Thursday, October 02, 2003
AMERICANS WORKING HARDER THAN EVER
This seems consistent with my own experience. When I'm frequently stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 at 5:00 am it is clear that there are a lot of people that work long hours. I wonder how this intersects with the frequently heard claims that Americans are the most productive people on earth. Are we? Or do we simply put in more time, energy, and effort?
As Harvard economist Juliet Schor has examined, Americans' working hours have been steadily increasing for the past 30 years. Between 1969 and 1987 alone, paid employment by the average American worker jumped by over 160 hours per year, or the equivalent of an entire extra month on the job. We now work the equivalent of nearly nine weeks more a year than our European counterparts. This burden threatens to expand even more as Congressional Republicans push to end the deterrent of overtime pay in sector after sector of the workforce. That doesn't count employers simply breaking the law – like the Wal-Mart managers now being sued in 28 states for allegedly forcing employees to punch out after an eight-hour day, and then continue working for no pay at all.
The increase of work hours complements a more general politics of the whip. Whatever our jobs, most of us now work harder than we used to, do more in less time, and worry more about being downsized. This is true whether we're on a factory assembly line, writing code for a software company desperately struggling to survive, or teaching the kids of the poor in an underfunded school. If we're going to have a decent future, and not become "losers" in an increasingly divided economy, we're told that we need to become wheeling and dealing self-promoters constantly selling ourselves to survive. Meanwhile, we spend more hours driving to and from our jobs, as urban sprawl, escalating housing prices, and lack of decent public transit options raise the stress of our commutes. Once we could rely on employer-funded pensions and Social Security, confident that if we worked long enough, our old age would be provided for. Now, for most of us, saving for retirement has become an uncertain journey through treacherous shoals. The US has long been the only advanced industrial nation in the world not to offer universal healthcare, but most of us used to be covered through our jobs. Now we pay more and more to get less and less, and spend hours choosing between equally bad options, trying to cover our families as best we can.
This seems consistent with my own experience. When I'm frequently stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 at 5:00 am it is clear that there are a lot of people that work long hours. I wonder how this intersects with the frequently heard claims that Americans are the most productive people on earth. Are we? Or do we simply put in more time, energy, and effort?
