FACTS ABOUT WORK HOURS

Second richest man has a radical opinion on work hours

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2014, THIS ARTICLE IS STILL RELEVANT IN 2019

Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man wants you to work just three days a week. But don’t get carried away just yet. The 74 year-old, who is chairman of Telmax, didn’t say that he wants to hire you. Telmax is the dominant telecommunications provider in Latin America.

Carlos Slim

According to an article by Jenna Kagel in the Financial Times, Slim wants to slim down the working week to just three days to improve productivity by allowing people more rest and recreation. He says the downside would be that workers may have to work until they are 70 or even 75 years old. Carlos Slim is believed to have a net worth of about $80 billion USD and it can probably be safely assumed that he didn’t acquire his wealth without lots of radical ideas.

But is his suggestion really all that radical, or is he suggesting that progressive trends in working conditions over the centuries are simply due for the next step forward?

We’ve come a long way since the earliest agricultural workers worked in the fields until they fell asleep, where they worked, and when they awoke again they immediately started work again, seven days a week. We hear terrible things about working conditions during the industrial revolution when an 18 hour day was normal, six days a week, and the workers went home after work. That was a miserable existence, but it was an improvement on the earlier work conditions.

A chart from the Economist showing the relationship between work hours and productivity

During the 20^th Century the 40 hour/five day working week became normal for many workers, and nearing the end of the century some workers were allowed to go home for the weekend after only 35 hours. Annual leave not only became normal during the 20^th Century, but the amount of leave increased from two weeks to four weeks a year. Other entitlements that became acceptable during the 20^th Century included sick leave, bereavement leave, maternity leave and long service leave.

Shorter working hours can have many benefits for society other than increased productivity. Not the least of these is work place safety. Take the case of long distance truck drivers in places like the USA, Russia and Australia with vast distances to drive with primitive conditions and laws, compared with Europe. These drivers sleep in their trucks and drive each day until they are ready to fall asleep and there is always pressure to deliver on time. The most common cause of single vehicle truck accidents is drivers falling asleep at the wheel. These drivers are stuck in a time warp somewhere between the first agricultural workers and the factory workers of the industrial revolution.

Another Economist chart showing average working hours for OECD countries

But there are other important benefits to be gained by society from shorter working weeks and work days. Family life is one of the first things to spring to mind. The children of long hours workers often grow up poorly adjusted for life and may embark on a life of crime or anti-social behavior. Long hours workers are more likely to divorce than shorter hours workers, and they are also more likely to have health issues. It is common to hear from people who live to an exceptionally old age, that they achieved their old age with hard work. But the reality is that people who work hard and long generally have shorter lives.

Life expectancy has improved with better working conditions, shorter hours and better wages.

There is one more important benefit of shorter working hours that is often overlooked. In the days when workers slogged from daylight to dark every day for poor wages (or in slavery), they had no discretionary spending power to buy the products that they produced, or any non-essential items.

Starting in the 20^th Century and continuing into the 21^st Century, workers have had discretionary spending power, and the reduced working hours give them the time to spend their surplus wages. This is good for the well-being of the individual and it is good for the national economy.

As workers spend their wages they help keep others in work, and the more a particular product is purchased the cheaper it can be produced and sold. As they used to say about money: It’s made round to go round.

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However, the suggestion by Carlos Slim that the retirement age may have to go up to 70 or 75 must be challenged. To prove his assumption wrong, we must go back again to the slaves and workers in primitive agriculture. For them there was no retirement. They worked until they died. It was the same during the industrial revolution and it wasn’t until the 20^th Century that workers started receiving a meagre retirement pension. As the century progressed more people qualified for the pension and the qualifying age moved steadily downward.

Retirement itself became an industry, taking from and giving to the national economy. Without pensioners the economy would revert back to the hard times prior to the introduction of pensions. Baby boomers joining the ranks of the retired is no reason to raise the retirement age. In fact most WWII baby boomers are now receiving a pension and the economic effect has been zero.

In summary, shorter working hours leads to improved safety and productivity, better home life, increased industrial creativity or a wider range of products for workers to buy and enjoy. It is better for everyone including governments, businesses and workers. Bring it on!