A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #25 - Per un Primo Maggio di lotta e di resistenza - Cristiano Valente (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Given the high production achieved with the new robotic and computer 
technology and the very recent production technology linked to 
artificial intelligence, the reduction of working hours should be the 
natural objective of the workers' movement organisations . After the 
global economic crisis of the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes, English 
economist, one of the greatest references of the schools of economic 
thought in the capitalist field and still today a reference of the 
so-called "progressive and democratic" thought, in his collection of 
essays published between the two world wars, warned public opinion and 
governments against the ideology of "laissez-faire" , that is, the 
abolition of any constraints or planning by the State on economic and 
stated that workers' working time would be greatly reduced: "Three-hour 
shifts per fifteen-hour workweek can keep the problem at bay for a good 
period of time. Three hours a day " (Keynes, Exhortations and Prophecies)
This calculation was done with the machinery and technologies available 
at the time. Today, given the new technologies, one might think of a 
working week of just four hours, but the real trends of the global 
economic system tend instead to increase working hours. In the twentieth 
and twenty-first centuries, despite a growing capacity for investments 
aimed at increasing productivity, despite the fact that more industrial 
machinery has been modernized, reaching the complete replacement of 
human manual skills in some processes, it has been impossible for 
workers to acquire new and significant reductions in their working 
hours. A contradiction has thus been created between the high level of 
production, which sees a quantity of goods never reached before being 
placed on the world market, and on the other hand, increased working 
times, with wages that are unable to cover the needs of direct workers. 
producers.

Far from decreasing, working hours are continually increasing thanks to 
new forms of exploitation of the workforce with production organizations 
that are increasingly sophisticated and coercive compared to those 
adopted in the past. In the twenty-first century, working time, with its 
increased rhythms, with its organization spread out throughout the 
working week, remains the tyrant of workers' life time, capable of 
conditioning their entire existence. The capitalist mode of production 
has its own laws, the main of which is the law of maximum profit. The 
purpose of the economic system is not to generate goods for use to 
satisfy the fundamental needs of humanity, but to create production 
aimed at the simple profit obtained with the extension of the working 
day and the increased productive intensity of the performance.

The China

The first clear increase in working time and decreased living conditions 
in the workplace can be seen in the so-called former developing 
countries, especially in China, which has now become one of the major 
economic and political powers in the world, where in just a few decades 
we have seen a notable increase in hourly production and equally the 
increased working hours of each individual worker. Despite the fact that 
by law work in China should be carried out weekly for five days of work, 
with Saturday and Sunday rest, with an 8-hour working day from 8am to 
6pm with a two-hour canteen break, and for a maximum of 44 hours a week, 
in practice the boom in the Chinese economy has its basis in the super 
exploitation of workers with an illegal and criminal extension of 
working hours. In reality, working hours in the vast majority of 
production sites, in particular in state-owned industrial plants and in 
the numerous Western multinationals present, comply with the "996" rule; 
that is, work goes from 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening, 6 days 
a week, so much so that last August the Supreme People's Court of 
Beijing, also following growing workers' protests, declared the "996" 
working hours a serious violation of labor regulations, indicating that 
overtime must not exceed thirty-six hours per month and defined as 
illegal the widespread agreements imposed by bosses so that workers and 
employees "voluntarily" give up overtime pay. This ruling is a direct 
consequence of the various lawsuits brought against the numerous cases 
of dismissals of workers who had refused to extend their working hours 
with overtime, in particular due to the umpteenth death of two workers 
due to stress and overwork.

The latter were employees of the e-commerce company Pinduoduo, the 
largest agriculture-focused technology platform, which connects farmers 
and distributors with consumers through interactive purchasing.

If this is the current situation of the working class in China, think of 
the working conditions in areas and states of south-east Asia such as 
Vietnam or Cambodia, where workers' resistance is even less than in 
China, which in turn has begun has long been relocating its production 
to these territories which have even lower labor costs and even longer 
working hours.

The West

The working situation in the developed West does not present substantial 
differences. In Europe, in industry, the working day is still eight 
hours, it has been since 1919. The conquest of the eight hours became 
definitive, throughout the old continent, between 1917 and 1919, thanks 
to the revolutionary push of Russia and of Germany. But the conquests of 
workers' struggles, in capitalism, are never definitive, and already in 
the crisis of 1929 and in the subsequent Second World War, entrepreneurs 
and various democratic and totalitarian governments increased working 
hours. Once the war was over, the return to the eight-hour working day 
was by no means automatic. In America people even worked 70 hours a week 
in the mechanical industry. Throughout Europe, despite the restructuring 
of production plants and the spread of new industrial technologies, 
working hours did not decrease; indeed, in some sectors, with the 
employers' demand for reconstruction, working times and rhythms remained 
those imposed during the war period.

