Work more or work less to revive the economy? A not so simple question

Text by: Romain Philips Follow

According to INSEE, France, which is only turning 80% of its level before the crisis due to the coronavirus, will experience the strongest recession since 1948. The GDP of France is expected to drop "by around 20% ”in the second quarter of 2020. A situation which has relaunched the debate, very sensitive in France, on working time.

Publicity

Two visions are opposed. On the one hand, some right-wing politicians and liberal think tanks are pleading for an increase in working hours . On the other hand, some people from the left, unions and NGOs defend conversely a decline . Growing unemployment and the country's economic recovery, impacted by the Covid-19 crisis , has rekindled the flames of a sensitive debate in France: that on working time.

►Read: Infographic: the impact of Covid-19 on the world economy

However, if both sides have a clear-cut opinion on the matter, there is no miracle cure for reviving an economy in recession. Éric Heyer, French economist and director of the analysis and forecasting department at the OFCE (French Observatory of Economic Conditions ) since December 2014 and Nicolas Bouzou, liberal economist, director of the consulting firm Asterès  and author of The work is the future of the 'Men explain that the question is not so simple and that in all cases, companies already have sufficient levers to act.

The economic crisis due to the Covid-19, which deeply affected the French and world economy, has relaunched the debate on the working time of the French. In your opinion, is it necessary to work more to revive the French economy?

Eric Heyer: No. Today the problem for companies is not a question of working time but rather a question of order book. The shock on consumption is not yet absorbed and if companies do not produce more today it is mainly due to a shock of demand . It is therefore not a question of working time but rather of consumption and on the contrary, increasing working time would have a negative effect on employment and would aggravate the problem. It is important not to increase working time beyond the legal duration.

Nicolas Bouzou: This question must be negotiated at the corporate level. We are not too used to doing this in France but it is however the right approach. There are a lot of devices that allow you to do much more or less than 35 hours. In addition, there are companies in which we need to work more, but there are also companies which face a lack of activity in which we have to work less.

In Belgium, the unions of an airline company have proposed to reduce their working hours and their wages for three years in order to save all the threatened jobs. In New Zealand, the Prime Minister spoke of additional holidays and a four-day work week to help reduce unemployment. Do we have to work less so that everyone can work?

Eric Heyer: In times of crisis, as long as there is a very strong shortfall in demand, if you want to avoid a very strong destruction of employment which would be linked to this sharp drop in activity, the reduction in working time is a possibility. This is what we did in France. When you make an extremely generous partial unemployment scheme, you hope to reduce the working time of employees without destroying their contract of employment, and therefore their employment. We have indeed gone for a reduction in socialized working time from a salary point of view since it is, in France in any case, public finances which took charge of all of this partial activity.

As long as there is insufficient demand, if you want to limit the impact on employment, reducing working hours is rather the right way to do it. Today, we are even wondering whether or not consumption will return to a normal level, so until we are sure of that, we should rather reduce working time.

Nicolas Bouzou: No, it doesn't work because when we have this Malthusian approach to work in fact, we destroy work and wealth. Work is not a fixed quantity that is shared and the economy does not work like that. One can possibly reduce the working time for extremely short periods to save employment because it allows to reduce the production and the expenses of the companies. But on a global level it doesn't make sense, working more does not take jobs from those who cannot work, in the same way that working less does not bring employment.

Besides, when we made the reduction of working time in France we saw that there were a lot of job creations at the same time but that they were not linked to the reduction in working time but to the accompanying measures that had been put in place at that time. There is no empirical evidence that cutting working hours creates jobs.

Many unions and French organizations have requested that the legal working time be reduced to 32 hours per week. Can this be a solution?

Eric Heyer: If we reduce to 32 hours but lower wages, we can consider that it will not have much impact because in any case companies do not need many hours of work as long as the we have not returned to normal level. We should ask ourselves more during normal activity: would there be enough job offers with this reduction in working time? Today we do not have to go towards these policies and if we were to go there we would have to make arbitrations. Does that mean that we share the work and therefore that the employees lose in wages but they maintain employment in a certain number of companies or then conversely we maintain the salary and therefore that makes additional costs for the company and therefore this could have a negative impact on employment.

Nicolas Bouzou: If you work a 32-hour week, it may be good for certain companies, but it will be very bad for other companies. We have never seen a country emerging from a crisis by working less, it does not exist. If there are companies in which the social partners agree to decide that it is necessary to work less, and therefore earn less, because it corresponds to an economic logic and an aspiration of the employees that they do it . But there can also be a consensus to work more. There are a lot of people who want to work more, especially in France with our very advantageous overtime system.

The observation which consists in saying that, collectively, we do not work enough is entirely correct. That means that there are not enough of us to work because of the mass unemployment in France. It had dropped enormously before the crisis, but obviously this drop mechanism was interrupted by the Covid-19 crisis, but it is really the key. This is the reason why it is really necessary to set up for the start of the new school year in September, and in particular for young people, hiring bonuses, exemption from charges to ensure that there is more possible young people working.

Finally, should the crisis make us think about our relationship to work?

Eric Heyer: The crisis is always (the opportunity), and especially when the economy is shut down, to take your time to (think about how to do it) to restart and if there is is not in this restart another way to take than the traditional way. It is obvious that our relationship to work will change, if only because we have tested life-size telework and that we realize the advantages and disadvantages of it. So yes, we are going to ask ourselves questions, we will have to take a little all the positive elements of this crisis and integrate them into the new daily life, but beware, there are also disadvantages and certain locks to put in order not to worsen the situation. employees.

Nicolas Bouzou: Yes, I think that this crisis makes us especially think about the way we work. Because if you work well in good conditions with an interesting and well paid job, you will undoubtedly want to work more than if you work in a company which you do not like under conditions which are not good. There is a superb issue, which the social partners should take up: this is the way we work.

► Read also : Ecocide, car, food: the Citizen Climate Convention makes its proposals

Newsletter Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Economy
• Economic crisis
• France

On the same subject

French press review

Headlines: work more!

Morning guest

Laurent Berger on the question of lengthening working hours: "It's irrelevant"

After the coronavirus, Emmanuel Macron wants the French to work more