TIME OF WORK, MACHINES AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Albert FRANK

The machines (robots, computers,...) have been conceived to help the man, and no to give him problems. However, what happens? In the present context, they are generating unemployment!! It is evidently not at all their "mistake", but the reason of this very sad state of fact is to look for in an aberrant system.

To do a determined task, 10 hours where necessary thirty years ago (as an example). Now, with the help of the machines, 5 hours are enough.

Therefore, for a same productivity, instead of 38 hours per week - main European standard -, only 19 hours are needed (a few more, globally, taking into account the maintenance of the machines). It is magnificent: thanks to the machines, it is necessary to work two times less to get the same result. It should be a big success! (we won't enter here in the problem of the civilization of leisure).

What happens in practice? "ONE" fixed "work times” (the number of hours per week “to be there” (in an office for instance, even in a laboratory) - and not what must be done -, and because, thanks to the machines, one man or woman can, during this time, make what was made before by two people, one of the two loses his job, in the name of efficiency!

So, the machines are now man's enemies!

This vision seems simplistic, but there are so many examples: to make an invoice, to sell an airplane ticket, to print an article,.....

And it doesn't seem to stop: Competition (with a capital C), the" taboo" of the number of hours to respect, the fear (!) of being replaced by a machine “more fast and more efficient”. And what about the value of the shares if “we are not the first” – who will speculate?!

How many people would have a better "efficiency" (I don't like this term) if they could work to their rhythm and their suitability, to execute the given tasks.

I will finish giving an example that I lived pleasantly: In 1975, I was responsible for the timetables in the National university of Zaire, Campus of Kisangani. The yearly schedule asked for the consideration of a lot of data (displacements of the visitors, regroupings, dimension of rooms (between 20 to 800 students had to be together in one room...) In one week, I achieved the schedule of everybody, for one year. Few hundreds of Professors and representatives of students were satisfied. The Chief of Staff of the university, having convened me, said: Albert, you performed a work that takes

"normally" two months, therefore I give you seven weeks of holiday... Life would be beautiful if it was always - or minimum sometime – like that.