Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full Employment Strategy: The Social Effort Bargain (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy)

Hardcover, xv + 293 pages, NOT ex-library. External cosmetic wear: glued tip of the lower outer corner of the front board. Interior is fine, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This study advances a heterodox economic argument for reducing working hours as a means of achieving full employment, moving beyond the traditional 20th-century case for shorter work weeks. The author subjects conventional full employment policies to critical scrutiny, examining why demand-side interventions and growth-oriented strategies have failed to eliminate involuntary unemployment in developed economies. Central to the analysis is the concept of the social effort bargain, a framework for understanding how the distribution of work time reflects broader power relations and institutional arrangements within labour markets. The book traces the historical trajectory of work time reduction movements and investigates why progress toward shorter hours stalled in most industrialised nations after the mid-twentieth century. It engages with efficiency wage theory, examining the relationship between working hours, productivity and worker well-being. The argument challenges the assumption that economic growth alone can resolve unemployment, proposing instead that regulated reductions in work time offer a more sustainable path to full employment and price stability. The analysis remains pertinent to contemporary policy debates surrounding the four-day work week, work-life balance and the future of employment in an era of automation and environmental constraints. As discussions intensify about redistributing available work more equitably and questioning growth-dependent economic models, this text provides theoretical grounding for understanding work time as a central variable in employment policy rather than a peripheral concern.…