Against stress and Hartz IV a 30 hour week

An alliance of scientists, politicians and trade unionists calls for a 30-hour week with full pay compensation in view of the increasing stress symptoms

02/12/2013

Every year, health insurers announce a massive increase in stress-related illnesses. The work density is continuously increasing, in the same breath increase the mental suffering. Due to the increase in stress diseases, more and more billions are spent and lost through sick leave. Now, an alliance of trade unionists, politicians and scientists has joined forces to develop concepts against labor delusions. Her massage is: „30 hours are enough!“

Against stress, a new alliance mandates a simple yet effective therapy: just work less. Around 100 trade unionists, scientists and politicians from the Left Party and Pirate Party have signed an open letter. In this they propose a radical reduction of working hours. Every adult in Germany should not work more than 30 hours per week and still receive his full salary. The demand is not shot from the hip, but underlaid with economic analysis. Scientists believe that higher incomes significantly boost purchasing power, drastically reduce mental illness, and provide more jobs. By stimulating mass purchasing power, companies are experiencing new financial opportunities.

The letter says: "For years, there has been a socially and economically counterproductive redistribution from labor to property income (profit, interest, rent, rent), which has limited domestic demand and the excess capital away from the producing real economy The crisis management must not be left to those who have made large profits from the crises and now try again, with illusory alternatives and a therapy of symptoms exclusively the wealth of the wealthy at the expense of the Nearly forty years of neoliberal capitalism are enough. "

The initiators also hope to counteract mass unemployment. Thus, the title of the call states: "Without working time reduction, never again full employment". The authors suggest that the current unemployment is a „economic liberal project“ to expand the ever-increasing low-wage sector. "The neoliberal redistribution would not have been enforceable without the long-term mass unemployment." An oversupply on the labor markets leads to a decline in wages. ".

Trade associations consistently reject the 30-hour week
It was clear that the appeal fell on deaf ears in many quarters. The liberal German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) describes the demand for shorter working hours with full pay compensation as "unworldly" and "shaped by Marxist ideas".

But new models are also needed because of demographic change. So one reads these days on the DIW website: "More and more people of retirement age are working." The consequences of low pay are already visible now and continue at retirement age, to the chagrin of those affected. Because not enough could be paid into the pension fund, retirees still have to do extra work in old age, in order to make ends meet. But an increase in the value of labor force through a reduction in working hours with full pay compensation counteracts economic dogmas. Therefore, even more social democratic economists such as Peter Bofinger or Heiner Flassbeck have rejected the call. It seems that the cycle of work, unemployment, stress, burn-out and poverty in old age are not broken. (Sb)

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Picture: Gerd Altmann