David Ellis makes the case for reducing working hours rather than cutting jobs. David’s site is here.

I read with interest today that a `Keep Britain Working’ survey found that 61% of workers in Wales would take a cut in hours in order to help save the jobs of their colleagues (20 April).  I would say that this altruistic stance is more than simply morally correct; it is also an economic necessity and the only rational response to the destruction of our economic base.  However, there is no reason why a cut in hours should result in a cut in pay.  In fact, logic dictates that the total spending power in the economy be maintained by paying the same amount of wages for the shorter, more productive week.  Theoretically, the bankers who have robbed the country blind could have carried on gambling on growth forever and perhaps got away with it.  But economic crashes are ushered in when, under the spur of the frenzied competition of a boom, more and more stuff is produced more and more cheaply until there is no profit in it and production collapses to be seized in the end by the few surviving, rapacious, isolated, hated and paranoid monopolists bristling with heavy weapons and laden with armour.
Even whilst there is want all around us too much has been produced.

Here is where the question of hours comes in because increased productivity in our society is invariably met with job cuts rather than cuts in the working week ensuring that the benefits of growing productivity accrue to a tiny minority of billionaires and shareholders whilst those who remain in work are told to think of themselves as `lucky’ even whilst the intensity of their exploitation is increased.  The same mass unemployment created by growing productivity also undercuts or destroys the market for what is being produced magnifying the effects of the economic `correction’ by many factors.  If, however, growing productivity were to be met with a cut in hours we could instead be earning today for a twenty-hour week what we earned in the past for a forty-hour week.  There would be no unemployment and no economic collapse in demand at least for the necessities of life.  Under such conditions production would be geared first and foremost towards meeting the basic needs of all workers rather than the production of trivial personality enhancements for the lazy, inadequate and inexplicably wealthy as a priority.  What we need now is not the restoration of growth, which is not possible as nothing can now be produced profitably, but economic consolidation to be achieved by sharing the wealth and sharing the work.  From such a platform we can go forward.

Oh, and guess what?  A much shorter week means we won’t have to totally alienate the care of our children, our elderly and our communities to the state or private companies whose only concern is the bottom line but can once again enjoy that aspect of our lives as equal partners, men and women, young and old.  I was very happy to find that the `Keep Britain Working’ survey also found that 46% of workers in Wales would also be prepared to occupy their workplaces rather than accept wholesale redundancies and closure.  It looks as if they might have to now that the banks have been `saved’.
I would point out that I actually don’t know who `Keep Britain Working’ is.