ARE ALL UNEMPLOYED PERSONS IDLERS?

By Attac Germany

[This tract from December 2003 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web http://www.attac.de/aktuell/rundbriefe/sig/SiG34.pdf,]



In 1973 there were 273,000 unemployed.

In 2004 there were 4,400,000.

Are we becoming increasingly lazy?

0.4 million open jobs are available for 4.4 million unemployed.

Are the 4 million unemployed idlers?

In 2000 there were 1.3 million more unemployed than 1991.

Did laziness increase by leaps and bounds in the 1990s?

50-year olds are more than twice as often jobless than 25-year olds.

Does laziness increase with growing age?

Construction workers are frequently jobless in the winter.

Does laziness skyrocket in the winter?

Unemployment is nearly twice as high in East Germany than in the West.

Are East Germans more than twice as lazy than West Germans?

Receivers of unemployment assistance receive on average 522 Euro.

Do you really think “laziness” is rewarding?

Two-thirds of the unemployed have vocational training.

Is someone lazy who will not accept any job?

Employed workers who do not want to work longer and more are also stylized as idlers. Whoever has capital is allegedly always diligent!



PROFIT IS THE PROBLEM, NOT LAZINESS!

· More and more workers become superfluous with constantly improved machines and plants. Whether they were diligent or not does not matter.

· Workers are ultimately only employed when they bring a profit. The benefits of work for the society do not count much.

· Whoever brings too little because he or she is too old, for example, hardly finds work.

· Capital is too lazy to work – when the profit isn’t right.

· Modern machines reduce the working hours for products. Still the working hours are lengthened and costly investments are worthwhile. Crises arise because too much is produced, not because too little is produced out of laziness, too many goods, too much capital. This makes profit fall. The overproduction must be destroyed. Even better machines are bought to come out of the crisis. Everything only goes back to the beginning.

The more diligent the employees and the more capital they produce, the more they will be unemployed and the longer they will remain jobless.

We work too much! We have a right to laziness!

We have no interest in working longer for less pay only to avoid being stigmatized as idlers by millionaires.

Millionaires only live in luxury because they have others working for them.

Working less =


Less unemployed!

30 hours a week is enough!

The lines run between top and bottom,


not between the nations.