After the war, the only significant reduction in working time occurred 
with the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, imposing and generalizing the 
eight-hour working day for five days a week. Years later, despite the 
increase in production capacity made possible by new technologies, 
workers in the industry of the European powers and in general in the 
developed West are still required to work eight hours a day for 40 or 
more hours a week, albeit compared to the early twentieth century, the 
hours worked contain more productivity and more intensity, effectively 
increasing the surplus value and therefore the profit. From the 1980s 
onwards, massive investment in new technologies has seen an increase in 
unemployment, an increase in productivity and a corresponding increase 
in work intensity. In the United States after the "Reaganomics" of the 
1980s, union activities were harshly opposed, leading to an effective 
increase in working hours. In the manufacturing industry it was 
increased to 41 hours and to these we must add the notable increase in 
overtime, bringing working hours above the levels reached in the 1950s 
and 1960s. Furthermore, as a direct consequence of low wages, the 
continuous threats from entrepreneurs of closing down companies due to 
international competition and the numerous relocations to countries 
where labor was paid below subsistence, double work or working on 
Saturdays and Sunday. After the economic crisis of 2007/2008, wages 
decreased significantly due to employment blackmail, aspects which have 
not yet been overcome despite the " reshoring" policy of recent years 
(the return of some previously delocalized American productions) and the 
organizational and of struggle of some unions, such as that of the auto 
sector, the UAW ( United Auto Workers) which with its tenacious and 
partly successful fight of 46 days of strike against the Big Three 
(Ford, General Motors and Stellantis) achieved last year a notable 
improvement in wages, greater guarantees for new hires, while failing to 
affect and reduce actual working hours.

Japan

In the country of the Rising Sun, Japan, weekly working hours usually go 
beyond 40 hours per week, both as a result of the lengthening of the 
daily working hours and because, in small and medium-sized Japanese 
businesses, made up of 2/3 of the entire workforce, working Saturdays 
have now become part of normal working hours. Even in large industry, 
72% of workers work at least one Saturday a month while the daily hours 
are 15/30% higher than those in North America and the workers' vacation 
days are 7.5 days a year. The peculiar form of organization of Japanese 
industry, identified with "Toyotism" , which is nothing other than a 
further form of control and command borrowed from "Taylorism" , was 
established at all production levels following the defeat suffered by 
Japanese trade unionism since the 1950s and the still absence of a large 
militant trade union and political fabric. " Toyotism", especially 
through the principle of zero stocks, has reduced and eliminated 
warehouse expenses, saved time, space and work, minimized production 
costs, maximized work productivity, going so far as to plan the 
introduction of the workforce into production processes in order to 
further increase working times, requiring more overtime hours and at the 
same time creating with the so-called "quality circles" a sense of 
loyalty and corporate belonging on the part of the workers. In fact, the 
workers are involved in participating in some company decisions, albeit 
the vast majority of which are fictitious, taken in "quality circles" or 
they are called to join professional training courses outside of working 
hours, "voluntarily" giving up part of their holidays, thus managing to 
extract and impose complete collaboration and submission to the 
company's will. It is in this way that Japanese capitalism, in addition 
to taking away all the mental and muscular energies of workers, leads 
workers to real physical exhaustion, even to death. In Japan it is in 
fact customary to work well beyond one's working hours, to the point of 
recording cases of workers with unpaid overtime that well exceed 100 
hours per month. This reality constantly fuels that tragic phenomenon 
known as "karoshi" which means deaths due to overwork, deaths which are 
estimated at around 200 per year, even if the real and unofficial 
estimates seem to be even higher.

Great Britain

In Great Britain workers obtained a small reduction in working hours 
between 1979 and 1981, but in the following period, the so-called 
"Thatcherite" period, named after the first female minister Margaret 
Thacter, leader of the British Conservative Party and first Minister of 
the United Kingdom from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990, with an 
insignificant increase in investment in machinery there was a notable 
increase in productivity and a 30% decrease in industrial employment. 
This situation of blackmail and weakness of the trade union structures 
in Great Britain and the United Kingdom led to an increase in working 
hours with an increase in overtime hours; 10 hours a week for male 
workers and 6 hours for female workers. The current contractual working 
hours of English workers are 45 hours which, with overtime, reaches 50 
hours per week, while for women it exceeds 45 hours.

