Some years back, tech biggies presented an interesting viewpoint on the hours of work. From the forty hours of work over five days, they presented an alternative of 14 hours per day over three days with the rest of the days being used for vacation. It was a three day week without resorting to a reduction in aggregate hours of working. These proposals have attracted some attention and do carry bit of merit. To many employees, the very fact of commuting to office and back takes away at least couple of hours each side thus adding to work life but zero to productivity. In fact in the post COVID era, when there is a talk of work from near (WFN), and thus location independent, it more reflects the conversion of commuting time to something productive. Therefore, it makes sense to examine the need to shift the current patterns of work life.
There are arguments that the current work life is a product of Industrial Revolution. The high rates of unemployment and skewed demand-supply dynamics in the labour market are primarily responsible for the current work patterns. With high unemployment, there is an increasing availability of substitute labour thus forcing people to work more for less. If the workers were to demand less, the firm perhaps has an option of replacing them. As long as the supply of labour outpaces the demand for the same, there would be employees who would be willing to work for longer times and at lesser wages. This represents a situation of near oligpsony at least in terms of understanding the labour markets. To add, the rigidity and inflexibility in the markets owing to multiple reasons, the decisions do get skewed against the labour force.
In the meanwhile, there are arguments that for all the disadvantages the feudal structure provided, the farm labour had more vacation or more leisure than the modern day counterpart in both industry and agriculture. One such piece is available here. The piece posits that the medieval labour in the agricultural fields earned more days in vacation something beyond the dreams of the modern day people. The article argued that almost half of the year was spent in leisure rather than in work. There is no doubt, some merit exists in the argument. In essence, the linkages between work and leisure are built through a prism of trade-offs something captured through the backward bending labour supply curve. The labour offers itself for work in exchange for money and wages. As the wages and salaries increase, the amount of work, the workers are willing to put would increase. If the work time increases, it comes as a trade-off to the leisure. The leisure decreases relative to more time spent in work. In other words, the leisure becomes scarce and thus with every additional unit of leisure sacrificed, the marginal utility of leisure increases. At the same with every additional hour of work put in would result in diminishing marginal utility of work. Thus there is a bend in the work-leisure trade-off wherein the labour force prefers to work less at higher salaries. As salaries or wages would cross certain point wherein the marginal utility of wages would be equal to marginal utility of leisure, the equation changes and we see a backward bending labour supply curve.
Rather than the evils of capitalism per se, it would be perhaps better to link the same with the wage-leisure trade-off. In the agrarian era, the leisure would be defined very differently. The leisure was essentially social functions like marriages or different festivals which encouraged the development of folk music and dance. Alternatively there would be theatre or circus that would keep them entertained. Since there was little industry as we know it, the work would primarily centered on the agrarian seasons. In the context of the lean season, the agrarian work would be relatively less and thus the labour force would be engaged in leisure. The agrarian work was very different from the work that was performed in the industries. Even in the current day, the patterns of work in agriculture would be very different from those engaged in industry or services.
Moreover, the question does remain about the willingness to work. In any context, it is the willingness and the ability to perform tasks that is material to determination of time engaged in work or leisure. In the medieval period, there was little option other than agriculture. Any industry if one might term it was linked to agrarian sector. It would be like carpentry or pottery or blacksmith or mining which all were primary sectors or rudimentary secondary sectors. Each had a small population engaged in the same. Their work was linked to the requirements of the task at hand and not something linked to leisure and work. If there existed work that would require more time to be spent and correspondingly linked to higher wages, they too would be willing to spend higher number of hours at work. it must be recognized that work life would strictly be linked to daytime and in the winter, where the daylight was less, the work time would correspondingly reduce. It was the discovery of electricity and subsequent invention of electric appliances that made the modern economy. Therefore there exists a fallacy linking to the capitalist nature of enterprise.
Contrary to belief it was not the nature of capitalism that shifted the work patterns. It was a logical outcome of the people’s willingness to spend more at work in return for higher wages. The medieval occupational patterns must be studied in the context of the wages earned and potential wages that existed rather than mere study of working hours in isolation. The leisure in the early industrial age was linked to time spent in pubs, thus the beginning of what can be termed the pub culture. The modern age is where the leisure is translated into cognitive surplus linking with a different sort of productivity. What one views through the contributions in Wikipedia or in open source software or the creations in YouTube or posts in Facebook or Twitter all are linked to the leisure activities? Thus rather than examining or comparing the medieval with the modern in isolation would self-defeating. They need to be examined both through willingness and ability on one end and the occupational alternatives and competition on the other. If otherwise, the task is incomplete.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 