In the labour market, the general preference for money predominates over the preference for time; what people do in their private time is interpreted as the desire of consumers. To the extent, however, that the boundaries between public and private are beginning to become blurred in everyday life, by formerly private time becoming public since it invades public space and publicly paid (working) time, new – political – questions arise about a fair distribution of work and time. All stated preferences for working time are preferences related to certain phases of life and situations. They are dependent on sex and age, one's family situation, income and class affiliation. And to the extent that people's biographies, conditioned by the general work situation, become more unsettled, the time preferences are also exposed to larger fluctuations. They become transitional preferences.28
Analysis of the conflicts and of the difficult negotiations over reduction in working hours falls short if they are seen merely as an extension of the previous conflict, and not as much more fundamental questions of distribution and organization. The extension of public time and public space into what was formerly called the private sphere is increasing – technologies are crossing this boundary as well as the interdependences just described between cases of unpaid free time furnished for purposes of general, public welfare. In this way, private everyday life becomes more public, becomes part of the market and the state, and emerges from its former anonymity and political protective coating. As consumers and female citizens, people demand new rights and seek to have a hand in shaping the political processes which intrude on their everyday lives. The politics of working time and the politics of living time are closely connected, and they are linked with one another via the labour market and social policy. The current model of the labour market is still based on rights, incentives and achievements derived from a continuous, lifelong and full-time working biography. This normal case has ceased to be the norm, though, just as normal working hours have long since become abnormal, and in the Federal Republic of Germany only a quarter of all households correspond to the popular notions of a normal family – parents with children.
Politics of Time
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