An anonymous coward writes:
""You May Justifiably Want to Take Friday Off"
Mark Engler, Newsday, October 22, 2003
Mark Engler, a writer based in Brooklyn, is a former analyst with the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in San Jose, Costa Rica.
On Friday, a small but growing number of Americans will celebrate "Take Back Your Time Day," calling out of work to honor the vacation they don't have.
This peculiar holiday was organized by a committee of economists and nonprofit advocates in response to the fact that, as a society, we are working more than ever before. Come Friday, if our country's work load were on a par with the rest of the industrialized world, you would have the rest of 2003 off.When compared with workers in Western Europe, the average American will work 350 hours more per year, the equivalent of nine extra weeks. Furthermore, a study by the International Labor Organization reports that in 2000, the average U.S. worker put in 199 more hours than in 1973.
Despite working hard, many people are barely staying afloat in the modern economy. Our days are filled with stress. Our meals are rushed. And, as much as it saves time, technology creates more clutter and more burdens. We have less time to spend with our families; less time to invest in our communities; less time to relax.
There are two sides to this dilemma. On one hand, increasing time at work is part of a larger trend in which working- and middle-class Americans find themselves economically pinched. Our national mythology contends the U.S. economy is inexorably marching toward progress - that each generation is better off than its parents were. But data indicate that the last several decades have not been boom times for most people.
While real wages increased steadily after World War II, they peaked in 1973 and began a prolonged decline. Despite some years of improvement in the late 1990s, average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers have never returned to their level of 30 years ago. With their regular paychecks not going as far as before, people have to put in more hours just to hold steady.
On top of this, more companies are demanding mandatory overtime from their employees. This hurts not only the overworked, but also the underemployed. Many low-wage workers are denied the hours they need to break even, and are instead held back as part-timers and contingent workers.
The other side of America's anti-holiday comes from our shared consumer shopping spree. That household debt has soared to record levels in recent years relative to disposable income should prompt questions about our spending: Does anyone really need that wide-screen plasma TV? The new SUV? By redefining things that once might have been luxury splurges as necessities, we have traded away the time to enjoy family, community and leisure.
Celebrating "Take Back Your Time Day" helps us think about ways to live more simply, spend less and reduce our work loads. The holiday's organizers take inspiration from Earth Day, which helped spur the emergence of the Environmental Protection Agency and legislation such as the Clean Air Act. In a promising symbolic step, the Senate responded last month to concerns about overwork with a resolution designating October "National Work and Family Month" and affirming a "balance between work and personal life." Addressing the wage side of the equation, however, presents a more difficult task.
Historically, labor unions have been a key vehicle through which people have fought for fair pay and reasonable hours. As one bumper sticker reminds us, the unions are "the folks who brought us the weekend" in the first place, leading historic struggles for the 40-hour workweek. Not coincidentally, the time crunch we have experienced in past decades has corresponded with a dramatic weakening of the American labor movement. The percentage of the nonagricultural workers represented by unions fell from 27.8 percent in 1970 to 13.6 percent in 2000.
Labor's decline has implications that ripple throughout the workforce. Businesses are freer to press their employees to put in longer days. And, without unions serving as an institutional check on pay inequality, workers are unlikely to receive a fair share of prosperity when the economy improves.
Like earlier struggles to limit the working day, today's drive to win back our time will require public support of unionization drives and demands to strengthen labor law. The right to organize is officially upheld in both U.S. law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but employers routinely flout it in practice. A National Labor Relations Board appointed by President George W. Bush has only dimmed the prospects for better enforcement.
Uncertain whether taking political action or resolving to buy less in the coming holiday season is your right first step toward greater freedom? Try calling out from work for some well-earned relaxation, and take some time to think about it.
