Since last October, the employees of the Barcelona publishing house Lack of control perform 28 hour work week. This was agreed upon after a long debate that was precipitated a few months ago, when they received a small subsidy from the Ministry of Industry to apply this measure.
By concentrating work on seven hours four days a weekthey consider that they have more rest and can better manage their daily needs, without this impacting the company’s performance. On the contrary: far from reducing production, they have established a rotating system by which the rotary machines, and customer service, are maintained five days a week.
Five years of critical thinking
Descontrol Editorial i Imprenta SCCL was born in 2019, the result of the confluence of people from the publishing world, design and digital printing. This team began to forge relationships with different bookstores, distributors and other sectors of independent culture. Not only in Catalonia; Its catalog of essays and fiction already reaches hundreds of points of sale in the Spanish State.
“We define ourselves as an umbrella for those authors who do not have a voice in the great commodifications of thought and culture,” they explain from the cooperative, convinced that the project has opened a gap to promote “socialization of autonomous, anarchist and revolutionary ideas and practicesdelving into the origin and development of contemporary struggles”.
Despite the difficulty of surviving in the current literary market, the members of Descontrol have never wanted to lose the cooperative principles that emanate from the social and solidarity economy. They make decisions in an assembly manner, they prepare the books with environmentally friendly materials, they look for similar initiatives with whoever intercooperatewhile putting the needs of those involved in the production chain at the center.
In accordance with this approach, the company located in warehouse 85 of block 11 of Can Batllothe old industrial site of Sants converted into a cooperative swarm, has decided to compact the activity to reduce the workload of its employees.
A paradigm shift
The reduction in work has not been a sudden decision. “Within the internal debates we have had about working conditions, we have always talked about reduce working hoursbecause we are people who want to do other activities,” says one of its managers.
Even so, the call that the Ministry of Industry It opened two years ago to subsidize companies that aspired to downsize. “It was in line with the vision of the project, beyond the fact that it incorporated a contract, something that also interested us to compensate for the reduction in working hours,” he adds.
The subsidy from the Ministry took longer than expected, when Descontrol had already invested a part of its resources in renewing the machinery, so the 25,000 euros that they finally received in October have been good for them so that the bet has been more ambitious than what was planned.
“If we had not made the cut and, therefore, we would have been left out of this pilot planwe would have also applied the reduction. But, with this money, we have reduced the day even more, since of the 32 hours that we had proposed, we have agreed to do 28, the equivalent of seven hours a day for four days,” they comment.
A drastic decrease of which the nine employees are very satisfied, because, through a compensatory relay systemdoes not force the company to close any day. “One week it’s Monday, another week it’s Tuesday, and so on for each and every one of us. We agreed to do it this way to avoid someone always having Monday or Friday,” they explain, which allows them to extend the productivity of the machines, which do not stop operating five days a week.
Towards efficiency and degrowth
At Descontrol, which has gone from five to nine workers, this work scheme is associated with a different way of conceiving production and other areas linked to publishing activity. Thus, for example, in terms of presence at fairs or literary days, they have decided to better select which ones to be present at, and if they cannot attend, look for local groups willing to exhibit their books. “In the end, it’s about doing less, but doing it better,” says one employee.
“We do not want to follow the dynamics of the capitalist market”
Also, regarding the production of books, they agreed a long time ago edit a lower number to those they released when they founded the company, to the point that they have gone from 25 titles in 2021 to an average of 12 to 15. “Surely we could publish more, but we do not want to follow the dynamics of the capitalist marketbased on a drag system that consists of launching many with the hope that one will cover the rest.” Faced with this logic, his recipe goes in the opposite direction: “We do not want to throw away resources, but rather take care of each work and that all have a meaning.”
Overwhelmed by the expectation generated by its latest measure, Descontrol embarks on a new stage in which the objective is to demonstrate, when they take stock a couple of years from now, that The reduction in the work week has been beneficial in every way. And more so in their case, unlike other companies, they have the advantage of having their own printing press. “We know that it is easier to invest in machinery than to hire new personnel or other aspects, which makes it easier for us to have a higher level of efficiency,” they comment.
Time will tell, however, if this commitment that the social movements have been demanding as a pillar of thedegressive logicit is optimal and satisfactory. At the moment, everything indicates that the Sants publishing house has it under control; not only for the purpose of making it sustainable over time; also to inspire many other cooperatives or companies that support working less to work better.
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