TECH CHANGE.

Shorter hours creates jobs _

By EMIL BJARNASON
R= wing economists are fond of

;
However, because the average ee
of work declined, the num”
employed increased much more f ath
the projection in column 5. In ‘
there were just under two million mo")
jobs in 1984 than there would have
with 1946 working hours. In spr i
that, unemployment had reachee
million.
Working hours are not the wholeet?
lanation of unemployment, but they
an important one. It can also be SiO
although space does not perm! the
demonstration in this article, that
rate of unemployment is closely
to the gap by which the increase NF

Productivity
(manhours per Jobs Available Employment
Manhours billion $ of Labor at 1946 Current at current No.

employed, only people who won’t Year worked output) (2) Force (3) working hrs. Ave. hrs hours Unemployed
millions of dollars ........ ) at

take the jobs available to them at the Gui
offered wage. That’s a dandy way of 1946 9.805 490.4
laying the basis for making people work tet ea, 7 SE
at the kind of wages that can compete 1975 83.103 13.207 158.922
with Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. 1984 105,273 14.521 137,032
In large measure, that’s what ‘‘free
economic zones’ are all about. The
concept is actually being tested in a sur-
reptitious way at Expo 86: many work-
ers are being brought in from places like
the Philipines at wages about one third
of the B.C. minimum wage (which itself _
is the lowest in Canada), and the Expo

saying that there are no un- GDP in

1971 )(1)

4,259,580 4,096,580 2,394
4,837,000 4.253.387 2,217
5,676,000 4.698.646 2,080
7,570,000 5,517,642 1,924
9,395,000 6,066,467 1,816

4,096,580
4,592,000
5,396,000 280,000
6,863,000 707,000
7,996,000 1,399,000

163,000
245,000

Notes: (1) Commercial Sector only
(2) In this column increasing productivity is indicated by
the reduction in hours for a given output
(3) No. of employees in commercial industries plus unemployed
Source: Statistics Canada

output per hour of the workers, the of manhours required for each billion

Expo for no wages at all.

that lower wages will mean more jobs.

perienced.

force that produces it. The bigger the

management is brazenly calling for
thousands of volunteers to work at

Unemployment is a cruel fact of life.
The right wingers are not at all unhappy
about it because they see in it a weapon
for forcing unions to accept sub-
standard wages and conditions. But no
unionist should be fooled into believing

If they really believed that, they
should take a look at the countries
where wages are a dollar a day and
unemployment reaches levels far
beyond what this country has ever ex-

The amount of employment availa-
ble, in this or any country is governed
by the size of the Gross Domestic Pro-
duct and the productivity of the work

GDP the more jobs, but the higher the

fewer jobs. The accompanying table
shows how this works and points the
way to a solution.

Unemployment has been increasing
more or less continuously during the
postwar years. From 3.4 per cent in
1946, it rose to 4.4 per cent in 1955, 3.9
in 1965, 7.1 in 1975 and 10.5 per cent in
1985. Those are official figures which
are greatly understated, but which
nevertheless reveal the trend.

In the accompanying table, it may be
seen that the gross domestic product in
constant prices, and therefore repre-
senting actual physical volumes of out-
put, was 5.26 times as high in 1984 as in
1946. But this was accomplished with
only 48 per cent more manhours work-
ed.

The productivity, or output per man-
hour, therefore went up by 256 per
cent. This is expressed in the third col-
umn of the table by showing the number

dollars worth of output, which provides
a measure of the number of jobs pro-
vided by a given output, as the advance
of technology proceeds.

The average hours of work in 1946
were 2,394, roughly equal to a 46 hour
week. Column five of the table shows
the number of jobs that would have
been provided by the GDP ofeach year,
if working hours had remained at the
1946 level.

That would have meant staggering
increases in unemployment, since the
available labor force considerably more
than doubled, while the available jobs
would have increased by only 50 per
cent. However as the result of union
bargaining, average working hours
declined to 1,816 per year, although
part of that reduction is a statistical illu-
sion due to the inclusion of increased
numbers of. part time workers in the
average.

- ter hours of work. In short, W

ductivity exceeds the increase gs
real wage. In our economy, rea i vith
almost always fall behind product!
“and the greater that shortfall, the Mi™
the rate of unemployment.

That is why concession bargainine”
a self-defeating policy.

If we truly wish to deal with
employment, therefore, two thing
necessary: higher real wages a”! P the

uth

er)
trade unions must do is to conti
pursue their traditional policy, DU ‘ay.
a level of militancy appropriate ©" |
magnitude of the problem.
Otherwise, a whole genera

young people may be doomed t0
time of enforced idleness.

Emil Bjarnason is the director of
Trade Union Research Bureau and @©
tor of Economics.

‘Tech change’ — a Marxist analysis.

By MAGGIE BIZZELL

e are the people who will go
Wiewss in the history books as

the generation which had to
cope with the beginning of the second
major revolution in science and tech-
nology.

