No Leisure Allowed?

To the Puritans, idleness was a sin. "Idle hands are the Devil's workshop." Understandably, when there's a lot of work that needs to be done, it's not fair for some people to remain idle and not do their share while other people do all the work, but this doesn't seem to be what they meant. The Puritans seemed to think every man, woman and child was required to be productive every waking moment. No work was allowed on the Sabbath, but neither was any play, and the laws regarding the observance of the day were so strict, it was hardly a day of leisure.

Throughout much of the 20th century, sociologists and politicians predicted that technological progress which would allow productivity to increase would result in an increase in leisure time. They reasoned that workers would be able to get everything done in a much shorter time due to more efficient technology. They predicted shorter work weeks for everyone. So what happened?

Juliet Schor says "we could now produce our 1948 standard of living...in less than half the time it took in that year. We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or every worker in the United States could now be taking every other year off from work -- with pay."

What happened? We got greedy. Our standard of living increased. We kept working the same number of hours, but producing more, and then working even more hours and producing even more, and then, since there were more goods being produced, we consumed them. We consumed far more than we needed. We became a consumer society. We are a nation of consumers. We are gluttons. The corporations which produced all of these consumer goods hired advertisers to convince us we needed, wanted, couldn't live without, and would become irresistible with these new consumer goods, but still, we are responsible at some level.

But of course, we weren't nearly as greedy as the corporations were and still are. It's in their best interest to turn us all into gluttons. That's how the corporations became obscenely wealthy, and that's why they're trying their hardest to turn every man, woman and child on the planet into a glutton, even though there aren't enough resources to produce everything they want to sell, and it will destroy the planet. All they see is wealth.

I'm not sure exactly what a 1948 standard of living entailed. I wasn't born until 1965. I think about how my standard of living differs from a 1948 standard, and some parts are higher, but some parts probably aren't that much higher. Most parts of my life are definitely much lower than my 2003 contemporaries' standard of living.

I use my computer daily. That would certainly have been a thing of science fiction to someone living in 1948. I wouldn't want to give up my computer. I have a phone. Not everyone did in 1948. My parents didn't get a phone until my mom was pregnant with me. I don't think I'd want to give up my phone either. Not that I talk to people on it very often, but I need my internet connection. So far, it sounds like I'm a glutton.

On the other hand, my townhouse was built as an apartment during World War II as housing for people working at Willow Run. It's 850 square feet. So I think that would be comparable to someone from 1948. It was refinished in the late 1980's, and air conditioning was installed, but I don't run it that often. If I didn't have it, I probably wouldn't miss it very often.

I don't watch television. I don't have a cell phone. I don't own a car. I've never flown anywhere. I own so few pairs of shoes, I'm in danger of having my "girl license" revoked.

I don't know if my standard of living is at the 1948 level if you average everything out, but I think it's probably closer to 1948 than to the typical 2003 level.

So what about those of us who didn't get greedy? Why are we still working 40 hours a week, along with everyone else? Why is 40 hours full-time? Why not 20 or 25 hours? I said earlier it wasn't fair for some people to remain idle and not do their share while other people do all the work, but isn't that what unemployment is? Corporations downsize and lay people off, forcing fewer and fewer people to do the work formerly done by many. Many people routinely work far more than 40 hours. In some occupations, 60 or 80-hour weeks are the norm.

Companies would rather have fewer people working for them, especially if they don't have to pay them overtime, and especially if they have to pay them benefits. They're paying each worker a certain amount, so they want to get as much work out of the worker as possible. But how productive can someone be when they're exhausted? How many mistakes are made because people are tired?

People are not machines. People need to rest.

We have one class of people working 40 or more hours a week. They get paid vacation, but in some cases it's only two weeks a year. In other cases it's more, but they never get around to taking their full allotted time because they have too much work to do. They're tired. Most of these people wish they worked fewer hours, but that's just not the way the job is structured.

We have another class of people working part-time jobs that don't pay benefits. Some of these people really are working part-time. Others are working two or three or even four part-time jobs to make enough money to live on, because they can't find a full-time job. Because part-time jobs pay less per hour than full-time jobs, these people are working an incredible number of hours per week, and of course, they have no benefits. In addition, they have the time and expense of transportation between the jobs, which may be at some distance from one another. They often take one of the part-time jobs thinking it's a foot in the door to a possible full-time job later, only to find out the company is now less likely to hire them, not more likely.

There are two classes of unemployed people. The unemployed who actually show up as unemployed in statistics, i.e., recently unemployed people who have some hope that they will someday find a job again, and the invisible unemployed. Some aren't in the statistics because they're students or have decided to retire or start a business rather than look for a job, but most of the invisible unemployed are people who have given up all hope of ever finding a job or who never had any hope to start with. Our society just looks the other way and doesn't even count these people in the unemployment rate, so we always pretend it's lower than it really is. We turn our back on the people we've failed.

It's time to face the reality. There aren't enough jobs for all the people. Rather than lay people off, can't we reduce work hours and spread the work out more equitably? Rather than have some people sit by idly while others collapse from exhaustion, can't we restructure our work hours? The Japanese have a word that means "death by overwork:" karoshi. How familiar do we want to become with that?

In the last couple of decades, Americans have worked more and more hours. People are working longer days which add up to longer weeks. They're taking less vacation time. More people don't get any vacation time at all. Leisure has become a foreign concept (German workers get six weeks of vacation in addition to a shorter work week. Together, an average German manufacturing worker works nine fewer weeks per year than an average American worker). It doesn't mean we're happy about it. Polls show most of us would like to work fewer hours, not surprisingly.

Life shouldn't just be working, sleeping, and getting ready for work. Is that what any of us thought life should be like? Are we having fun yet?