Year XXXVII, 1995, Number 1 - Page 26
Working time, Temps Choisi and Federalism
MARITA RAMPAZI
1. Working Time and Economic Development Models.
The problem of redefining working time is currently a matter of concern throughout Europe.
There has been discussion of greater flexibility, not only of daily, weekly or monthly work schedules, but also of the relationship between working time and time for living, which includes time spent on training (deferred and articulated entrance into the labour market, interruptions for updating courses, various new ways of combining the traditional models of employment between full-time and part-time, and so on). The flexibility of time for fulfilling work tasks favours the requirements of the initial and life-long training of human capital and, more generally, reflects new organisational criteria which are imposing themselves in firms focusing on cutting edge technologies and oriented to ever more specialised and fragmented markets.
There has also been discussion above all about a generalised reduction of working hours, such a measure being designed to offset unemployment, in particular youth unemployment.
This second aspect is what provokes most debate and has greater resonance with the mass media since, on the one hand, unemployment is becoming a problem of worrying dimensions in Europe’s economies and, on the other, in the difficult situation in which Europe’s economies now find themselves, a reduction of working hours could lead to a corresponding reduction in wages. Notwithstanding reservations and an initial reticence, however, the slogan “less work so that all may work” (to paraphrase the title of a well-known book by Guy Aznar[1]) is beginning to receive growing support, even among Europe’s trade union movement.[2]
Simply by opening the newspapers it is evident that the question of working time is currently the subject of political decisions in the short, indeed very short, term.
What one does not read in the newspapers, or one reads rarely, is that the decisions to be taken do not represent only an easy way out, or a lesser evil, for tackling European unemployment. In reality, the unemployment issue has become the starting point for a more general reflection as to the way in which Europe’s economy and society are facing up to the challenges posed by the scientific and technological revolution.
As always happens when historical changes in the mode of production occur, the way in which people conceive of themselves as citizens and workers, as individuals in constant tension between liberty and necessity, is currently undergoing change. In this framework, the choices that already need to be made concerning working time can contribute to the elaboration of a development model which will either guarantee greater degrees of freedom for all or become a source for new forms of discrimination and social alienation.
The choice of a new development model is, primarily, a choice of values. Nowadays, European society has the possibility of adapting itself to the emerging models in the two most technologically and economically advanced countries, Japan and the United States. These are models which, in the name of productive efficiency and market freedom, legitimise, as will be seen below, the creation of grave social inequalities and the assertion of a culture dominated by economic rationality, which is an instrumental rationality. But Europe can also seek its own way, one more in keeping with its cultural traditions, those which (it should not be forgotten) have given the history of humanity the values of liberty, democracy and social justice.
In this perspective, Delor’s White Paper[3] is a document of great interest because, above and beyond specific technical solutions for re-launching Europe’s economy, it offers a view of development that is dominated by the search for a model that is, “more respectful of the needs of nature, of natural capital, more attentive to the rhythms of people’s lives, and which responds to the unsatisfied needs that derive from the sense of unease in our cities, from disadvantaged neighbourhoods, desertification, and the isolation of people.”[4] Such a model would be able to marry efficiency with solidarity: solidarity between individuals, groups, generations, and areas of the world.
Reflections about time can not set aside such considerations, for risk of trivialising what is at stake. Nor can they ignore the institutional setup that is most suited to allowing the implementation of a possible European development path. This is the specific contribution that the federalist perspective[5] can give to a debate which has by now made enormous progress in Europe as regards analysing the potential and problems inherent in the post-industrial mode of production, but which comes unstuck when the task is to conceive of an institutional framework in which it will be possible to encourage the controlled development of this potential.
In order to be able to contribute effectively to this debate and highlight the importance of the federalist’s contribution, it is worth examining the arguments of those who see in the redefinition of working time the seeds of a real revolution in people’s lives. This, in essence, is what I propose to do in this article.
2. Time as Defined by Nature, the Church and the Factory.
The study of the nature of time dates back to the ancient history of western thought. Indeed, there exists a long philosophical tradition on this subject (from Aristotle and Augustine to the present day), which has been backed up in more recent times by important contributions from other disciplines, such as sociology, history and psychology.
