Mouvement 4x8  (Association loi 1901)  17, rue de la Tournade   95220 HERBLAY  FRANCE  Tél : 00 331 34 50 13 93

An association to promote two law bills :  1. To change working legislation so that the actual legal 39 hours working week is reduce to 32 hours in four days with a maintain of pay for the low wages.2. To make each Robot, Computer and Expert System pay National Insurance.

     We hear with a great interest that you are going to publish a newspaper. Here in France there are a number of publications recently created which put forward new ideas found nowhere else. It is reassuring for the democracy and social progress that you attempt to write one. We send you an article on the association 4x8 which we hope, one day, will have members living in Edinburgh.
 
    The Mouvement 4x8 is the result of ten years of European conferences, debates and conversations between hundreds, of citizens, friends, students, old age pensioners, colleagues, unemployed, politicians, ... In 1981 the French labour government and the trade unions had started to apply the reforms necessary for the promised 35 hour working week for all. But the 35 hour week did not materialise and it was only in 1984 that the idea of the 32 hour week (the four day working week) was born.
 
    During the years that followed hundreds of letters and questionnaires were sent to the politicians, trade unionists, journalists, economists, ... soliciting their opinion on reducting the working week to 32 hours. The 4x8 did not get much echo in the press so two persons (John Mitchell and Jean Pierre Flechard) decided in 1992 to create the association 4x8 and publish a newspaper three times a year. An association independant of all political parties, trade unions and religous confessions. It has for objectives :
                     - to promote the four day working week with a maintain of pay for at least the low wages,
                     - to claim for a national insurance on every Robot, Computer and Expert System,
                     - to organise contradictory debates on the causes and remedies of unemployment
                     - to think about work and its plade in our society.

Its slogan is                         “WORK LESS SO ALL WORK AND LIVE BETTER”.
 
   The choice for 32 hours in 4 days is essentially decided on the job creation possiblities. Indeed if 4 people employed work ond day less one job is freed. If a switch-board operator doesn’t work the Monday somebody will have to replace her. But if she works one hour less by day, the business will do without a switch-board operator for one hour and will not employ anyone else. The national insurance on the robots, computers and expert systems permits the social security to always exist as well financing the reducing of working time.
 
    The 4x8 newspaper has permitted to advance the debate on reducing the working time of which the national and international press had made the echo last winter. The National Insurance on the robots, computers and expets syustems has not yet been taken up by the masse media.

 We have begun to stick here and there small sticker labels promoting the national insurance on the robots, computers and money distributors, ... (we have even in English). And we continue with our poor means to heckle our society rulers in order to obtain their arguments for and against the 4x8 proposals.
yours sincerely.