The Forty-Hour Week With the 40-hour week on the agenda
of the Inter- national Labour Conference in June the Minister of Labour is acting wisely in conferring with the Trades Union Congress and the National Confederation of Employers' Organizations, though the views of the two bodies are so far apart that the Minister when he has seen them both may find himself very much where he was before. The idea of a shorter working day is making visible headway, largely of course, as a means of spreading employment, and the Government may well be disposed to state its policy at Geneva less dogmatically than it did. when the hours question was- last discussed there in January. But what is wanted now is not the repeated expression of time-worn opinions on both sides. The need is for scientific data, drawn up in an honestly objective spirit. If the Ministry of Labour could persuade a representative selection of individual employers to submit estimates showing what the adoption of a 40-hour week in their own works would involve financially, and at the same time obtain reports from the numerous firms which have gone on to short hours voluntarily already, the whole question- could be considered scientifically.
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