“We must abolish the 40-hour week”

The screen shows a bright room in an old building. Teresa Bücker (38) is sitting in her home office in Berlin for a video interview. The influential journalist’s first book «Alle_Zeit» has just been published. Bücker is a sought-after and experienced conversationalist. After a short conversation about the golden autumn light, we get straight to the point: time. For the feminist root of social injustice and the resolution of social problems.

Ms. Bücker, do the hairs on your neck rise when you hear the phrase “time is money”?
Teresa Bucker: Yes. Someone who only equates time with money does not have a balanced life. We no longer see what other values ​​time has.

In our meritocracy, time that is not used in an economically appropriate manner is not of equal value.
At school, children learn to use time efficiently and to see time pressure as a normal thing. What they don’t learn is that it can be good to consciously take your time and use different speeds in your own life.

For you, power is tied to time. in what way?
time is power Democracies rely on people who have free time they can turn into political participation. If people do not have this time, power imbalances arise.

What do you mean?
There are groups that do not get involved in politics. Like people who work in shifts. Or parents or caring relatives who combine lucrative employment and care work. They also have almost no opportunity to attend in the evenings or take an afternoon off. Their perspective is lacking in public discourse. This is a democratic issue.

One parent can look after the other…
Absolutely, but in doing so a parent gives up their own time needs. Typically, men take most of this time and women give in.

The traditional distribution of roles is also evident in part-time activities.
It will be important to understand that both of our interests are equally relevant in the partnership. Sometimes next to the family, sometimes the other may pursue their own interests. However, a special gift in a partnership should not be time dependent in order to be socially or politically involved. We should not ignore that there are people who take care of relatives and raise children alone.

How can you give everyone time to participate?
There are different instruments. A relief for parents is good childcare that is affordable and includes not only hours of work but also time for leisure or commitment. Go on …

… Wait a minute: Is it okay to leave the child in the nursery longer so that the parents can treat themselves to something?
It should be kid friendly, that’s for sure. But parents should also have free time. If we put parents on the brink of extinction, they may not be good parents or good employees in the company. The well-being of children and parents concerns us all. Because without children there is no society anymore: there will be no people to buy products and use services in the future.

What other levers are there?
We have to remove the 40 hour week. The reduction in working hours shows people that you are more than just a person who has to get paid.

Women are being asked to accept higher workloads.
If we have a world where everyone works full time, volunteering and community engagement will collapse.

Let’s say everyone worked less. What kind of utopian society do you see in front of you?
First of all: It is feared that reducing working hours will cause production to collapse and important work is no longer done. But today’s working hours are very unevenly distributed in a society. Some work very long hours, while others cannot find any job where they can earn a good income. So it’s about an equal distribution among all people living in a country so that material wealth is distributed a little more equitably.

Work in a company can also be done with reduced working hours…
… and we all have more free time. This is important to strengthen social cohesion. If we not only develop the exchange professionally, but also spread it to other people, it will enliven any society and make it more innovative.

How many hours should count as full time?
If you look at the working hours people prefer, less than 30 hours in Germany, for example. People believe that they can do everything with them in their spare time. If we distribute the current work more equitably, we can already get closer to the 20-hour week.

Nursing work – raising children, caring for elderly relatives – is done privately, free of charge. It’s a thorn in your side.
Maintenance work should be considered real work. Then you can talk about how much work is actually too much. If you combine a full-time job with this maintenance job, you face a workload that is dangerous to your health.

Many mothers will say: I voluntarily quit work, I love being with the kids.
Many of us take great pleasure in our work and are passionate about it – and yet we want to be paid for it. One can also enjoy parenting; I do too. But it’s only annoying when a parent says it. And it is often the mother who spends time with the children and is at a huge financial disadvantage as a result.

We need to delve deeper into the issue of payment. In your vision of society, care work is paid for. At the same time, full wage working hours are reduced. How do we finance this?
The care work that is being done right now is actually part of the economy because we are dependent on children and the elderly cared for. If we refuse to do the maintenance work privately, it has to be financed from taxes.

Therefore, we tax all members of society more to implement this corporate design. However, this means that each individual has less financial resources.
Money would be distributed differently, but in many countries we see that the expansion of childcare increases economic output, for example, as it brings many mothers back into the labor market. Now if men are slightly reducing their workload to be more involved in childcare, but mothers are returning to the labor market sooner, this could be an increase in economic output, thus increasing the overall tax volume and even more money being distributed.

What does the word timeliness mean?
Timeliness is achieved when everyone has a similar amount of free time that they can use for their own benefit. To me, the term also implies that we have a significant amount of time left that we can use. Personal development depends on free time.

Younger generations do not find ideas like yours utopian. They give up full-time job and career opportunities to have more time for themselves.
I find it a worrying development that shorter working hours are seen as an individual thing that you indulge in, as if you were spoiling yourself with an expensive vacation. We look to a long tradition of the labor movement that has had success with shorter working hours, paid holidays or paid sick days. We need the political awareness that good working conditions and good living conditions always come from larger movements.

According to a recent referendum, everyone in Switzerland works until age 65 to enjoy their “deserved retirement”.
Finding an honest approach to retirement will do us good as a society. And recognizing that not all of our dreams may have a place and that the things we really want need a place right now too.

Should you live in the moment?
It sounds very tricky. But you can’t catch many things. If I don’t have time to develop friendships, they won’t be there all of a sudden when I’m 70. I need time for these things. Or if I push the limits of my health throughout my career, maybe I’ll be there when I retire and not much of my health remains.