I was even told by one trade union research official -- an outspoken
advocate of reduced work time, by the way -- that there was no point in
having realistic estimates because the employer wouldn't agree to reducing
work time no matter what the costs or savings. Similarly, the provincial
government here in British Columbia offered to subsidize "alternative work
arrangements" in the forest industry in a policy announced a year ago. The
subsidy was announced without having done a shred of costing research. Not a
penny of the subsidy has been taken up (nor will it be).
For my part, I have publicly criticized the government's failure to do
cost/benefit analysis and I have written a detailed critique of union
contract costing myopia. But in seeking support for the kind of research
that needs to be done, I've also encountered a remarkable degree of
hostility from potential funders. There is a taboo attached to the reduction
and redistribution of work time.
Reviewers at the Science Council preempted a proposed project because in
their view the very idea of redistributing work time was "biased" --
research into it might impinge on the prerogatives of human resources
professionals. The proposal was simply to document the relative importance
of quasi-fixed costs in the structure of labour costs in the pulp industry
as a preliminary to estimating the barriers to work time redistribution.
Funding from the provincial government for a study of policy options was
unceremoniously axed during a general spending freeze. A federal pilot
project ran into interminable delays and was eventually abandoned when it
was learned through back channels that the government didn't want to fund
the research because of pressure from business. The president of the
Canadian Council for Social Development told me that he was taken aback by
the hostile response when the CCSD included an article on work sharing in a
book on family economic security.
After repeatedly running into a stonewall on research funding, it's not
surprising to have an otherwise positively evaluated paper rejected for
publication because of "not enough data." Here we run into a catch-22 of no
publication without data, no data without funding, no funding without
respectibility, no respectibility without publication, ad infinitum. To
quote Oscar Wilde, "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being
called an idea at all." If that is so, shorter work time is undoubtedly an idea.
Frankly, one of the problems with estimating the effects of policies to
redistribute work time is that those effects depend entirely on the
particulars of employment practices and cost structures in each industrial
sector and geographical region. A one-size-fits-all policy for
redistributing work time would, in my view, probably produce as many
undesired consequences as would wholesale fiscal pump-priming or, for that
matter, supply-side bandwagon policies promoting "training" and "job
search". I don't know how many times I've been told "work sharing is not a
panacea" by self-styled realists who then proceed to recite the catalog of
supply-side nostrums.
Rather than pursue an all-encompassing estimate of the macro effects of
policy, I've chosen to develop analytical tools that can be readily adapted
to particular circumstances. Essentially, mine is a collective bargaining
model.
The good news is that the numbers do tell a different story, if we could
only get past the union slogans fruitlessly demanding "shorter hours -- with
no loss of income" and the managerial idée fixe about a chimerical "lump of
labour fallacy". The bad news is that the ritualistic chants continue to
drown out the good news.
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#408 1035 Pacific St.
Vancouver, B.C.
V6E 4G7
knowware@istar.ca
(604) 669-3286
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
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