Imagine you have 3 employees working 6 hours screwing screws. Suddenly you find out about a magical screwdriver that makes them finish their 6 hour shifts in just 2 hours. The fair thing to do would be to buy 3 screwdrivers and make your employees work shorter shifts for the same money. Maybe give them a proportional raise and make them work 4 hour shifts.
But if you think in terms of maximizing profits, of course that’s not what you’ll do.
Instead, we fire two employees, cutting our costs, buy only one magical screwdriver, cutting our costs again, double our last employee’s salary, which is still less than what we paid our 3 employees, but if the remaining employee is not looking at a bigger picture, they are happy (100% raise!) and then we make them work 8 hours instead of 6 (you are getting much more money now, right?)
All in all, instead of benefiting the working conditions, an introduction of a better tool lead to more money in the pocket of the CEO, two unemployed screwdriver drivers and one that screws four times the screws for only half the money per screw.
Profit-driven economy is just slavery with extra steps.
There has been an hour reduction movement when capitalism was already well rooted. In France, we went down to 35h/week ± more paid leaves. Even in a conservative country like Japan, many companies moved to 7h45 workdays.
What changed is the weakening of capitalism regulation, especially in countries like the USA and even (supposedly) communist China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system.
Capitalism takes tools that help productivity and uses them in a way that makes people work longer hours.
Pretty much.
Imagine you have 3 employees working 6 hours screwing screws. Suddenly you find out about a magical screwdriver that makes them finish their 6 hour shifts in just 2 hours. The fair thing to do would be to buy 3 screwdrivers and make your employees work shorter shifts for the same money. Maybe give them a proportional raise and make them work 4 hour shifts.
But if you think in terms of maximizing profits, of course that’s not what you’ll do.
Instead, we fire two employees, cutting our costs, buy only one magical screwdriver, cutting our costs again, double our last employee’s salary, which is still less than what we paid our 3 employees, but if the remaining employee is not looking at a bigger picture, they are happy (100% raise!) and then we make them work 8 hours instead of 6 (you are getting much more money now, right?)
All in all, instead of benefiting the working conditions, an introduction of a better tool lead to more money in the pocket of the CEO, two unemployed screwdriver drivers and one that screws four times the screws for only half the money per screw.
Profit-driven economy is just slavery with extra steps.
There has been an hour reduction movement when capitalism was already well rooted. In France, we went down to 35h/week ± more paid leaves. Even in a conservative country like Japan, many companies moved to 7h45 workdays.
What changed is the weakening of capitalism regulation, especially in countries like the USA and even (supposedly) communist China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system.