Between 1870 and 1980 total annual paid working time in the major nations of the industrialised capitalist world contracted by approximately 40 per cent. This book attempts to explain how it is that this dramatic development occurred. A general discussion of the worktime issue is opportune because this topic traditionally becomes a major political and economic issue in times of high unemployment. During periods of economic crisis the labour movement invariably puts forward the argument that standard times should be reduced in order to spread the available work amongst as many individuals as possible. The ongoing crisis that has emerged following the end of the “long boom” has proved no exception to this general rule. An examination of the worktime issue is necessary, moreover, because the contemporary worktime debate is still dominated by the belief that the primary reason time standards have contracted to the extent they have is the rising incomes workers have enjoyed through the last century. Despite some limited attempts to widen the debate as unemployment has increased since the early 1970s, this basic hypothesis remains the core of modern worktime theory.

The central theme in this volume is that the changing nature of worktime is not primarily explained by worker preferences for income and leisure. Rather, it is argued, the primary causal factors bringing about this development have been the changing nature of the capitalist production process and the changing nature of the demands this process places on the psychophysiological capacities of human beings.