The history of these studies has witnessed a move away from the concept of a sense of time innate to the essence of mankind, and hence unchanging, towards one of an experience of time, understood as a changing element that changes in a “structured” and “directed” way, which can be explained – as Elias has pointed out.[6]
Time is one of the two co-ordinates (the second is space) around which groups and individuals construct their concrete actions. Time and space, in this sense, allow human activities to be better organised, but also pose some specific limits. In as much as they are finite resources, they impose choices as to the priorities to be assigned to the multiple possibilities of action. If, for example, the expression “I don’t have the time to do this” is examined, it becomes clear that this implies the idea that there exist much more important things to do: decisions about the allocation of time can not be separated from judgements about the meaning that different activities possess for individuals and for the community.
The definition of priorities is not however left to the individual’s free will, in as much as it depends (to a greater or lesser extent, according to the historical context being referred to) on the conditions of producing and reproducing social life.
In every historical period it is possible to identify a dominant “time”, which provides the reference point for organising all the other times both of daily life and the whole span of people’s lives.
Pre-industrial societies, for example, were governed by a very different temporal structure from the one which became established with the industrial revolution and the birth of the modem state. The saying “time is money” would have made no sense either to a feudal lord or to a serf: people were not in control of their own time, hence they could not dispose of it at will, not even for giving it a monetary value, in an agricultural economy whose rhythms were marked out by the procession of the seasons, by the hours of light and dark, and by the ringing of the church bells that structured the time for work, prayer and rest.[7] In that historical period, time was not measured in order to remunerate, control or synchronise it: people adapted to the definition of time “bestowed” by nature and by God, represented by the Church, and/or by the sovereign in theocracies.
With the establishment of the industrial mode of production, the key activities of the economy were freed from the rhythms of nature. And with the parallel development of modem forms of citizenship, which led to the secularisation and democratisation of the state, subjects were removed from the temporal bonds posed by the Church and/or sovereign.
The dominant time has become that of industrial work: a linear time, no longer a cyclical one, that assumes the specific characteristic of being paid. In factories, the logic of servile work, for which a direct personal service was recompensed in kind according to the benevolence of the owner, has disappeared. In the same way, with the introduction of specialised machines and the splitting up of work tasks, factories have denied the logic of the artisan’s trade, which is tied to the creation of finished goods exchanged for money only at the end of the production cycle. The factory system imposes a different calculation of the way to remunerate work: the value of work is held to be identical to the value of the time spent in the workplace.
Since time has become the object of remuneration, it is important to be able to measure it precisely and remove it from the arbitrariness of personal judgements. Clock time, measured in rational terms, tends to separate the meaning attributed to the content of an action from its duration. In this process, duration becomes dominant, to the extent that work for the market has established itself as the principal activity of modem man. The priority of content over duration persists only for activities removed from monetary calculations: such as caring for a family, cultural enrichment, conviviality, engagement in civil society, and voluntary work. These are the so-called “leisure time activities”; notably, the expression highlights their marginality, subordinate to the central nature of activities paid for by the market.
The distinction between working time and leisure time is often, and equally significantly, linked to an image of a temporal structure in which there exists a divide between working time and time for living. During working time the instrumental logic of money is dominant, and becomes no longer a means but an end in itself; the time for living is considered as a time for relationships and morality. If we consider this observation, which is a part of common speech, we can better understand both the inherent ambivalence of the concept of time which has asserted itself with the industrial society, and the nature of the decisions to be taken now.
3. Economic Rationality and the Ambivalence of Modern Temporality.
One of the two ambivalent elements in modem temporality is rooted in the fact that both the French revolution and industrial revolution sanctioned the idea that each individual is a fount of rationality and liberty. Liberty, above all, to pursue the ideal of a moral life without the bonds of personal servitude. This translates into the liberty to dispose of one’s own time, on the basis of independently chosen criteria. The spread of money as a means of exchange, above all for remunerating work, has contributed to dismantling the legitimacy of a direct and all-embracing personal dependence that is inherent in the servant/owner model, as not only writings in the Marxist tradition stress, but also those of other “classics” of western thought, such as Simmel[8] for example.
The second source of ambivalence is represented by the fact that industrial work has legitimised a new way of selling yourself, linked to the sale of one’s own time. Modern culture considers it normal for free citizens to commit a considerable part of their lives to limitations of time and space (the workplace) set down by hierarchically superior bodies that are legitimised for the organisation of the physical and intellectual energies of people for purely instrumental ends. As regards economic calculations, human work is “a thing”, one of the factors of production, which must be predictable and rationalised. It is the complete negation of autonomy, of the very idea of a subject. The most comprehensive expression of this concept is Taylorism and Fordism, which dominated the periods of greatest success for the industrial organisation of work.