Germany

In Germany, although there had been massive investment in industrial 
technologies and machinery since the 1980s, working hours did not 
decrease at all. Since the first achievement by the German working class 
of the 40 hour week, nothing had changed in terms of work improvement; 
on the contrary, German democratic legislation continued until 1994 to 
be based, in the matter of working hours, on a law of 1938, which 
provided for a weekly duration of 48 hours, excluding overtime. The 
increased productivity had coincided with a massive increase in 
processing times, consequently increasing the degree of worker fatigue 
and causing, in many cases, serious mental and physical disorders. This 
was one of the causes of a long and harsh workers' protest, which 
resulted in the request, by IG Metal, the largest German metallurgy 
union, for 35 hour working weeks. But even after the formal reduction of 
working hours in 1995, the average working hours in German industry 
remained at 40 hours due to the increase in the usual overtime hours. In 
the latest agreement of 2018, applied for now only to the Stuttgart 
region (which still has around 900 thousand employees in the sector, 
including those of Daimler, Porsche and Bosch, and which will pave the 
way for the entire sector which at national sector has 3.9 million 
employees) the possibility is envisaged for workers who have particular 
family needs to request a 28-hour working week for a period of time 
ranging from 6 months to 2 years, with a relative salary reduction , 
after which we return to the regime of 35 nominal hours, but as we were 
saying, 40 effective hours. Those who reduce their hours to 28 hours and 
have children up to 14 years of age will be able to have a bonus of 8 
more days of holiday, but will have to give up the wage subsidy that the 
company partly offers to those who reduce their hours. Finally, since 
2009, the so-called "mini jobs" have been introduced with wages of 
EUR450/500 per month and with an hour limit (at least formally) of 
around 15 hours per week. The companies that hire with this system 
receive an incentive from the State and the worker called upon to 
replace the absent worker is forced, given the miserable pay, to further 
squeeze by the employer with the use of hours in excess of the his 
normal working hours. France is the European country where working hours 
have decreased the most. Nominally reduced to 35 hours per week already 
at the end of the nineties, but the subsequent laws issued in 1990, 
which give companies the opportunity to operate their plants at maximum 
capacity, requiring greater flexibility from the employee, actually lead 
to an increase in working hours through an incentive for overtime; over 
35 hours you pay at least 10% more, after the first 8 hours of overtime 
you pay 25% more, for the subsequent hours you pay 50%.

Spain

In Spain, until the end of Francoism, working hours exceeded 40 per 
week. It was the socialist government of Felipe González that changed, 
in 1983, the working week from 43-44 hours to the legal 40 hours in 
force until today, normally distributed over five days of eight hours 
each. From 1978 to 1991, thanks to the resumption of workers' protests, 
working hours were reduced by 10%, approaching the European average, but 
the employers immediately returned to imposing all possible forms of 
precariousness experienced in all production sectors of the 
industrialized world. By 2022 there were more than 18 types of 
fixed-term contracts, and the regular use of overtime had led to a 
substantial increase in working hours. Although the last decree approved 
in December 2021 and validated by parliament in February 2022 provides 
for only two types of fixed-term relationships, the structural one, for 
circumstances related to production, and that of replacing another 
worker, the overall duration of the Effective working hours are still 
more than 40 hours per week.

Italy

In Italy, after the Second World War there was no substantial reduction 
in average working hours; 7.95 hours per day in 1948 and 7.77 hours in 
1984. The workers' struggles of the sixties and seventies, which led to 
the conquest of the Workers' Statute, protecting and conquering rights 
that were unimaginable before those years, however, failed to 
materialize in a daily hourly reduction, but the five-day week was 
generalized, from Monday to Friday with the Saturday holiday, remaining 
at the levels of 40 hours per week. However, working times expanded with 
a massive use of overtime and piece work, particularly in related 
industries, far exceeding those of large industry.

Between 1976 and 1989, overtime hours in large industry increased by 
4.7%, increasing the weekly working hours from 42 to 44 hours at Fiat 
Mirafiori and 47-48 hours at the former Alfa Lancia in Pomigliano. The 
debate on the reduction of working hours to 35 hours began in the 1990s 
and in particular during the first Prodi government 1996 - 1998. The 
failure of the political debate first, the failure to approve this bill 
afterwards, but above all the launch in 1997 of the infamous "Treu 
Package" formally introduced temporary work on a large scale, arriving 
in subsequent stages in 2001 and 2003 to generalize project contracts, 
vouchers and intermittent contracts. If on the side of our business 
organisations, consistently with their class interests, the use of 
greater flexibility in working hours was hoped for , it should be 
highlighted that from the trade union point of view , there was a wide 
willingness to consider the matter of working hours, not in a dry and 
substantial reduction of daily and weekly hours, but in terms of a 
process of flexibility through the modulation of hours, the use of work 
shifts and a greater development of part-time. This unfortunate trade 
union strategy, called "concertation" and defined by the trade union 
leaders since the early 90s of the last century, is constantly 
re-proposed to this day with more or less similar formulas, despite the 
fact that the fate of the workers' movement is always unchanging and 
increasingly difficult with regards to actual working hours and their 
general condition of exploitation. Analyzing the data relating to 
working hours in Italy , we can actually see how a substantial stability 
of actual working hours was accompanied in the second half of the 1990s 
by a greater use of so-called atypical hours, with a relative increase 
in evening work . and on public holidays, including May 1st, on 
weekends, as well as a large diffusion of non-voluntary part-time work, 
including vertical part-time work (i.e. work concentrated on Saturdays 
and Sundays)

