What is in the employee's interests?

The idea of ​​legalizing a 60-hour work week, subject to the employee’s consent to it, which became widely known thanks to the leak of one of the working materials of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, aroused widespread public criticism. As a survey conducted by the Superjob.ru Research Center showed , 58% of economically active citizens are against the initiative, while only 27% support it.

The main arguments of opponents of the legalization of a 60-hour work week are as follows: (1) employers will impose an extended week on employees; (2) the salary during the extended week will remain the same; (3) even if an employee accepts an extended week voluntarily, it will not benefit his health. There is some truth to these objections, but before discussing them, it is advisable to consider (and reject) some simplistic ideas about the subject of the dispute.

One of them is that the requirements for employers provided for by the Labor Code infringe on the interests of the employer, but are certainly useful to employees. Reality does not provide grounds for such an easy opposition. Restricting freedom of contract narrows the permissible options for both parties to the contract, not just one. For example, a ban on prostitution affects the interests of not only those who want to provide sexual services, but also those who want to buy them. Likewise, restrictions on the import of foreign cars affect the interests of not only the manufacturers of these cars, but also their buyers. And in the same way, the establishment of a minimum wage limits not only the ability of employers to offer low wages, but also the ability of workers to accept them or even offer them in an attempt to outbid other workers. Thus, justifying the usefulness of the Labor Code for the employee and, in particular, the regulation of the length of the working week must take a high bar: it is required to prove that although the restriction is imposed on the two parties to the contract equally, one of these parties benefits from the restriction.

Another simplistic view is that no justification can meet this bar. This is wrong.

Restricting a person’s freedom of action can benefit him (including in the sense that he himself understands it).

Let us remember Odysseus, who ordered the sailors to tie him to the mast, and thereby was able to hear the singing of the sirens without succumbing to deadly temptation.

So, the bar is high, but still passable. Does her argument that working longer hours, even if for higher pay, and even if entirely voluntary, is the equivalent of a siren song? By being led by money, are we sacrificing a more important thing - health? This “sacrifice” may in fact turn out to be a “gain”. Money is needed for many things that affect health conditions - buying food (including dietary), warm clothes, medicines, services of fitness centers and sports sections, etc. More money means more opportunities to buy all this.

However, let's imagine that an extended work week is actually harmful to health. In other words, it is harmful, even taking into account all its possible positive effects on health. Does this mean that it should continue to be banned?

When answering this question, we must take into account that life and health have relative value for us, not absolute value. As David Friedman emphasizes , a person who considered the duration of his life as his only value “... would never cross the street, would save money for doctor visits and earn it for things that are necessary for physical survival. He would buy the cheapest and most nutritious foods possible and live in a small room, saving his income for frequent visits to the best doctors possible. He would not take risks, would not consume luxury goods, and would live a long life. If you can call it life."

Given that we actually sacrifice our health for very trivial things, and that no one is going to ban it, consistency considerations pose a difficult challenge for advocates of banning the 60-hour week. We must either find a principle that would justify banning the 60-hour week, but would not require banning all other actions that lead to harm to health. Or, on the contrary, ban everything that leads to a decrease in life expectancy.

Opponents of the legalization of a 60-hour work week pose another challenge for its supporters. They question the reasoning: the 60-hour workweek is simply another option from which a worker can choose. For some, this option is better than a 40-hour week and these people will choose it, but for others it is worse, and these people will continue to work as before. It turns out that there are only winners and no victims.

However, what if the introduction of a new variant leads to the (partial) disappearance of the old one?

(Matt Zwolinski calls this problem “ failure of independence ”). What if workers are forced to switch to a 60-hour week?

The minimum condition for such a scenario to occur is that a 60-hour workweek must be more profitable for the employer than a 40-hour workweek, and some critics of the 60-hour week clearly assume this.

In their opinion, an extension of the week can occur without an increase in pay at all.

Is this likely? Not too much. Of course, any employer would prefer not to pay anything for the work, but in the absence of such a convenient situation, he would rather agree to receive 1000 rubles per employee. profit than to watch another employer receive 2000 rubles with his help. As a result of the fact that everyone is guided by this logic, it is very unlikely that an employee will be “underpaid” compared to his production contribution. There is another way to look at this situation. If employers could agree to cut hourly wages by a third, they would do it now, without waiting for the workweek to lengthen (and they wouldn’t raise wages to current levels in the first place).

The logic of employer competition also says something else - you can earn money in a working week of different lengths, the whole question is in the amount of wages. If a lot of workers want to work 40 hours rather than 60, and get paid three times less than working 60 hours, it will likely be a good deal for the employer. Hourly pay is half that of a competitor! And if this profit is too large, competition from other producers will bring it closer to the production contribution of workers. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the 40-hour week will disappear if there are many people willing to work that much, nor that one of these workweek options is clearly preferable to employers (we still have a fairly wide variety of workweeks, including both part-time work and a 60-hour workweek for those who work part-time in two places - 40 hours at the main employer and another 20 at the second). But if so, there is little reason to think that employers will have the incentive or ability to impose a 60-hour week.