Reducing working hours as a transformation project in the context of the care revolution

We document here a speech by Gabriele Winker (Care Revolution Freiburg) on the topic. She argues that a reduction in working hours is of central importance in the context of a socio-ecological transformation. It is an important step towards a society that supports rich social and caring relationships and respect for the limits of ecosystems instead of growth and profit.

Speech at a panel discussion of the 4-hour league on 28 April 2013 in Cologne

Gabriele Winker, Care Revolution Network

1 High importance of reducing working hours as part of the Care Revolution as a socio-ecological transformation strategy

I am a co-founder of the Care Revolution network, an association of more than 80 initiatives with regional groups in 10 cities, which has been active in German-speaking countries for 9 years. We were founded because, especially in a neoliberal world, many people are finding it increasingly difficult to master the balancing act between paid work and unpaid care work for themselves and others. This is true even in a country as economically strong as Germany. Women in particular live with the constant feeling of not being able to fulfil the requirements. In their gainful employment, they are confronted with increasing demands for flexibility from companies, growing pressure to perform, unpaid overtime and inadequate wages. At the same time, they are expected to reconcile these professional demands with increasing responsibilities in family care work, which accounts for 56% of all working hours in Germany. To make matters worse, social infrastructure facilities, for example in the healthcare or education system, are being cut instead of expanded in order to reduce costs.

Work without end is thus becoming an everyday reality. As a result, caring for oneself is neglected. Leisure has become a foreign concept. The constant overload leads to exhaustion and even mental illness. Important needs of children or sick people who are dependent on care also remain unfulfilled. The current policy, which primarily supports profit-driven growth, is therefore not only destroying the earth's ecosystem, as is generally perceived, but also people.

The Care Revolution network is therefore committed to a social framework in which all people can satisfy their needs - comprehensively, without excluding anyone and not on the backs of others, nor by accepting the destruction of ecological systems. In order to achieve this goal, in addition to the expansion and democratisation of the social infrastructure and state support for a wide range of community projects, a drastic reduction in working hours for everyone is crucial from the outset. This is the only way to give people the time they need for often extensive caring tasks for children, relatives in need of support or people in distress.

2 Positioning on reducing working hours from a care and climate perspective

From a care policy perspective, it is undisputed and can be seen, for example, in the rise in mental illnesses, that the burden of the sum of paid and unpaid work overburdens people, especially when they have taken on a high level of care responsibilities. There is an urgent need to reduce the overall workload and in particular that of paid work.

From a climate policy perspective, it is obvious that Germany's contribution to limiting the climate catastrophe cannot be achieved solely by switching to non-fossil energy sources and increasing energy productivity. Reducing output is essential; this is particularly true with regard to the production of goods and the services directly associated with this. In this area of the economy, work is almost exclusively gainful employment, the volume of which should be reduced accordingly.

2.1 Ecological and social destruction - inscribed in capitalism

The causes of the rapid increase in global warming and the rapidly growing number of exhausted people lie in the capitalist economic system. In this system, family and voluntary care work as well as ecological cycles are regarded as free and seemingly unrestricted resources. They are used for the purpose of capital utilisation without regard for the limits of human performance and the resilience of ecosystems.

In addition, the competition-driven need for growth is inherent in capitalist society. However, growth means that more and more raw materials and more and more life time are sucked into the capital valorisation process. And competition means that as few resources as possible are used for the reproduction of human life and the reproduction of ecological cycles.

As a result, the current economic system is neither able to limit greenhouse gas emissions to the necessary extent in the short term, nor to increase the financial resources for education, health and care sufficiently. On the contrary: labour, social and environmental policy measures are being implemented on too small a scale for reasons of global competitiveness and in such a way that, where possible, companies are still making money from them. The threat to care relationships and ecological destruction are therefore systemic. At the same time, this means that a drastic deterioration in living conditions is to be expected at this stage of capitalist development. This applies in particular to the Global South, where famine is on the increase, but also to those people in Europe who have few financial resources.

2.2 Reducing working hours as a key political instrument

If we do not want to allow social and ecological crises to be carried out on the backs of the working population, a significant reduction in full-time gainful employment to initially no more than 30 hours per week for all is essential. All employable people will then have at most a short full-time period with flexible long-term accounts that can be controlled by the employees, so that individual time sovereignty also increases. It is essential that the reduction in working hours is accompanied by wage compensation for lower-paid groups of employees and is realised without increasing the intensity of work.

Such a reduction in working hours improves the current living conditions of many people in a variety of ways.