This ambivalence has generated a paradoxical situation, which lies at the heart of André Gorz’s work.[9] On the one hand, modem societies have been developed on the basis of a rejection of the traditional concept of work as toil, an activity unworthy of free men. Out of this rejection was produced a work ethic[10] that has ennobled activity for the market, by defining it in vocational terms: the paramount expression of morality and opportunity for personal development. Work has been transformed into the main socially useful activity, through which individuals provide daily proof of their adult responsibility towards the collective. According to this point of view, it is the pillar around which not only lifetimes are structured, but also group and personal identities.
However, work is also the realm of life in which most people continue to experience the greatest limitations and frustrations with regard to the need for self-realisation, to feeling themselves to be human beings to other human beings. The problem concerns not only the specifics of the working class condition. This is a more general issue that involves all activities carried out for the market: the market provokes the greatest limitations on the liberty and morality of modem man, in as much as the instrumental nature of economic calculations conflict with behaviours (delegitimising them) that are oriented towards values, to human relationships and to the sentimental sphere.
But there is more. Building on Habermas’s work,[11] Gorz observes that economic rationality, which is a particular form of “cognitive-instrumental” rationality, is not only applied, abusively, to institutional actions to which it is not applicable, but extends even as far as “colonising”, deifying and mutilating the fabric of human relations on which depends social integration, education and the socialisation of individuals.[12]
This is a fundamental point, since it represents the principal reason advanced by Gorz, and the current of thought that is currently developing in Europe around his arguments, for supporting the request for a progressive and generalised reduction of working hours, as the condition for a real cultural revolution.
4. Criticism of the “Utopia of Work”.
Gorz takes as his starting point the observation that the scientific and technological revolution is currently changing the way people work (and live). To understand better the characteristics of the new jobs, Gorz looks to the Japanese firms that have developed the so-called “total quality model.”
In such firms, the introduction of advanced technologies has revolutionised the traditional forms of organisation. The management no longer has any choice: it can reduce costs only by replacing Taylor-style assembly lines and ordinary workers with robotised equipment which, at least in certain parts of the factory, requires a new type of worker. These workers must be able to assume, within a multi-disciplinary group, the running of an automised plant. They must be capable of rapid initiatives; they must collaborate with a group of peers which is called on to decide the splitting up of tasks, on the basis of the actual situation; and they must possess autonomy and a sense of responsibility. The management is therefore materially unable to command, direct or supervise the multidisciplinary groups. It must bind this new type of workers to it, making the most of them psychologically and socially, and construct a new image of the factory and of its “production operator.”[13] In this way, it seems that a future in which work could really become a focus for people’s liberty and self-fulfilment is being opened up, as is foreseen for example by the “ideology of human resources”, which is nicely summed up in this passage by Blondel, “(in the robotised factory) workers without an identity (...) have lost their jobs to intelligent people who are well organised and possess personal skills, and for whom firms tend to encourage career strategies.”[14]
In such a perspective, there are strong links with what Gorz defines as the “socialist utopia”, which associates the liberation of people with the end of the alienation (absence of property, control, and meaning related to work) that was created by the capitalist mode of production. He criticises this concept from a leftist viewpoint, showing how, in working activities, there does not exist any space for developing the most “human” component of individuals, even in a scenario of re-establishing control over production and developing an intrinsic interest in what one is doing. Control would nevertheless always remain relative, since technical responsibility is not the same as moral responsibility, and professional autonomy is not the same as existential autonomy. At the same time, Gorz considers debatable the idea of pursuing full personal fulfilment on the basis of interest in one’s profession since the intrinsic interest of work does not guarantee its meaning, and its humanisation in no way guarantees the ends to which work is dedicated. The humanisation of work can render undertakings of the most absolute barbarity attractive for the individuals that carry them out.[15] It is sufficient to consider the condition of a highly-qualified technician employed in the construction of atomic bombs; or the issue of objective and subjective responsibility for scientists as regards the uses to which their discoveries can be put.
In summary, there are three key points to Gorz’s criticism of the utopia of work as a source of liberation in an automated society, whether this utopia be considered a concept deriving from Marxist or neo-liberal thought.
