30 Hour Work Week is Possible and Necessary by Heinz J. Bontrup

30 HOUR WORK WEEK IS POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY Full Employment Only Through Reduced Working Hours By Heinz J. Bontrup and others [This open letter to unions, parties, social and environmental organizations and church leaders in Germany is translated from the German on the Internet, www.ossietzky.net.] We the undersigned of this open letter turn to representatives of the unions, all democratic parties, spokespersons of social and environmental organizations and church leaders in Germany with an urgent appeal to give the highest economic, political, social and humanitarian priority to the struggle against mass unemployment. Germany and the whole European Union are in a serious economic and social crisis. Unemployment in Europe has reached unbearable levels. Youth unemployment is over 50% in individual countries. While the number of jobs in Germany increased in the last years, these are mainly short-term jobs that are not enough as a foundation of life (so-called precarious jobs). Overcoming the labor market crisis requires the active involvement of all democratic forces in the country. Economic power and neoliberal policy must be prevented from burdening the wage-earning population, the unemployed and the socially weak with the costs of the crisis. A fair distribution of labor through a collective reduction of working hours is necessary. Let us fight together for that reduction! A socially and economically counter-productive redistribution from labor- to asset income (profit, interests, rents, leases) has occurred for years. The domestic demand was restricted and the surplus capital was redirected into the financial sector – away from the producing real economy. Enormous financial speculation and financial crises were the consequences. Overcoming crises cannot be left to drawing high profits from crises and only increasing the assets of the wealthy at the expense of the great majority of the population with pseudo-alternatives and a therapy for symptoms. Nearly forty years of neoliberal capitalism are enough. This wrong political-economic track has led to indescribable social misery all over the world and not only in Germany and Europe. An economic policy that blindly hopes for further growth aggravates the dangers of climate change and destruction of nature. It deepens the divisions within and between societies. The rich become richer and the poor are made poorer. The neoliberal redistribution would not have been possible without long-lasting mass unemployment – neither in Germany nor in any other country. An oversupply on the