ساعات کار در پیرامون اروپا:میزان ساعات کاری روزانه در اسپانیا، 1885-1920

This paper studies the decline of the working day in Spain from 1885 to 1920. The decline was more continuous than previously thought. Differences in hours reinforce wage differentials, showing labor markets were not well integrated. Cross-sectional and time-series analysis suggests that hour reductions reflect a labor supply rather than a labor demand effect. Given the comparatively slow growth of real wages in Spain from 1870 to 1920, the Spanish case shows that international convergence in hours of work must have been stronger than convergence in wages.

Current wisdom is that annual hours of work followed an inverted U-shaped pattern over the course of the nineteenth century, increasing during industrialization with the erosion of the customary management of working time and declining thereafter (Voth, 2003). In this process, the Spanish case seems unusual: hours of work in Spain fell quickly despite the fact that real wages grew comparatively slowly and the shortening of the working day took place in a context in which there were no significant legal restrictions on maximum hours prior to 1919. One important empirical question is whether the “Eight Hours” decree of 1919 represented a fundamental discontinuity in the pattern of working time in the Spanish economy or whether it was a further step in the progressive shortening of the working day during the second half of the nineteenth century. Economic historians generally attribute long-term reductions in working hours to three factors. The first invokes unions and legislation reducing hours of work (Douglas, 1930). A second hypothesis stresses the existence of a backward bending labor supply in which income effects outweigh substitution effects (Whaples, 1990).1 Demand variables also play an important role: production function analysis using data from 19th century manufacturing establishments suggests productive efficiency improved by diminishing daily working hours and by increasing annual working days. Hour declines in this sense were a joint decision between workers and managers (Atack et al., 2003). The paper will proceed as follows. In Section 2, I present the main stylized facts of Spanish urban labor markets. In Section 3, I describe the long run evolution of the standard workday in Spain from 1885 to 1919. Section 4 analyses cross-sectional variation in working hours in light of both labor supply and labor demand variables. Section 5 discusses changes over time of demand and supply. Section 6 concludes.

In his study of differences in the working year, Voth (2000, p. 259) stressed that developing nations industrialize working less hours annually than Britain or Western Europe during their industrial revolutions. Spain might thus represent an early case of industrialization on fewer hours than were worked in more advanced economies at the same stage of development. Early convergence to the short hour day in the Spanish case cannot be attributed to factor price convergence due to increasing trade or factor flows (Spain entered late in the age of mass migrations, Sánchez-Alonso, 2000). The varied reasons for the pattern of Spanish hours seem to be related to a combination of early adoption of the international short-hour movement and industrial protectionism. Spaniards worked fewer hours because Spain industrialized later than other European countries, when the negative effects of long working hours were already apparent. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, most Spanish unions were initially organized by a small number of foreign activists. Representatives of the First and Second International, in which the demand for the 8-h day featured high, organized Spanish unions and might have prioritized a shortened working day over higher wages. Later adoption of the 8-h day inspired by legislation of the International Labor Office can also be considered part of this catch up from a state of relative backwardness. On the other hand, Spain being a closed economy could have allowed employers greater room for manoeuvre in altering working conditions. Testing this hypothesis will require cross sectional comparative analysis with other countries. Nonetheless, Spanish workers could have reaped rents from higher import prices brought about by higher tariffs. Isolation from international competition constrained productivity growth in the manufacturing sector and, as a consequence, real wages grew slowly. Alternatively, employers might have conceded on hour demands to avoid costly labor disputes. One unexpected consequence of the peculiar development path of Spanish industry is that most of the rents from the favourable evolution of the terms of trade took the form of time off work. My characterization of hour reductions in Spain as a labor supply phenomenon begs the question of why the labor supply was backward bending in the period when today it is not. Further research on this issue should take into account the nature of jobs in the late nineteenth century, when manual jobs were monotonous, physically demanding and sometimes hazardous—all these characteristics reducing the opportunity cost of time off work. The absence of paid holidays and the postponement of retirement until the worker was incapable of physical labor constrained choices of working and non-working time to choices of hours within the working week. Compared to workers in current services’ bureaucracies, manual workers in the late nineteenth century had flatter earnings life-cycle profiles and fewer opportunities for promotion. Wages peaked at ages 35–40 for manual workers, remaining stable or declining thereafter, a fact that reduced the incentive to work long hours when the worker was young. Finally, more time-productive leisure consumption and higher productivity in household chores because of technological change might also have changed the shape of the labor supply.