There seems little evidence that reduced working hours have so far been an effective method ot reducing unemployment. See G Therborn, Why Some Peoples Are More Unemployed Than Others, chapter II section 4, Verso, 1986, and OECD, The Challenge of Unemployment: a Report to Labour Ministers, 1982.
2.
There is a similarity between the method of extrapolation from trends used to predict the disappearance of work, and similarly doom-laden ecological projections of the impending exhaustion ot natural resources. Both arguments fail to take adequate account of the switching of investment to new activities which can take place when relative scarcities change
3.
But while feminists have rightly pointed out the huge amount and importance of 'unpaid' work, women have been in increasing numbers choosing to enter th labour market, for reason of the wider roles and opportunities it provides, as well as for material purposes.
4.
See M.J. Rustin, A Statutory Right to Work, in New Left Review 137, Jan.-Feb 1983, also in For a Pluralist Socialism, Verso, 1985.
