A Care Revolution perspective on working time policy

The following text is the written version of a speech given by Matthias Neumann, invited as an active member of the Care Revolution network, at a discussion event on the topic of working time policy on 14 October 2013 in Berlin. The Care Revolution network's working group on reducing working hours is also working on this topic. Anyone interested in joining the working group is welcome to write to ag-eazv@care-revolution.org.

In a capitalist society, talking about time means above all talking about the lack of time for oneself and for relationships, and also about the choice between work in excess and existential insecurity, which many people face. It is therefore primarily about overwork and about the fact that central needs are unfulfillable for people with permanent time pressure. In this context, it is primarily about working timeand the exhaustion that this causes, as well as the lack of unequally distributed resources for those who are exhausted.

It is generally recognised that overwork or the forced choice between overwork and poverty does not affect everyone equally. Yet work is by no means just wage labour: the majority of total social work is unpaid. According to the Federal Statistical Office's time utilisation report, 56% of working time is unpaid and 44% paid. However, with roughly the same total working hours, the distribution is completely different for men and women (only this binary data is collected): two thirds of women's work is unpaid, while 45 per cent of men's work is unpaid. This has the effect of increasing the risk of poverty for women when it comes to pension entitlements or in the event of divorce. The fact that unpaid work is mainly done by women shows that this issue is obviously about social roles and structural privileges. After all, what domestic and family work would be inherently tied to a particular gender? Basically, this ends pretty quickly after childbirth and - already limited - breastfeeding.

The burden comes from the entire scope of labour. Among other things, it is reflected in the increase in mental illness. People with a high level of caring responsibilities are particularly burdened. However, caring responsibilities are unevenly distributed. This can be seen in both single parents and family carers, two groups that are particularly affected by poverty and overwork. Here, too, it is women in particular who are exhausted by extensive caring responsibilities and who become poor. Both also affect the dependent persons: Children or those in need of care.

This unpaid majority of socially necessary work is largely not perceived as work. A large part of my work on the supermarket works council involved defending time for housework, family work and self-care against excessive demands for flexibility from store management, which stemmed from the attitude that work is only that which is remunerated. Incidentally, this has the consequence that the closer the work is to domestic labour, the more it is devalued and poorly remunerated. And this must always be borne in mind when we talk about time: the lower the hourly wage, the more time has to be spent on wage labour to achieve a certain standard of living.

This access to unpaid labour implies the fiction that this labour itself is available without restriction, that no conditions other than the purchase of consumer goods and services need to be fulfilled in order to have a fit and motivated workforce at the factory doors on the next working day and in the next generation. The fact that reproduction also takes time is ignored. Taking the example of caring for relatives: later retirement means that fewer women in particular are available as carers. At the same time, those who remain in work despite caring for relatives generally reduce their paid working hours significantly. After all, you can't do both at the same time, and you also have to fit rest into your day - which is all too often not possible. The parallels in dealing with unpaid labour and ecological cycles are obvious and have been clearly identified by various currents of feminism. Both are overused in capitalism until the success of reproduction is called into question.

In neoliberalism, this crisis of social reproduction comes to a head: If everyone is expected to work full-time wherever possible, which is often the only way they can earn a living, there is a lack of time for domestic care work. At the same time, because the social infrastructure should be as cost-effective as possible, support services in areas such as education, upbringing, care and health are not adequately provided. This contradiction between keeping labour costs as low as possible on the one hand and wanting to have an appropriately qualified and flexible workforce available on the other is inherent to capitalism, but is currently coming to a head under neoliberalism. Households solve the problem in different ways depending on their possibilities: Overworking when there is a lot of paid work in addition to unpaid work, accepting insecurity and poverty when paid work is reduced, shifting work to lower-paid domestic workers than oneself, quite a few households with one high-earning person stick to the traditional money-earner-housewife division of labour - at the latest when the first child is born, the equal distribution of work is over. The bottom line is that there is no good constellation that combines secure reproduction and time prosperity without taking place on the backs of others.

