work

Chapter 1 The ingenuities of our times 1.1 Our times ... "Money can buy everything, it is said. What is not said is what it takes to buy money."

It seems clear to me that the women's movement in Boston hasn't really been doing much this year as compared to last year. I think that the reason behind this is that people have tried very hard not to think about what they were doing, and have therefore become encased in dogma. I also feel that people have settled for reforming their lives instead of changing them.

If a household gets a washing machine, you never hear the family members who used to do the laundry by hand complain that this “puts them out of work.” But strangely enough, if a similar development occurs on a broader social scale it is seen as a serious problem — “unemployment” — which can only be solved by inventing more jobs for people to do.

1. Introduction

Collective working time reduction is being seen by many as an effective instrument to fight the madness of today's capitalism which produces millions of unemployed while forcing those employed to work overtime. The demand for a 'radical working time reduction' complements that for a 'guaranteed income' where leftist unionists and welfare politicians begin to co-operate.

Being a student isn’t what it used to be. I mean, sometimes in these days of loans and top-up fees it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always like this. After all, only ten years ago the fees didn’t exist at all. And before that we actually used to get given grants to go to uni! Times have changed now and with it, the student experience.

Question Authority

Almost everyone in this society is underpaid and over-worked. Many temps, contract and casual workers have very few rights, and permanent workers are still always under the threat of redundancy. Many people are massively exploited and ill-treated, and in Britain over 20,000 people are killed at or by their work each year*. Millions more suffer stress, depression, anxiety and are injured.

Coming from a Marxist viewpoint here Thompson argues that observance of clock-time is a consequence of the European industrial revolution, and that neither industrial capitalism nor the creation of the modern state would have been possible without the imposition of synchronic forms of time and work discipline.

"We have seen a rapid and sharp increase in the number of calls from older employees who are very, very concerned, many of whom are angry," said Michelle Mitchell from Age Concern.