The Chris Moeller Archives

The 40-hour workweek is wrecking the economy

Since World War II, worker productivity in the United States has gone through the roof. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, the average American is able to accomplish in an 11 hour week what took him or her 40 hours in 1950. Additionally, related "polls and surveys have shown that people in countries with the standard of living that the U.S. enjoyed in the 1950s are no less satisfied than today's Americans." In other words, there's no evidence that above a certain level of work to afford the basic necessities, there's any appreciable gain in happiness or contentedness, according to people's attitudes.

Last night, I watched the documentary film "Food, Inc" online. Watching the images of hogs and cattle crammed into confined spaces trudging through piles of their excrement, it was hard not to think also of the American worker. Our conditioning in the workplace, as it serves the interests of Corporate America, is likewise counter to the march of evolution, and it's increasingly killing us. Too much work makes us sicker and more prone to disease. Measurable worker productivity has nearly quadrupled in half a century, yet there have been no concessions by management during this time in return for our backbreaking and often soul-crushing service.

Why are their millions out of work? Well, in addition to the real loss of manufacturing-related jobs and others, consider the proposition that there's simply not as much work to go around when so many of us are being forced to hog it for ourselves. Coupled with a fucked-up health care system geared towards maximizing profit, living costs heightened by overwork have skyrocketed, and increased work hours means higher energy costs also for both businesses and their employees.

Two weeks of paid vacation time annually is ludicrous when we compare it with the six weeks that is customary for workers in Germany. Plainly put, Germans live better than we do. And why is this? Turns out that it has a lot to do with the United States and the New Deal. Chicago attorney and author Thomas Geoghegan has just written a book that outlines how Germany and much of the rest of Europe was rebuilt in our (better) image after the Allied victory. They got it right, and somewhere along the way, we lost it. As their societies were being rebuilt, ours was being dismantled by "neoliberalist" greed. German workers are better paid, their health coverage is better, they work less, they're more unionized, their education costs less, and they're beating us senseless in business to boot, according to Geoghegan. Germany leads the world in exports. America's business leaders still operate under the premise that robbing from your workers helps to grow the store. Statistics say otherwise.

posted by CM @ 10:57 AM