1) Any activity that is paid for by the market, however socially useful it might appear, favours the instrumental logic of economic calculation, which impedes the full development of morality. This also helps to explain why Gorz criticises those who rely solely on expansion in the service sector for creating new jobs. Such an expansion has a precise limit: the limit which derives from the need to protect from instrumental logic a range of activities through which solidarity and person-to-person responsibility are expressed, which make sense only if they are unpaid. To give an idea of the aberrant consequences which a culture dominated by the idea that it is legitimate to consider paying for all forms of human activity can produce, Gorz takes the example of maternity by proxy, the “renting out” of a woman’s body for reproduction. This represents the legitimising of a form of “people selling themselves” that has nothing whatsoever to do with people’s liberty.
2) It is necessary to be aware of the limitations of “the technical culture”, which eliminates manual activities (hence contact with the tactile world) by exalting the abstract aspects of human activity. Through the extraordinary and extremely fast progress in science and technology, work is tending to become ever more specialised and rich in high-level technical content. There will be no more room in future for unskilled or low-skilled tasks. This will lead to a progressive increase in the weight of the technical culture, which is the anti-culture of everything non-technical. For this reason for technicians, learning to work turns into unlearning to find and to look for relationships that are not instrumental with regard to the environment and to other people.[16] Technology can be called on to help savings in working time and energies, but it can not be allowed on the other hand to invade the whole of daily life.
3) The savings in time and energy allowed by automation are translated into an ever lower availability of jobs. The problem of technological unemployment will be a dramatic structural fact for the 21st century, as is recognised also in the “Premise” of the White Paper. This risk involves, already today, a choice between two options. The first is linked to the adoption of a model based on the training of a fairly small élite of permanent and full-time workers (as is already the case in Japan, for example) which is backed up by a broad swathe of temporary or part-time workers, employed primarily in an excessively expanded service sector, and by the long-term unemployed. The second, which Gorz supports, tends to favour a generalised reduction and greater flexibility of working hours, intended above all as a decision in favour of solidarity. In Gorz’s perspective, the reduction of working hours is also the only possible way to hold in check the risk of an excessive spread of materialism and technical specialisation, which is inherent in work culture.
Regardless of whether one accepts Gorz’ s diagnosis or not, confronted with the examples that come to us from countries that are very advanced along the road to automation, it is impossible not to consider the generalised reduction of working hours as a measure around which western societies can put into effect the values of equity and solidarity. It is unacceptable that work be a privilege reserved for the few, above all if one considers that, following this model, we would remain anchored to an image of work as the cornerstone of people’s social identity. We would risk witnessing a growing mass of marginalised people who lacked a specific identity and were confined, not by their choosing, to a parasitic existence.
In the event that a significant reduction of working hours were achieved, a very wide range of considerations would be opened up: how to employ the vast amounts of time that have been freed? Do the institutional and cultural resources exist to enable people, now freer to organise and arrange the different times of their lives, to make decisions that are endowed with real meaning?
Before examining the merits of these issues, it is necessary to add some observations concerning another aspect of change in the structure of time, which so far has not been considered.
5. Overcoming the Divide Between Work and Life in the Post-industrial Age.
Gorz perhaps fails to highlight sufficiently the fact that the scientific and technological revolution is changing not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, the relationship between working time and the other times of people’s lives. These are characteristics that have already been considered in the past in studies by federalists concerning work in the postindustrial age, the relationship between schools and the community, life long education, and democratic territorial planning. When the federalists began these studies, they were practically alone in doing so, and were considered, at best, to be utopian. Today, such questions have become so topical as to represent an integral part of the Delors Plan, an official document that has been adopted by the European Union’s heads of state and government.
It is enough to recall two cases taken from the White Paper. This document repeatedly stresses the fact that with the new mode of production, science and technology are becoming the main resources of an economy. Human capital is the key resource for growth. The result is a particular interest in training, that must guarantee not only a higher degree of basic preparation (with greater interdependence between the worlds of school, work and research), but also the continuous updating of worker’s knowledge, with interruptions of various periods in the working cycle. In this way the principle separating the school experience from the work experience, which has dominated industrial societies, has been radically called into question.
