal laws of capitalism and because all these people have not yet reached the 2013 social minimum, whether individually or, a fortiori, collectively.
Unfortunately, the pendulum swing of collective motivations has left parts of Europe, slightly less so the United States, to land in Asia, certain African countries, and South America. The result risks being counterproductive and even disastrous for us if we do not pull ourselves together collectively.
While a good part of the population of the old continent (though not all of it) seems to lack nothing anymore (I think you and I already belong to this category) and therefore no longer sees the point of going to "break one's back" every morning, the rest of it sees no reason at all not to take advantage of the historical opportunity provided by the weariness of the former.
This is why the argument relayed in the article, in my view, does not hold up. Ask with much respect the Romanian, Polish, or Czech driver, earning 400 euros a month, if he feels like slowing down. You know the answer as well as I do.
I regret as much as you that it is possible to pay people at that rate, but... but it's a sort of historical reality. Every country has its own rates and valuation of different professions. For example, in the Soviet Union as well as in communist Vietnam, a doctor was worth hardly more than 100 euros a month. Everything is relative, isn't it, and life is cheap. This can perhaps justify moonlighting and hidden commissions, especially when death is lurking. One of our friends who worked in the early 2000s in Vietnam was regularly forced to grease the palms of the police officers he met on his way home.
One hundred euros a month was still the average monthly salary of a Vietnamese person in 2001. I didn't fail to notice on that occasion those young men speeding on jet skis (what wealth!) in Ha Long Bay, docking to meet us, speaking poor English and wanting to exchange dollars with us with complete impunity while a 4L blared communist propaganda to the rest of the locals.
Work less? How I would love to... but isn't it a beautiful collective dream that accidentally survived our lazy childhood? I don't believe in it.
You know my anxious nature. A society that works less today - and this is the case for a good part of European countries (France, Italy, Spain, Greece) - while the rest of the world is in the middle of a "boom", is a poorly organized society that has failed to take its share in this new global race for material happiness for all.
When I think back to the populations of the African countries I visited during my past travels (Cameroon, Morocco, and Senegal), I don't believe either that we need to work less so that we can all be better off. Nothing comes from nothing.
I hope my words don't offend you. Now, there is clearly a second way to understand your letter: that is, telling me to stop working where I am because I have supposedly reached the threshold of material well-being and it is time to leave my place in the sun for others...
Was that also the subliminal message contained in your words? Much love to you, and I wish you good health and life for as long as possible. If only to keep discussing these things that we cannot and do not want to change!
Your son.
Author's note:
Thirteen years later, in 2026, the world population is about 8.3 billion individuals, I am retired, and my father has passed away.
A slum in the suburbs of Dakar - 2000