Not a social revolution, won by the
struggles of the people and in which
power passes from one class to
another, but a revolution nevertheless.

Since the mid 50s, we have seen
dramatic changes in the place occupied
by human beings in the production pro-
cess. New science and technology is
having a revolutionary impact on the
actual production process, the organ-
ization of production, raw materials,
management, communication and,
most significantly, on labor and its rela-
tions with capital.

Under socialism new technology is
introduced as fast as possible without
dislocating the economy, and in such a
way as to lift society to a higher level in
the interests of the people.

In capitalist societies, however the
inevitable introduction of tech change
is carried out at a tremendous cost to
the people. Profits and the need to sur-
vive cut-throat competition come first
while the working people’s concerns
are merely problems to disguise, divert
and suppress because they get in the
way of profit making.

Unemployment soars as a capi-
talist-wide phenomenon, as mod-
ern technology replaces people. Work-
ers are fed the myth that they’re not
productive enough, that labor costs
have to be cut, and profit must come
first. Capital, therefore bears no
responsibility for unemployment.

Along with higher
‘‘acceptable’’ and permanent unem-

levels of

ployment comes unprecedented per-
manent ‘‘new poverty’’. Women and
youth are particularly hard hit.

Exploding Myths

The fight for control over tech
change, for shorter work time with no
reduction in take-home pay can be won,
but only by a united, militant labor
movement that can stand up to the cor-
porate strategy of divide and rule, and
its use of the unemployed, the unor-
ganized, part-time and temporary
workers to blackmail the trade unions
into submission and concession.

It requires education to explode the
myths about high wages and low
productivity that workers are saddled
with. They have to be exposed to the
truth about soaring profit levels, and the
impact of mergers and takeovers which
concentrate capital and decision-mak-
ing power in fewer hands, often outside
Canada and beyond our control.

Workers see the link between mas-
sive unemployment and _ shrinking
purchasing power. The employers have
to be made to answer the question of
who is to buy all those new and better
goods created by the expanding new
technology when buying power is
decreasing?

This question must also be linked to
the increased tax burden on working
people (and not the corporations) to
fund the increased demands for social
services like welfare and unemploy-
ment insurance as joblessness grows.

When workers can see it is the corpo-
rations who are to blame for the eco-
nomic crisis, and that these same cor-
porations dislocate the economy with
their drive for profits, they can grasp
the possibility of winning shorter work-
time with no loss in pay and can under-
stand that working over time for badly

needed dollars isn’t really in their in-
terests.

Implications

The implications of tech change go
far beyond any single plant or office —
far beyond the bargaining table. They
demand a united political fightback by
labor for the protection of jobs and the
communities they support; for shorter
work time with no loss in pay; for a say
in the introduction of tech change; for
new policies in education, skills train-
ing and upgrading pensions; for health
and safety legislation and protection of
the environment.

The problem is that such legislation
would require a government which is
prepared to ‘interfere in the market
place’’, not one such as the current
Tory crew whose majority rests on a
platform of less interference.

There’s not much chance of protec-
tive legislation for people from either
Tory or Liberal governments. They
have their own corporate agendas of
intervening to help the transnationals
find the ways of accumulating capital to
finance new machines and move along
with intense international competition.

Mulroney's Tories won’t interfere:
with the rights of business, but the
government will redistribute the na-
tional income in favor of the cor-
porations, ignoring the people’s rights
in the process.

As long as there is a pro-business,
pro-U.S. Tory majority in Parliament
the majority of working people outside
won't get full protection against the
harmful impact of tech change. -

Then, there is free trade and the Mul-
roney government’s frenzied efforts to
find new markets and investment for
the corporations by opening up Canada ~
to the U.S. transnationals. New tech-

[?

nology, as the General Motors work
in Quebec are finding out, ™ 10
easier for the TNCs to relocate '
wage, non-union areas. és

At the same time our Tory 80%
ment in Ottawa favors nurturing
high tech companies that are #
Canada to the U.S. military indU>
complex and dragging us into com Ny
city with Reagan’s Star Wars prot i

Most Canadians understand thal

_trade would eventually turn

into the 51st state, poor, but 2 ©
source of natural resources fo"
TNCs.

Fundamental Changé

There are alternatives for C®
But to win them requires a unite?
by all patriotic Canadians, if y
progressive people united around fl
for a government that will stand UF
the demands of the corporatio” ;
build a healthy, balanced Cam
economy. is

The advance of technol08)
outstripping social, and_ poll! f
developments. Combined with
other crises of the capitalist worl! i
change is accelerating the polariZ
of capitalist society between thos?
own production and the growing
bers of increasingly exploited
who work. rr

As the industrial revolution bra
an end to feudalism, the problem ‘
rounding tech change today, ©
the seeds of the end of capitalis™, jab |
tal will fight with all of its for™
power to keep the system going,
the end working people will s&%
only fundamental social change
bring real solutions.

a
Maggie Bizzell is the central edu oe
Director of the Communist Party ~~

regular columnist with the Tribun®

18 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 30, 1986