First published in www.socialistappeal.org, website of the Workers International League, US section of the International Marxist Tendency.
“Wherever there is a working day without restriction as to length,
wherever there is night-work and unrestricted waste of human life,
there the slightest obstacle presented by the nature of the work to a
change for the better is soon looked upon as an everlasting barrier
erected by Nature.”
- Karl Marx, Capital Volume I
As
if graveyard and shift workers needed a new reason to despise their
jobs, which place their schedules in opposition to the waking world,
the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World
Health Organization, has recently declared night work a “probable
carcinogen,” with the American Cancer Society likely to follow suit. A
report by the Associated Press states that research clearly shows
“higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose
work day starts after dark.” This is due to the fact that melatonin,
which is integral to the body’s functioning, is usually produced at
night, while the body rests. Melatonin production is inhibited by the
artificial lighting, putting night-shift workers at risk.
And
what do shift workers get for their trouble? The Fair Labor Standards
Act does not even require that they receive extra pay for having their
schedules turned upside down. In the advanced capitalist economies,
nearly 20 percent of workers are forced to work the night shift, with
younger workers working more than older, blacks working more than
whites, and perhaps most disturbing of all, single mothers more than
married mothers. In all, 15.5 million people in the U.S. are formally
engaged in some form of night labor.
Night labor has been part of
capitalism for quite some time, and generally speaking, “to appropriate
labor during all the 24 hours of the day” has been an “inherent
tendency of capitalist production,” as the need to squeeze every last
bit of surplus value out of the production process forces the
capitalist class to resort to ever more dehumanizing methods of
production (Marx, Capital Vol. I). Marx remarks in a footnote to
Capital that the very fact that there is any “controversy” on the
question of night labor “shows plainly how capitalist production acts
on the brain-functions of capitalists and their retainers.”
Night
labor has long been seen as a measure of the level of “development” of
a capitalist economy. In more developed countries more workers work
night shifts, or what Marx refers to as a “relay system,” i.e. a
rotating system of day-night shifts. The relay system allows the boss
to maintain production for the entire 24 hours of the day, but it is
extremely dangerous for a worker’s health, as it results in sleep
deprivation by upsetting his or her circadian rhythm, i.e., constantly
forcing a resetting of the body’s internal clock.
According to a
report produced by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health, aside from disrupted melatonin production and sleep
deprivation, “shiftworkers have more upset stomachs, constipation, and
stomach ulcers than day workers.” The specific cause of these
particular digestive problems is still up in the air. It could be
another product of the disruption of the circadian rhythm, but it could
also have a dietary cause, as often workers on the night shift are
limited in their choices to vending machine junk food. A Swedish study
has also found possible links between night work and heart disease,
perhaps caused by work schedule stress.
It would be remiss to not
mention the family and social bond disruptions caused by working at
night. Night workers with children face a particularly rough dilemma.
They can either participate in the lives of their children, forced to
live dual lives perpetually deprived of a healthy amount of sleep, as
the schedules of their children are inverted from their own, or they
can try to find affordable, quality childcare, which is something they
are not likely to find under the current system.
For
these and other reasons, the labor movement has always been at the
forefront of arguing for the complete abolition of night labor. During
the Paris Commune of 1871, when the workers of Paris succeeded in
overthrowing the capitalist government and organized the first embryo
of a workers’ state, they felt it important enough to place a ban upon
night labor in the bakeries. Leo Frankel, one of the participants in
the Commune, stated that, “The class of bakery workers is the most
unfortunate section of the proletariat; indeed, you will not find a
more underprivileged trade. Every day we are told that the workers
should educate themselves, but how can you educate yourself when you
work at night?” (our emphasis) He was to declare the decree against
unnecessary night labor “the only truly socialist decree passed by the
Commune.”
The Bolsheviks considered the prohibition of night work
to be of the utmost importance. In the heat of revolution, in June of
1917, they revised the party program to abolish night work between 8 pm
to 6 am, extending the ban one hour further, while at the same time
adding a provision stating that were night labor to be absolutely
necessary for technical reasons, it should under no circumstances
exceed four hours.
Based on infinitely more developed means of
production than existed in tsarist Russia, a 21st Century Socialist
USA, with a democratically planned economy could go even further in
eliminating night work. But this will require that control of the means
of production and of the state be in the hands of the working class.
In the meantime, we must call for an end to night work. Workers should
not be forced to place themselves at the risk of disease and disruption
of their social lives for the profits of the bosses!
