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Economics

¿Cuál es la cantidad adecuada de trabajo?

May 25, 2023 Anne-Marie Slaughter and Autumn McDonald

WASHINGTON, DC – La pandemia de COVID19 podrá estar oficialmente terminada, pero igual que un cambio de agujas ferroviario, ya redirigió incontables vidas a otros caminos muy diferentes. Millones de personas nunca volverán a sus rutinas laborales prepandémicas, de modo que empleadores y empleados se ven obligados a crear nuevos modelos a la medida de unas necesidades cambiantes. Pero mientras se hacen experimentos con modelos híbridos, nos enfrentamos a una pregunta más profunda: ¿cuál es la cantidad adecuada de trabajo?

Al menos en los países desarrollados, estos desplazamientos y experimentos pospandémicos pueden iniciar una revolución del mercado laboral tan profunda como los cambios en los lugares, horarios y retribuciones del trabajo que signaron la transición de la era agrícola a la industrial.

Las modificaciones se pueden analizar en dos niveles. En el nivel macro, el horario de trabajo legal, de ocho horas al día y cuarenta a la semana, está dando paso a un nuevo equilibrio. Es probable que sea un proceso largo, si tenemos en cuenta que reducir la jornada laboral de catorce a ocho horas por día y la semana laboral de siete a cinco días en los Estados Unidos demandó medio siglo de luchas, acción sindical y experimentos corporativos.

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Anne-Marie Slaughter

Writing for PS since 2006
104 Commentaries

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department, is CEO of the think tank New America, a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and the author of Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Autumn McDonald

Writing for PS since 2023
1 Commentary

Autumn McDonald is a senior fellow at New America and has written for Slate, Pacific Standard, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

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Joe Ryan Jun 1, 2023

"Work" as used here does not mean accelerating a mass over a period of time, the way physicists mean it. It means employment that allows you to get a share of the income produced by firms. Physicists' muscle work done for yourself at home is a partial alternative, but specialized firms outcompeted subsistence production at home long ago and as a result employment has become the alternative to destitution for most people.

Why? Because we need the work done by employees to produce the things we need to live? No. Much less labor is needed to produce what we need, even at middle-class standards, than the amount that is available for employment.

The why is that firms are controlled by a tiny portion of population who direct the firms for their own benefit, minimizing what everyone else gets: "profit maximization." So unless some other authority — government — steps in, firms have no particular interest in the work of a given individual or in giving a share of income to that individual, whose destitution is at the whim of the tiny minority.

The government has, in the case of the U.S., determined that "how much work is enough" is "full employment": everyone (except the wealthy who control the firms) works all the time.

One problem with this approach is that not everyone can work all the time, even during occasions periods "full employment," for a number of reasons. There are transitions between products, processes, and individual firms. There are individuals' shortcomings as workers. There is conflict with those who control the firms.

Another problem is that "full employment" requires "investment" that is an increase in the wealth of the minority but that is not necessarily useful for raising living standards of everyone in the majority and is environmentally desctructive.

The alternative, as the title of the essay might suggest, is that the government would ensure individuals' shares in real income through fiscal means and separately ensure that sufficient work is done to produce the total real output needed. This would result in a less "work" than full employment but more real income, including security and equity, for most people.
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alex Finch May 27, 2023

Example Austria: To avoid high income taxes no one wants to work more than 30hrs/wk, choosing lifestyle and relying on government promises. Total hours worked per year by average full time worker: lowest in the world is Germany soon to be overtaken by Austria where hrs worked has had the biggest drop of any country since 2018 (OECD). Austrian population 9M, pensioners 2.4M, Workers 4.5M of which „all-year full time workers“ just 2.3M and 2.2M part-time. Of the 2.4M pensioners 40% get brutto over €30.000/yr while the 2.2M part-time workers earn brutto less than €32.000 and pay less than €4.500/yr income tax. All the income tax burden is on the upper quartile of workforce, about 1M workers supporting 2.4M pensioners. There are widespread staff shortages in hospitality, healthcare, old-age care, construction. One consequence is current political turmoil.
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