THIRTY-HOUR WEEK

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 129, 2 June 1936, Page 12

THIRTY-HOUR WEEK

AUSTRALIAN OBJECTIVE

LABOUR EXPLANATION

Why the Labour Party wanted a 30hour week was explained by the president of the Trades Hall Council (Mr. P J. Clarey) in an address which he gave to the Melbourne Constitutional Club recently. Although a 40-hour week was the immediate objective, said Mr. Clarey, the Labour Party favoured a 30-hour week, or a progressive decrease of working hours as production increased, reports the Melbourne "Age." It was realised not only by the Labour Party, but also by economists, that a shorter working week was the only way to solve the problem of unemployment. Certain big industrialists in the United States and elsewhere believed in this proposition. Up to 1910 mankind lived in an age of scarcity, but since then, because of industrial development, more commodities were produced than could be consumed under the present organisation of society, which had not adapted itself from the age of scarcity to the age of plenty, which was able, by the application of machinery, mass production, and rationalisation, to produce to any extent desired. The average output per employee, said Mr. Clarey, had increased as a result of machinery out of all proportion to the increase in population. In 1909 Australia, with a population of two and a third millions, had a factory energy of 227',000 horse-power. Today, with a population of six and two-third millions, they had a factory energy of 1,917,000 horse-power, so that while population had increased by 200 per cent, the factory horse-power had increased by 700 per cent. GREAT ADVANCE. In 1909 the factory horse-power was equivalent to the labour of 2,777,000 persons. Today it was equivalent to 19,000,000 persons. Side by side with this vast increase in production there was a reduction in the opportunities of employment. Between 1901 and 1914 the average unemployment m Australia was 6 per cent, of the workers Between 1915 and 1920 it was 6.85 per cent. In the brief post-war depression of 1921-22 it was 10.25 per cent., and in the seven years of prosperity from 1922 to 1929 it was 8.9 per cent., but from 1930 to 1933 it was 25 2 per cent. At present it had dropped to 13 per cent., but economists believed that it would never again go below 10 per cent. The same conditions were to be observed in other countries. In Britain 3.7 per cent, of national income was devoted to tne relief of unemployment, which represented 7.7 of the total wages bill. In Germany the figures were much worse The Labour Party believed that machinery should be used for the liberation and not the servitude of mankind. It would resist any attempt to link a reduction of wages with a reduction of hours, as this would defeat the whole object of the reform, and the whole burden.of supporting the unemployed would be thrown on the workers. The purchasing power of the people should be increased rather ■ than diminished, and the shorter hours ' would, by absorbing more unemployed result in a relief of taxation, which industry now had to bear in order to support 13 per cent, of the workers unable to find any employment. If the Commonwealth Government was sincere in its desire to reduce the . working week to 40 hours, then it ; should proclaim a 40-hour week for i Government employees. The Labour > Party had refused to be represented on the conference called by the Federal Government to consider a shorter working week because the Government's Committee of Nineteen would be too large and unwieldy and it would contain only six representatives of the I employees.