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Americans_Workday_2012

The document discusses the negative impact of long working hours on Americans' health and well-being, highlighting that U.S. workers already work significantly more than their counterparts in other developed countries. It argues for a reduction in work hours to improve job availability, employee satisfaction, and overall quality of life, suggesting that many Americans would accept lower pay for more leisure time. Additionally, it notes that shorter workweeks could benefit the environment by reducing energy consumption and carbon footprints.

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3 views

Americans_Workday_2012

The document discusses the negative impact of long working hours on Americans' health and well-being, highlighting that U.S. workers already work significantly more than their counterparts in other developed countries. It argues for a reduction in work hours to improve job availability, employee satisfaction, and overall quality of life, suggesting that many Americans would accept lower pay for more leisure time. Additionally, it notes that shorter workweeks could benefit the environment by reducing energy consumption and carbon footprints.

Uploaded by

b9f72k8x6h
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Working less would provide much to Americans

By Richard Schiffman January 27, 2012


Published by Washington Post

Recently a friend confided over dinner that her job was “killing” her. I was surprised. She is a
director of a midsize nonprofit that is doing citizen diplomacy work in the Middle East, and she
has often remarked on how gratifying it is to be involved in a program that brings historical
enemies face to face to share their stories.
But 2011 was a tough year for fundraisers, and my friend has been doing double duty as her
understaffed organization struggles to make up the shortfall. Like many nowadays, she takes her
work home with her, which has taken a toll on her personal life, health and sleep. She is thinking
of leaving the nonprofit but is afraid to do so before she finds another job.
Another friend who is employed by a large insurance company is routinely forced to work late
and at home on weekends — often without pay — on the projects she didn’t have time to finish
at the office. With the threat of layoffs ever-present, she dares not complain about this modern-
day slave labor.
Americans already work hundreds of hours a year more than their counterparts in other
developed countries, including workaholic Japan. They also have fewer days off than Europeans,
who typically take four to six weeks of paid vacation a year.
Companies argue that grueling work schedules are necessary to boost productivity. But consider
that, despite the recession, the productivity of U.S. workers has increased fourfold since the
1950s. Put another way, as of 2000, employees work one hour to produce what it took four hours
to create a half-century ago. Meanwhile, the buying power of wages has remained stagnant and
in recent years has even begun to decline. Someone is getting rich off the exponential rise in
productivity, but it is not the American worker.
In the past, unions struggled not only to raise pay but also to shorten the hours that their
members had to work. The trend toward shorter hours continued unabated from the Civil War
through the end of the Great Depression and the enactment, in 1938, of the Fair Labor Standard
Act’s 40-hour-week provision. But during World War II work hours increased sharply, and it has
not been a significant public issue since.
Given the recent troubles in the U.S. economy, this may seem an odd moment to reconsider the
value of working less. But this crisis is not due to poor productivity; U.S. workers’ productivity
is at an all-time high. Neither is it a crisis in corporate profitability, which continues to soar
despite tough economic times for ordinary Americans. It is arguably a crisis in corporate greed,
one created by financial entities pushing for ever higher growth rates and levels of profitability
regardless of the cost to the long-term health of the economy or for those whose hard work made
that economy flourish over the past century.
Americans know that we can no longer afford a corporate culture on steroids that generates
unsustainable profits by systematically cannibalizing our nation and the people who make it
work. So a good place to start applying the brakes on this runaway train would be making sure
that we don’t have to kill ourselves at work just to make a living.
A widescale reduction in work hours would spread out the national workload and help to make
more jobs available for the unemployed. Historically, shorter workweeks have been as large a
creator of new jobs as market growth, sociology professor Juliet Schor argued last year.
While shorter hours would mean less income for many, nearly half of Americans surveyed in
2004 by the Center for a New American Dream said that they would be willing to accept a
smaller paycheck in return for more time with their families and leisure. This would help explain
the popularity of four-day workweeks; a pilot program in Utah found 82 percent of state workers
surveyed said that they liked the change and wanted to stick with it.
The benefits of shortening the workweek would be incalculable for Americans’ health and well
being. And it would even be good for the planet. A 2006 study by the Center for Economic and
Policy Research estimated that, if the United States were to emulate the shorter workweeks of
Western Europe, energy consumption would decline about 20 percent and our country could
significantly diminish its carbon footprint. Millions of Americans could live with less stress and
more happiness and fulfillment.
With so much to gain, we need to cut work hours while there is still time.

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