IOWA CITY DECLARATION

Post-industrial society in North America is experiencing a
time famine. Yet, while many working people have inadequate
time to pursue family, personal, and community life, others
have become economically redundant in the continuing waves
of corporate downsizing. The maldistribution of work and free
time, with attendant inequality of incomes, has created a
growing social problem. We believe that this problem may
effectively be addressed by a general reduction in working
hours.

The forty-hour workweek became the legal standard for U.S.
hourly workers in 1940. Labor productivity has increased by
many times since then. Increased labor productivity, unless
accompanied by shorter hours, tends to displace workers from
employment in productive enterprise. The result is higher
unemployment or increasing employment in low-wage occupations.

Responsible social policy requires correction of these
trends. Responsible employment requires that the jobs allow
adequate time for employees to cultivate rich and fulfilling
lives outside their work environment. Responsible direction
of national economies requires attention to the widening
income gap in society. Responsible practice in international
trade requires that nations refrain from dumping domestic
unemployment on their trading partners by maintaining a
schedule of work hours in excess of levels appropriate for
their stage of industrial development.

We North Americans, gathered in Iowa City, therefore urge
the national governments of Canada and the United States
to put in place before the year 2000 the legal arrangements to
ensure that a thirty-two hour workweek will become the norm
for full-time workers in the first decade of the new
millennium.

While a reduced workweek is the focus of this appeal, we
also recognize that longer vacations, sabbaticals, job-
sharing, and other forms of hours reductions or alternative
schedules are desirable objects. In the process of reducing
work hours, it is important to protect and enhance the basic
wage and benefit structure for workers in advanced economies,
including those employed as part-time, contingent, temporary,
or contract workers. We invite support for those objectives
from representatives of the labor movement, the business
community, public officials, religiously committed persons,
socially or environmentally conscious groups, and others
concerned with humanity's future.

Adopted in Iowa City, Iowa on March 10, 1996