Because there is too much work overall and the total working hours hardly differ between men and women, a redistribution of wage labour and with it domestic care work cannot solve the problem - too much working time and poor working conditions. There are good reasons for not simply categorising unpaid work as "shared suffering, half suffering". Very few people would say that their dream of a good life involves not looking after their home at all and preferably having nothing to do with children. Work becomes bad if it is too one-sided and too little self-determined. Apart from that, there are of course good reasons for the redistribution of work and the dissolution of the gender division of labour: the risk of poverty as long as pensions and other payments are linked to earned income, and the fixation of people on gender roles. However, the problem of overwork will not be solved by redistribution if the total amount of work is too much.

For a good life, we need more social time to organise our social relationships, and we need more time for social co-determination. However, more time for this means spending less time on other things. For ecological reasons, this applies in particular to the production of things, their transport and sale. At the same time, however, the ecological reorganisation of the production apparatus and energy supply is urgently needed. Some necessary measures, such as moving away from industrial agriculture, using only renewable energies and expanding the care infrastructure, also reduce overall economic productivity. All of this means the use of working time. All the more reason to ask the question: How can we organise a better life with fewer things available? A second starting point for reducing working time is that a number of reproductive tasks can be done more satisfactorily, because they are more relational, and more efficiently if they are organised collectively. This can also only be positive for the consumption of resources and energy.

These two starting points for socio-ecological reorganisation are only desirable in the context of a different, non-imperial way of life. This would be more generous in its sharing at various levels, from the neighbourhood to the planet. It would be more frugal in its consumption of energy and resources, and also in its desire for possessions; it would reduce transport and be more small-scale, while sharing knowledge and capacities globally. It would be more collective and, from a care-activist position, very important: the development of relationships would be at the centre. These could be less instrumentalising and superficial, and there would certainly be less isolation. There would be time to come into contact with the needs of others and with one's own needs; there would be room to negotiate what can be done when individuals are overburdened.

Ultimately, to get back to the topic of the event, it's not just about less time spent working. It is important how much time is available for regeneration, for developing one's own creativity, for playing and being allowed to be useless. But it is also about the quality of time spent working. It's about the quality of our social relationships. It is also about efficiency and planning in the sense that everyone can satisfy their needs with the results of social labour. And it is about the collective disposal of living conditions. None of this can certainly be realised in a society geared towards the exploitation of capital. This makes it all the more important to take the first steps that will make us more capable of acting, alleviate suffering and at the same time make a non-capitalist future more imaginable.

A very central step is the reduction of wage labour time. The joint struggles are empowering and, given the right framework conditions, improve the quality of life enormously. This framework includes, on the one hand, full wage compensation for low wages and, on the other, no increase in labour intensity. Under these conditions, the volume of gainful employment in society will fall. This is only positive if we consider the overburdening of ecological limits and the overburdening of care workers. This makes it all the more important to debate and manage which labour products we need more of and which we can do without. For example, we certainly need more social infrastructure and public mobility. We will do without a large proportion of cars, advertising and defence goods. Overall, we will have to and be able to share more goods. This brings us back to lifestyle and quality of time.

In many life situations, however, when caring tasks take up a lot of space, freedom from wage labour or part-time work beyond a reduced full-time schedule is important. These people are currently particularly affected by poverty and a lack of time. And it should be emphasised that here - in a different sphere - they also contribute to society's overall work. In order for there to be more time sovereignty, other things are also important: a relieving social infrastructure, an increase in the minimum wage and an equalisation of wage differences so that the individual decision to work shorter hours is open to more people. Such a decision to devote more time to care work is also supported by a non-employment-related, sanction-free livelihood.

These would be steps within the capitalist framework towards combining time prosperity for all with livelihood security. Not everyone in favour of shorter working hours will share these proposals. But in alliances, not everyone has to have the same motives. It is much more important to come together and engage in dialogue in the struggles. However, from a Care Revolution perspective, we will always argue that unpaid work and the different care situations must be taken into account when talking about working time and that this perspective, just like the ecological framework conditions, belongs in all alliances in struggles for time.