Tag Archives: Reducing Unemployment

A radical solution – hour control
In America, there is a 40 hour work week.  It is ironic, that those who are not paid by the hour are forced to work over 50 hours a week in many professions.  The 40 hour work week was created to protect workers from the oppression of having to overwork. But, since only some industries follow the time parameters, it only protects hourly wage slaves some of the time.  Here is a radical idea.  What if certain industries have fewer jobs, and many are out of work.  Rather than let some of the people be unemployed and have nothing, crippling their family’s finances, and depressing them emotionally, here is another better solution.
 
Let’s say that there are 1000 jobs making widgets.  Let’s say that suddenly, 10% of those jobs disappeared.  If the government took the liberty to have different work week standards for different industries and job-types, they could reduce the work week for widget makers to 36 hours which is a decrease of 10%.  That way everyone would have a job.  Another solution would be to have a government agency ask which workers would be interested in being retrained, since the widget industry was drying up. That way people could voluntarily change industries instead of ending up on the sidewalk on their rear end!
 
There are many different industries, and creating different length work weeks, and adjusting the length of the work week every quarter would be a cumbersome task.  But, would it be worth it?  
 
Hour reduction?
When workers make too many mistakes, they might lose their bonus, or even get fired.  But, this creates a sociological problem of unemployment.  Why not just reduce their hours for six months instead of firing them. In a flexible system of hour control, that would be a viable option.  The worker would still be able to pay their rent and basic expenses.  The worker would be in financial stress, but would not suffer the disaster of unemployment.
 
Government work programs
During the American Depression, the government created jobs for people to build trails in the mountains, build bridges, and do many other types of work.  I say that governments worldwide should create jobs for unemployed people.  Maybe these jobs might not be glamorous, but we always need more jobs done in society. Cleaning up the streets, fixing up older homes, building solar power infrastructure, and the list goes on. These jobs always need to be done. It doesn’t make sense for someone to be at home twiddling their thumbs when there are jobs that desperately need to be done.
 
Conclusion
There are many ways to reduce unemployment, but maybe it’s time to investigate some innovative plans.