The end of school still coincides with the end of a part of our lives. With this change, the temporal structure, above all the daily one, is differently organised and assumes a different meaning. From time primarily dedicated “to ourselves”, and which is relatively self-governed or at least employed in activities designed for personal development, time becomes not so much “for others” as bound to a large degree to the instrumental goals of working for the market. It is as if our societies were perfused with the unexpressed rule according to which in a certain stage of our lives it is possible, indeed proper, to dedicate the day to developing our potential, and in a later stage this goal no longer has any reason to exist. There are examples of privileged people who can choose a profession that allows a certain degree of flexibility with regard to these times. But, for the majority of people, a distinct separation is enforced between a phase in which “people study and are formed”, and one in which people work. This ends up by creating a divide between the age of intellectual curiosity, and that of work and nothing else. As also Zamagni has recently pointed out,[17] a specific form of inequality has been created in modem societies: an inequality concerning the different degrees of freedom to organise time on the basis of one’s personal development needs. Life-long training overturns this logic, by introducing the idea that it is not only possible, but proper, to consider oneself in all moments of one’s life as a person who is continually “developing”.
The second example of the qualitative transformation of the temporal structure, linked to the advent of the new mode of production, concerns the end of traditional factories (or workplaces).
Not only is the traditional Ford-inspired model of organising work becoming obsolete, as was noted above in reference to Gorz’s work, with the resultant development of extremely flexible “mini”-factory systems. For many activities the very idea of factories or offices, intended as fixed places of group reference for a significant part of the day, is on the wane. Today, the multiple possibilities linked to telecommuting are redesigning certain fields of work on the basis of a separation between work activity and the workplace. Since many work activities are being reduced to the elaboration and transmission of information via computer, it is no longer necessary for workers to be physically in the same place where machines operate, since machines can be controlled from a distance by computer. This can be done perfectly well even from the home. Telecommuting is no longer a fantasy, but a very concrete reality, above all if one examines technologically advanced places, such as the United States.
The changes in the work space are breaking down the rigid distinction between working time and the other times of daily life: those connected with travel from home to workplace, with family care, with social relationships in the nearby community, and so on. The most obvious and glaring consequence, however, concerns the transformation that this altering of the workplace and working time structure can induce in the organisation of urban life itself.
These processes open up a completely new horizon, difficult to grasp today in all its potential developments. All the same, some of the potential and some of the risks can already be glimpsed.
On the one hand, it becomes possible to imagine the removal of the barriers (temporal and spatial) between activities that were previously held strictly separate in people’s days and lives, and which were governed by rules that were frequently conflicting. This can enable people to reconstruct in a coherent fashion a temporal structure that is currently very fragmented and a source of discrimination between those who possess, and those who do not possess, autonomy in the management of the times and meanings of their own actions. On the other hand, it is necessary to avoid that this “reconstruction” translates into the overwhelming dominance of a single activity over all others, or in closure within a private, entirely self-sufficient world, which is lacking in relations with the outside and which comes to an end at the front door of the house. There exists the problem of channelling the energies that will be liberated, and the greater amount of personal resources, towards forms of civil life in which participation in the community, solidarity, and communication can be developed.
6. The Federalist Perspective for a Civilisation of Temps Choisi.
The grounds for reflection proposed so far demonstrate how the current opportunities for redefining working time will bring about changes that make a new model of civilisation, one based on temps choisi, conceivable.[18] In the 1980s, the authors of La révolution du temps choisi wrote: “Nothing prevents us thinking with greater precision about the morphology of the areas of action in which it would be possible to develop the human activities produced by the freeing of time: certain tasks of local administrations could be directly re-appropriated by the collectivity, working in tandem with the reciprocal services that are typical of neighbourly relations; the maintenance of property, of the artistic patrimony and of all goods of social or individual interest (...) would find its own recognised function; multiple participation in associations and the creation of an artistic production parallel to the official one are equally possible expressions for nascent microcultures that will be small, but effective, producers of meaning, whose vitality can serve to ridicule the standardised iconography of the mass media.”[19]
Nowadays, the issue is no longer to “conceive of” this transformation, but to start putting it into practice, by promoting a reduction of working hours, changes in the traditional factory system, the creation of new professions and, above all, the establishment of an institutional framework that will allow all people fully to develop their capacities for involvement in civil and social life.