reduction of hours with equal pay to live better and for greater employment

Throughout the industrialized world, effective working hours, despite 
increased productivity, have not decreased at all, and in some cases 
have even increased. And the life time dedicated to work has absolutely 
increased through the extension of the retirement age, which has grown 
from the nineties of the last century to today, from 4 to 7 years. 
Throughout the period, which the economic literature calls the "glorious 
thirty", from 1945 to 1973, which was characterized by exceptional 
economic growth, linked to post-war reconstruction, working hours, as we 
have seen, remained practically unchanged, if not even increased. The 
end of this period and the economic crisis of 1974/5 was the starting 
point of a new employers' offensive against paid work, aimed at 
increasing profit and productivity which were declining at the time.

From then until today, all the results obtained by the struggle of the 
workers' movement have been called into question and thanks also to the 
compliance and subservience of the major trade union organisations, an 
employer strategy based on the de facto extension of working hours, the 
increase in overtime, the increase in precariousness and flexibility of 
the workforce, the decrease in breaks, the increase in intensity with 
the suspension of holidays, the massive use of an easily blackmailable 
immigrant workforce, "ad personam" salary incentives " and finally the 
significant increase in the retirement age. The massive introduction of 
new automated systems into the production system has not had at all the 
effect predicted by Keynes. The higher the level of production, 
determined by strong investments in industry, the more the improvement 
in the living conditions of the workforce decreases. Technical progress 
and mechanization are not used to reduce working hours, but to fragment 
the production cycle, reduce wages for the same amount of working time 
employed and discipline and subject the working class to company needs. 
Capitalism has always used machines to produce the goods placed on the 
market in the shortest possible time, replacing wage earners with 
machines and new technologies, extending working times and working hours 
for workers who remained employed. In addition to the imposition of high 
work rates, capitalism, with the introduction of information technology 
and robotics, reduces personnel, creating high levels of unemployment. 
The more capital invests in new technologies, the more it must recover 
and valorise its investment, and it has only one way to increase its 
profit; compressing employment and increasing working times. In a world 
that, thanks to mechanization and increased productivity, could 
progressively free itself from the slavery of work, a working day of 
over 8 hours and the existence of unemployment clearly appears to be a 
contradiction and defines the need to overcome the current capitalist 
form of production . In fact, the worker, in the first part of his 
working day which varies depending on the level of technological 
development and the balance of power between the workers and the owners, 
creates a value equal to the sum paid to him as wages for the entire 
working day; in the remaining part he continues to work for free and 
creates surplus work and therefore surplus value which is confiscated by 
the boss. If the working day corresponded only to the creation of a 
value equal to the salary, that is, if it were entirely composed of paid 
work, the decrease in hours corresponding to an increase in productivity 
would be a natural and practically automatic fact; in the given 
conditions, however, the increase in productivity only causes a 
reduction in the hours in which the worker works for himself, to the 
full advantage of the hours in which the worker works for free for the 
boss. But the employers also have other means of increasing the hours of 
free work in their favor; reduce the salary, the value of which will 
therefore be rebuilt by the worker in less time; increase the degree of 
saturation of production capacity, even without technological 
transformations, by making the individual worker work more quickly, 
increase his work pace,increase the percentage of hourly use of the 
machinery necessary to satisfy the required performance; finally, 
increase the duration of the working day with the use of overtime as 
these, although paid, are not burdened with a whole series of 
contributions which instead weigh on the ordinary hours of a 
hypothetical new job. Similarly, through forms of piecework or 
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it 
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the 
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the 
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value. 
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those 
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations, 
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more 
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of 
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological 
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are 
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours, 
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to 
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will 
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of 
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working 
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the 
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the 
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a 
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to 
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in 
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, 
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the 
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To 
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call 
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of 
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition 
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of 
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other 
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a 
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand 
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or 
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it 
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the 
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the 
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value. 
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those 
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations, 
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more 
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of 
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological 
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are 
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours, 
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to 
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will 
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of 
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working 
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the 
