ABSTRACT
In industrial society, labour has typically been purchased in temporal units, establishing time rather than task as the primary concern in the wage-effort bargain. At the individual level, working-time has been altered not only by an irregular though persistent reduction in the length of the working week but also more recently by changes in the working year and the working lifetime. The growth of unemployment has also reduced the total worktime of a significant minority within the labour force. The growth in the power of organized labour, together with steady increases in labour productivity have been translated into a marked reduction in total working-time over the last century: average annual working-time is now only half that worked in the textile mills during the first decades of the nineteenth century. International Labour Organization (ILO) data suggests relatively little change since that time, though in other Eastern bloc countries the standard work week appears somewhat longer than in the USSR.
