Work hours or the globalization of a parameter.

I take the recent publishing of a report by the International Labour Organization as an opportunity to develop what I consider to be a lack of debate about globalization.
For a lot of people, if not countries, the amount of work is a local, political decision. France for instance. The law (voted in 2002) fixing at 35 hours/week the amount of work is still seen as a proletarian victory; The result of a local fight which is now considered a right. An expression of the right of a nation to choose. Nevertheless this law has been since violently attacked as a major economic growth reducing factor by the present governement. It is the speech of the newly elected president M. Sarkozy: Others countries work more and make more. In the end what he wants to come back to is an auto-regulated system. Or more anglo-saxon if you wish.

This system is lead by offers and needs, impacted very little by nationals regulations with the exterior (the WTO did its job) and a sense of competition. In other words, work time is a variable strongly coupled to the gobal economy which finds its regulation worldwide, taking care of the economical situations and specificities of every place. In the end, competition has kicked the power of desire our of the game. A country cannot decide anymore what shall happen within its border. Nevertheless, there is theoric, yet interesting trick. Let's pretend tomorrow all the world leaders agree to reduce the work hours in their countries by 2 hours, the economical relative positionnment of every country will likely stay the same, with a smaller production or an employment progression. (which latest was the prime argument of the law on work hours in France and which failed completely.) Nevertheless, if any country decides not to respect or sign such a convention, it takes an advantage in the competition, which sooner or later will spread on its surroundings and lead back to the previous state (without the reduction of 2 hours). Of course one could say that this logic is wrong since otherwise, the working hours would keep rising everywhere. The reply is simple: First, a week is not extensible. Second, it exists worldwide grounds or concepts which are to be considered non-alienable. The idea of Sunday for instance: a day of the week off, historically given by the place of religion.

This description I have made matches what could be called a precarious equilibrium. An aquilibrium which is reached only when all the participants agree, that cannot evolve if everybody doesn't evolve in the same direction at the same time. Finally, an equilibrium to which any disagreeing community could break and bring to a "lower" state, but not "higher" state. (The qualitative adjectives are to be understood from the point of view that a society giving more personal time to people is "higher". Point of view which can be highly debated but which main argument could be that a society giving less space to production (which act is contained as one of the 3 main acts of a a living organism (feed, produce, reproduce), and therefore, if reduced, brings a more "abstract" (away from basics) society which according to Wittgenstein point of view, is the way of human evolution.)))

So, - remember that I'm french here - what Edmund Phelps (Nobel Price of Economy 2006) forgets to precise when he says that work provides more to people than money but relationship, creativity and others values which I would consider to be gained from extra-work activities is that his point of view matches the anglo-saxon culture of work and life. It is a point of view about his culture. That is why I do not take any account to his reproaches toward Europe (and France noably) for not seeing such a perspective.

All this aside, it is a shame that no worldwide institute analyze the desires concerning the amount of work, feeding international meeting possibly toward the definition of new living standarts, at least theoricals. Something that people would desire.