1. Firstly, people will have significantly more available time than is currently available to working parents, for example. This directly reduces the pressure on people, especially those with extensive caring responsibilities. With a larger individual time budget, it is also easier for all people, regardless of gender, to participate in unpaid care work. Less time spent in paid work supports the redistribution of domestic and family work and can lead to a more gender-equitable distribution of unpaid care work. The time gained by reducing working hours also increases the time available for social, cultural and political activities.
2. Furthermore, a reduction in working hours, if it is accompanied by full wage compensation for those earning lower wages and salaries, can halt the ever-widening income gap. This gradual equalisation of wages and salaries is also important in order to prevent poverty in the event of a further reduction in the volume of gainful employment. The aim is to level out income differences as far as possible so that in future the demand for equal earnings per hour of gainful employment for all no longer sounds as utopian as it does today. The logical continuation of such a development is an equal income for all, regardless of the number of hours worked. This fundamentally calls into question the separation of social labour into a paid and a non-paid sphere.
3. To the extent that a reduction in working hours reduces the total volume of gainful employment, society is forced to conduct a debate on the significance of individual economic sectors: The production of which goods should be reduced and to what extent should healthcare and education, for example, be expanded at the same time? Under capitalist conditions, such decisions cannot take the form of comprehensive social planning. However, such reflection and implementation of economic priorities can certainly have an effect, for example through production bans, state control of investments and orders or targeted taxation. In this way, a reduction in working hours supports the containment of the climate catastrophe to the extent that the production of goods is reduced and public services of general interest are expanded instead. This is because_{CO2 emissions} per euro of turnover are around five times higher in the production of goods than in the production of services.
4. To ensure that everyone can live at an acceptable level when production is reduced, it makes sense to strengthen collective consumption at the same time. This means expanding the public education and health sectors, but also the public leisure sector, for example the expansion of public swimming pools or local and long-distance public transport. The shared use of cars, tools or washing machines also makes sense from an ecological and supply point of view.
5. This increase in available time can also support changes in lifestyle. This is because a more relaxed life strengthens the importance of social relationships and reduces the importance of compensatory consumption. This is supported, for example, by surveys that confirm the desire of employees to receive improvements in the collective labour agreement in the form of a reduction in working hours instead of a pay rise. The interest in changed forms of coexistence is already visible today in community projects, especially in commons. There, people are gaining important experience with communal ownership and organising their decision-making processes collectively. In some cases, income is already shared equally or according to need, regardless of the earnings of the individual members. These beacons, which already point a little way into the future, also make lifestyles beyond the nuclear family appear attractive in some cases.
6. Last but not least, a general reduction in gainful employment also represents a glimpse of an alternative to capitalism: If the trend towards equalisation of hourly wages (partial wage equalisation) and an equalisation of working hours means that income differences become smaller and smaller, the incentive to desolidarise or accept unacceptable conditions due to competition on the labour market also decreases. Ultimately, an equal income for all - unrealisable under capitalism - also becomes more conceivable.

3 Reducing working hours - a project for a social alliance

The reduction of working hours has always had to be fought for in tough battles. The reduction in working hours will not happen by itself, because it is not in the interests of companies. This applies not only to individual companies, but also to the economy as a whole. In Germany, for example, the annual working time for full-time employees has remained fairly constant for 30 years, although surveys regularly show that full-time employees would like to reduce their working hours.

I see it as the task of social movements to bring the reduction in working hours, with all its positive effects for a good life, more into the social debate. A joint approach by trade unions with groups from the climate movement as well as groups motivated by care politics and feminism is therefore obvious and is certainly necessary for the required strength and political framing of a working time campaign. From the perspectives of the respective movements, such a campaign concerns the defence of ecological spaces, physical and psychological integrity and the possibility of fulfilling social relationships. Hardly exaggerated, it is about the defence of life against the destruction of the capitalist mode of production.

Climate, quality of life, gender division of labour, social justice, transformation of lifestyles, the prospect of a social alternative - reducing working hours could be a key project for social movements. However, whether anything can be achieved here depends to a large extent on large organisations. Widespread implementation is possible through collective agreements via broadly supported trade union struggles or via the Working Hours Act, i.e. a legislative amendment brought into parliament by a party. Can we imagine an alliance of inevitably not only small organisations and groups that can muster the momentum to interest the trade union or a parliamentary left - insofar as it still exists - in this?

As the path of a plebiscite is also closed at the national level, social movements initially only have the option of "constant dripping wears away the stone" in social debates and individual labour disputes. This is why the Care Revolution network brings the above arguments to feminist actions such as the feminist strike, but also to women's congresses within the trade unions. We also present the above arguments on flyers and posters at the climate strike demonstrations. There are particularly many discussions on the reduction of working hours at demonstrations and celebrations on 1 May, in which the Care Revolution network participates in several cities under the motto "1 May - also the day of invisible work", drawing attention to the unpaid care work that requires a generalised reduction in working hours.

4 Solidarity society as a concrete utopia

Finally, I would like to outline my concrete utopia, as the idea of a solidary society, even if its realisation is a long way off, can already be important today as an orientation in political struggles. Because even if we succeed in drastically reducing paid work and also comprehensively expanding public services and socialising companies, reducing poverty and much more, family and voluntary work will continue to be devalued.

In order to break through this devaluation, the functional separation of paid and unpaid labour in capitalism must be abolished. This does not mean that previously unpaid care work should be remunerated and thus also subject to performance monitoring. Rather, it is about overcoming wage labour and generalising work in its unpaid form, which is directly aimed at satisfying needs. It is clear that such a proposal to overcome wage labour goes beyond the framework of a capitalist society once and for all. This is also necessary in order to actually overcome exploitation and domination.

In a society based on solidarity, all people have free access to what is created through the division of labour, and everyone contributes to the necessary work according to their needs. This means that they decide on their own contribution. Contributions and needs are coordinated through dialogue, digital information and the planning of upcoming tasks. Social decisions, including ecologically relevant decisions, are voted on via open assemblies on site or via councils in supra-regional contexts. In such a society, there is no longer a private-sector focus on profits at the expense of human and non-human nature. Instead, a caring and solidary interaction with one another is supported by the basic social structure.

More detailed information can be found at

Winker, Gabriele (2021). Solidarity-based care economy. Revolutionary Realpolitik for Care and Climate. Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag