Shorter work week

Shorter work week – and a living wage !

SWWAC builds its campaigns around the slogan “ a shorter work week - without a loss in pay”.

In the world today there is mass unemployment and underemployment for those who the free market has discarded. Simultaneously, those who have employment find themselves under attack from employers wishing to cut back on wages and conditions while increasing the time worked.

In such a situation both employed and unemployed workers everywhere require a radical re-organisation and redistribution of society's work time if we are to restructure our work lives in a way that empowers us.

The Shorter Work Week Action Committee aims to participate in the building of a global movements to equalise and reduce the hours of toil of the worlds workers.

However, unlike other shorter work advocates we do not believe it is in the interest of the working class to take a cut in pay at the same time as a reduction in work time.
On the contrary we are for a sliding reduction in the hours of employment as long as there is unemployment to justify it, and a sliding scale of wages that keeps pace with inflation.

Some supporters of the shorter work week take an opposing view.
They argue for a shorter work week to redistribute work-time, but think that workers should take a voluntary reduction in pay in line with a reduction of the hours worked.

This idea of a voluntary reduction in take home pay is premised on the belief that while reducing unemployment is a commendable desire, the capitalist economy has no “slack” to allow more workers to get paid any more than a lesser number of workers were previously and that workers should pay for the costs of bringing the unemployed back into the workforce.

In fact though employment is mediated by economic forces, the acceptance of unemployment in society is a political decision.
Unemployment is used as an "economic lever" (ie: weapon) to drive down wages and conditions of employment

It is not greedy workers who do not share their work and wealth around with their brothers and sisters.
In-fact the planet we all live on has a socio-economic system where 225 of the richest people earn as much as the poorest 3 billion!

This is the harsh reality of the global market place.
And it is this situation of inequality that is increasing rather than decreasing.
This shift in wealth from one sector of the worlds population is not due to the hoarding of wages by one one group of workers rather than another. It is a political reality that only exists as long as it is tolerated by the worlds productive workers.

The Shorter Work Week Action Committee is opposed to the unequal distribution of labour on a world and local scale. The condition of life for humanity is productive labour for all our benefit.

We aim to unite the employed and unemployed to redefine the standard work week and the standard weekly wage.

We do not want to universalise part time work and part time pay. We have the power to share our work equally – to create full employment at a living wage .