There currently exist many obstacles for European citizens as regards taking advantage of these opportunities. If the continent’s economic and political union is not completed as soon as possible, there exists a real risk that Europe will miss a historic opportunity. Work can change only if we decisively take the leap towards the post-industrial mode of production. Only in this way will Europe’s economy be able to regain its competitiveness compared to the other technologically advanced powers and implement, for example, a generalised reduction of working hours in conditions of resource abundance that will be able to guarantee dignified standards of living for everyone.
The re-launching of the European economy will require such a broad range of infrastructure investments that it can only be carried out at the European level. Consider for example the infrastructure needed for developing information technology to its full potential: in the US, the information highway has been under construction for several years, while Europe is still discussing to what extent (with which funds, what political controls, etc.) it will be possible to implement the Delors Plan, which contemplates investing in this sector as a priority.
The re-launching of the economy is a necessary condition, but not alone sufficient, for carrying through to completion the révolution du temps choisi. Fundamentally, we need to answer the question of what is the most suitable political and institutional framework for encouraging and satisfying the demands of citizens (which are growing in the perspective of an increase in leisure time) to participate in political, social and cultural life.
The perspective of temps choisi is difficult to imagine for those who consider only the current context in which public life is conducted: that designed by the national states, which are presently characterised by grave political crisis and by the failure of local communities to provide an integrated focus of life. In such a framework it is possible even to be fearful of an increase in leisure time, which for some appears as a nightmare that will be dominated by boredom or by an endless recourse to totally hedonistic activities.
The problem is that there is never sufficient consideration of the fact that when a new mode of production is established, the result is not solely a new type of worker. In addition, and above all, people conceive of themselves differently as citizens: these new citizens re-think the state, renew forms of participation in public life, and seek out different ways and spaces in which to establish politics as the maximum expression of morality.
This is the issue that federalist thought places at the centre of considerations about the potential for renewing democracy through federalism, and about the new citizenship that will be created by the European federation.
[1] G. Aznar, Travailler moins pour travailler tous. 20 Propositions, Paris, Syros éditeur, 1993.
[2] To cite but a few examples, it is well-known that in Germany, in the wake of the success of the Volkswagen experiment, the reduction of working hours is now at the heart of negotiations between the government and unions; the feasibility of a four-day week is being examined in many sectors in France; and in Italy, the Progressives have presented a parliamentary bill (entitled “Norms for altering the rhythms of life, shortening the length of working lives, and establishing the right of temps choisi”) which links a reduction of working hours to a change in the rhythms of urban life (La Repubblica, 23/3/95).
[3] European Commission, Growth, Competitiveness, Employment. The challenges and Ways forward into the 21st Century. White paper. Office for official publication of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 1994.
[4] J. Delors, “Il Libro Bianco: un piano d’ azione e uno stimolo alla riflessione”, in Istituto Europeo di Studi Sociali IESS-AE, Il futuro del lavoro in Europa, Bari, Cacucci, 1994, pp. 33-4.
[5] Even recently, for example, Alfonso Jozzo (“The Challenge for Europe: Reducing the Working Week”, in The Federalist, XXXVI, 1994) has re-presented these topics, highlighting the connections between a reduction of working hours, a re-thinking of democracy and community service.
[6] N. Elias, Über die Zeit, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1984.
[7] This refers to a series of essays which were published together in Italy under the title: J. Le Goff, Tempo della Chiesa e tempo del mercante, Turin, Einaudi, 1977.
[8] G. Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes (Liepzig, 1900), Berlin, Duncker und Humblot, 1977.
[9] A. Gorz, Metamorphoses du travail. Quête du sense. Critique de la raison économique, Paris, ed. Galilée, 1988.
[10] Here Gorz directly recalls Weber’s work on the protestant ethic and capitalist spirit, and on the concept of Beruf.
[11] Habermas, Teoria dell’agire comunicativo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986.
[12] A. Gorz, op. cit.
[13] Ibid.
[14] D. Blondel, “Mort et résurrection de la pensée économique”, in Le Monde, 1/4/86.
[15] A. Gorz, op. cit.
[16] Ibid.
[17] S. Zamagni, “Lavoro ridisegnato dal tempo”, in Il Sole-24 Ore, 15/2/95.
[18] This expression was used by a team organised by Jacques Delors (Echanges et Projets, La révolution du temps choisi, Paris, Albin Michel, 1980) which had, already in the early 1980s, posed the questions which are today once again at the centre of debate about the temporal structure.
[19] Echanges et Projets, Op. cit.
