THE CANKER OF LONGER HOURS DESPITE SHORTER WORKING WEEK

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27501, 8 November 1954, Page 10

THE CANKER OF LONGER HOURS DESPITE SHORTER WORKING WEEK

[By the Labour Correspondent of “The Times")

More overtime is being worked in Britain today than ever before nt peace time. In many industries em nlovers rely on regular overtime to Fulfil their commitments and w 9]*kers rely on regular overtime to maintain their Standard of living. As a conseauence matters affecting overtime have become increasingly important. m industrial relations The origin of the stevedores'union th>t dock employee SgTotS The London bus strike arose .out of the men's resentment at persistent ovffl--time resulting from shortage of staff. More and more often a ban on overtime is being used by the workers as an industrial weapon by which they can bring pressure to bear on employers without sacrificing their ordinary weekly wages. In many industries complaints are made that workers do not put their full effort into their work during normal hours lest they lose the benefits of more remunerative overtime. In many ways, in fact, the extent of overtime now being worked is an unhealthy feature of Britain's industrial life. As things are, it is a canker, giving rise sometimes to injustices, sometimes to low productivity, and sometimes to bad feeling. Before the war the normal working week was 47 or 48 hours in most industries. During the war the Trades Union Congress included prominently among its post-war objectives the establishment of a 40-hour week, if possible by legislation. It recognised that provision “would have to be made in certain cases for overtime to meet breakdowns, emergencies, etc. The case for the 40-hour week, it said, should be based principally upon the need of work people for increased leisure for rest, recreation, and personal development; in other words, it should not be associated, as it commonly was before the war, with the problem of unemployment.

The industrial atmosphere after the war, however, was not as they envisaged it. There were widespread and pressing shortages of labour and urgent demands by the Government for increased production. Though it was commonly argued that a shorter working week would not necessarily result in loss of output, the trade union movement was forced to revise its policy. The proposal for legislative action was abandoned and it was accepted that the reduction of working hours to 40 could be brought about in two stages. The first stage, the reduction to 43 or 44 hours, took place over the greater part of industry in 1946, when more than 2,000,000 of the workers covered by the Ministry of Labour’s returns secured reductions, and 1947, when another 5,250,000 secured reductions.

Normal working hours had become about 44 and the demand for the second stage of the reduction to 40 hours has been tacitly held in abeyance ever since. But the reduced working week has not achieved the objective of greater leisure for the workers. At first it appeared to do so to a limited, extent. Tne average number of hours actually worked by men—overtime is mainly a male problem—was 47.7 in October, 1938. At the end of the war it had been nearly 50. But the decline came to an end in April. 1947, when the average was 46.3. It then rose steadily to 48.3" in April this year. The separate figures of overtime among operatives in manufacturing industries suggest that the trend was continuing in August. A Regular System These figures show that more than a quarter of such operatives work overtime, averaging about eight hours, in any selected week. In civil employment as a whole there may oe 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 in a week doing overtime; and there must be many more who do overtime sometimes. The position has been reached that, whereas the accepted working week is shorter than before the war. tne actual hours worked are longer. In many industries overtime is regular and systematic and both employers and workers have come to depend on it. The shorter working week has not had the result of increasing leisure but of increasing earnings. It may be thought the reduction in the working week was premature and that a straightforward increase in wage rates might have been preferable. Possibly, however, a good deal of the present overtime could be dispensed with by skilful and determined management, with co-operation from the

workers. Systematic overtime is to stall than to stop. It i s petuating. Once it is accepted™’ ployers can too easily fall into S. of aiming at higher production bv 5 creasing hours rather than productivity, while workers may S that it shall be maintained so »•7 keep up their earnings—or even mJ' sure that work is not completed a* ing normal working hours. ’ aur ‘ The view that shorter hours win suit in increased productivity has been exaggerated, but in most iff tries there does come a point longer hours will defeat their own? ject. Behind the averages are grip? of workers and* even whole industn whose working hours are probably u long for maximum output. There a more than a dozen industries in whk the average hours worked each wm exceed 50 <in the cement industry 2 average is 57.3); and again within thS averages there are groups of men Z work very much longer. Much hiEhS output in the United States is ba2 on a much shorter working ww? Moreover overtime is costly—thouS this can be offset by the advantages of making fuller, use of J pensive machinery.

Average Earnings The working of systematic overtiiM sometimes causes difficulties in negot ation. When employers, for instant, in the engineering industry, have quoted average earnings in the count of their reply to a wage claim the men have frequently resented the in elusion of overtime payments, parties larly those men who have no oppor. tunitv to work overtime. They hay. found a ban on overtime a natural form of retaliation. Again, as in th? London bus dispute, men may use sn tematic overtime resulting from short, age of staff as a reason for demanding higher wages in order to attract more staff. Employers who are short of labour, on the other hand, may find it hard to obtain unless they are able to offer the extra remuneration ft. suiting from regular overtime. The question whether all this over time is compulsory or voluntary, which started the troubles in the docks, ha seldom been raised in other industries Collective agreements often say hoi much shall be paid for overtime, and a number restrict the amount that shall be worked, but they seldom m whether it is voluntary. Ai exception is the engineering agree ment which says “employers nave the right to decide when overtime is necei. sary,” but this is not normally interpreted in a rigid way. The engineering agreement also deprecates atic overtime as a method of production, and says no workman shall be required to work more than 30 hour overtime in any four weeks. Jn th* building industry overtime is in theorr restricted to “cases of urgency.” Theory and Practice In most industries systematic over time is vaguely disapproved, and then is the v somewhat illogical position that overtime is regarded as voluntary in theory but, in normal circumstances, obligatory in practice. The unions generally accept that their members should work overtime when asked unless they have good reason for declining—either because they have been working excessively long hours over a period or because they have special personal reasons for wishing not to do it on a particular occasion. Dispute over individual cases are quite common. but discussion of the principle is generally avoided. The clause in the dock labour scheme which says a registered dock worker “shall work for such periods as are reasonable in his particular case’ hai*dly clarifies the principle, since ii makes no attempt to define what fc reasonable.. It would have been better for all concerned if the two sides fc the dock industry had concentratec their attention on particular disputes instead of fighting to the death over; principle which in any case can mean little. Overtime is bound to involve f'ive and take by both sides. Worker, he docks is necessarily influenced by such things as tides and the movement of ships which are not under the control of the employer; and in such industries the case for insisting, co overtime at particular times;is plainly much stronger. Tempers in all industries tend It become strained when lon«? hours are worked for a Considerable period There is need for a determined effort by both sides of industry to reduce systematic overtime and eventually confine it to the emergencies and special circumstances for which it was originally intended.