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the 
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a 
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to 
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in 
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, 
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the 
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To 
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call 
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of 
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition 
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of 
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other 
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a 
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand 
of the workers' movementSimilarly, through forms of piecework or 
economically incentivized work, the boss manages to shorten the time it 
takes to reproduce the salary and the incentive is always far below the 
advantage that the boss himself derives from the extension of the 
working time intended for the accumulation of surpluses. value. 
Furthermore, night work, work on weekends, on holidays and all those 
forms of work, now widespread particularly among the new generations, 
with hours spread throughout the 24 hours of the day, allow for a more 
integral exploitation of the systems and a reduction in the costs of 
investments made. Working hours, rhythms, incentives, technological 
innovations, overtime, night and holiday work, short-time work, etc. are 
closely connected problems and a fight over formal reduction of hours, 
although successful, as we have seen in France, is not connected to 
others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the bosses, who will 
redistribute the weight of the various elements in the organization of 
work, thus re-establishing unpaid time in the division of the working 
day to their advantage. Lastly, a factor of great importance is the 
relationship that must be built and pursued between the employed and the 
unemployed, including the new generations and women. The presence of a 
significant number of workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to 
live and suffer low wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in 
addition to the unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, 
inevitably produces a compression of wages and therefore increases the 
share of labor that the bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To 
be effective, any battle for the reduction of working hours must call 
for not only the reduction of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of 
overtime as a common practice in all working environments, the abolition 
of night shifts where production and work do not require continuity of 
work as in some services, the abolition of piece rates and other 
incentives and the absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a 
parallel hiring of workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand 
of the workers' movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on 
the reduction of formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in 
France, not connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and 
evaded by the bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various 
elements in the organization of work, thus re-establishing to his 
advantage the unpaid time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a 
factor of great importance is the relationship that must be built and 
pursued between the employed and the unemployed, including the new 
generations and women. The presence of a significant number of 
workforce, such as youth or gender, the first to live and suffer low 
wages and precarious regulatory conditions, in addition to the 
unemployed, the classic industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a 
compression of wages and therefore increases the share of labor that the 
bosses appropriate, increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle 
for the reduction of working hours must call for not only the reduction 
of hours with equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common 
practice in all working environments, the abolition of night shifts 
where production and work do not require continuity of work as in some 
services, the abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the 
absolute prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of 
workers and unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers' 
movementthey are closely linked problems and a fight on the reduction of 
formal hours, even if successful, as we have seen in France, not 
connected to the others, can be quickly neutralized and evaded by the 
bosses, who will redistribute the weight of the various elements in the 
organization of work, thus re-establishing to his advantage the unpaid 
time in the division of the working day. Lastly, a factor of great 
importance is the relationship that must be built and pursued between 
the employed and the unemployed, including the new generations and 
women. The presence of a significant number of workforce, such as youth 
or gender, the first to live and suffer low wages and precarious 
regulatory conditions, in addition to the unemployed, the classic 
industrial reserve army, inevitably produces a compression of wages and 
therefore increases the share of labor that the bosses appropriate, 
increasing their profit. To be effective, any battle for the reduction 
of working hours must call for not only the reduction of hours with 
equal pay, but the abolition of overtime as a common practice in all 
working environments, the abolition of night shifts where production and 
work do not require continuity of work as in some services, the 
abolition of piece rates and other incentives and the absolute 
prohibition on increasing the pace, and a parallel hiring of workers and 
unemployed workers. The historic demand of the workers' movementThe 
historic demand of the workers' movementThe historic demand of the 
workers' movement" eight hours of work, eight of leisure, eight to 
sleep" , launched in 1886 in Chicago and subsequently became the 
international battle of the workers' movement for the reduction of 
working hours, culminating in the recognition of the anniversary of May 
1st, must be declined today for an effective reduction in daily and 
weekly hours. No flexibility must be granted with respect to the actual 
hours of work to be carried out, rather it is necessary to recover a 
sort of rigidity in the daily and weekly schedules, in order to have 
more and more time available free from work. A consequent generalized 
economic battle and not for individual categories must be set up so as 
not to divide and shatter the proletarian front. Every victory in a 
single product sector or company, if not generalized, is destined to be 
revoked by the blackmail and divisive policies of the employers. The 
world proletariat must with strength and determination relaunch and 
claim the battle for the reduction of working hours with equal pay, to 
redistribute work and increase the number of people employed and to 
reclaim their time stolen by the intrinsic logic of capitalist profit.

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