Redução da jornada de trabalho sem redução de salário: reflexões e perspectivas em um mundo flexível

Abstract

Reducing employees’ working hours with no reduction in their wages has often been a dear theme to the working class since the First Industrial Revolution. In this period, having 16 hours of work per day was widespread owing to the overexploitation of men, women and even children to attend the demand of several developing technological innovations. During one and a half century, laws protecting workers were gradually created, starting in central countries and then occurring in peripheral nations. One of these legislations was the law limiting working hours, which aimed to reduce the number of employees’ accidents and deaths, thereby increasing their life expectancy. However, maintaining the same level of work as well as the length of working hours was imperative if one intended to be aligned with capitalism goals. After the emergence of a small number of initial achievements favoring employees by reducing their daily working hours, a profound perception of these policies improving workers’ quality of life as well as regulating jobs and increasing productivity to contribute to a more equitable society also arose. The current research strives to rescue the discussion about reducing working hours in the Brazilian flexible capital accumulation scenario. In this context, perspectives of well-known social actors either interested or not in conducting a new reduction on daily working hours faced by ordinary people were analysed in accordance with various proposed constitutional amendments being currently processed by the Brazilian National Congress. Therefore, after performing an extensive theoretical discussion as well as promoting debates, a number of key variables were assigned and then analysed on the scope of main controversial matters regarding the theme of reducing daily working hours. Considering their effective economic, cultural and political viabilities, towards new concepts about working and non-working time in contemporary societies, we conclude that reducing working hours can decrease not only absenteeism at work but also the number of work-related accidents. Accordingly, having more hours available on a daily basis as a consequence of working for a shorter period of time enables people to devote themselves to education as well as to employ leisure and to dedicate their free time to cultural activities. Furthermore, a small reduction in unemployment, when combined with other factors, and the diminishing likelihood of people’s inner being getting harmed are other reasons to defend the discussed topic.