Writings
At
Work in the Digital Age:
Or
Tips to Surviving the Second Industrial Revolution
MY
GOOD FRIEND
doesn't have much patience for ruminating on Americans'
tendency to overwork and overspend.
Three
months ago, Peter was among 7,000 employees laid off
by a major firm in its efforts to weather the ongoing
U.S. economic downturn. Yet when he, his wife and
son visited Washington last month, I was surprised
to see how terrific he looked. In fact the whole family
seemed healthy, happy and at peace. Peter had been
working freelance, he'd been writing for the first
time in years, he'd begun running again and had taken
off twenty pounds, and he'd become fast friends with
his four-year-old son, Mathew. His wife, Trish, had
made the transition from freelance to a part-time
position with a company that had made her an offer
too good to pass up. She seemed content and empowered.
This was simply a different family than the harried,
disconnected people who had visited us a year earlier.
And
yet, though my friend was well aware of the remarkable
changes in his family's lives and relationships, to
his mind, the transformation had come at a great price.
They owned a large home with a big mortgage to pay,
and they were still making payments on the Camry and
the minivan. My offer that they stay at our modest
apartment rather than at the Hyatt downtown was politely
declined. And a good portion of our weekend together
was spent ducking in and out of shops. Over dinner,
I found my conversational forays into the attractions
of scaling back and living lightly weren't much in
line with Peter's intent to add some shine to his
CV with a stellar new entry and make up for lost time
in supporting the lifestyle to which he and his family
had grown accustomed.
Over
the past 15 years, our friendship has weathered vast
distances and differences. And prior to Peter's visit,
I'd felt deeply concerned and frustrated about his
situation. Yet, as we said our goodbyes, I was struck
by the thought that, like so many of us Americans,
my friend was perhaps as much a victim of his personal
choices as of the system.
Running
on Empty
There
is no question that, as a people, Americans' most
deeply engrained habits of working and consuming are
unique. And it's a good thing for the environment
that that's the case. One scientific study reports
that if every person in the world were to consume
like the average American, we'd need four more planets
to supply the raw materials and absorb the waste.
Yet
for many, Americans' work and spend habits are a cause
for pride and celebration. When the Commerce Department
reported last year that the productivity of American
workers rose 2.5 percent over the previous five years,
the business headlines were self-congratulatory and
Wall Street cheered.
But
what have these productivity gains done for the average
American? We're producing more commodities and wealth
by Tuesday than we once produced after a full week
of work, and yet our leisure time is shrinking. American
workers now produce our 1948 annual standard of living
by July, yet we're still hard at it in August when
our European counterparts are on their long summer
holidays. Instead of using some of our treasured productivity
gains for personal fulfillment and family fun, we're
shuffling into the new millennium, sleepy-eyed, briefcase
in hand, to work something that's approaching a six-day
workweek.
According
to one report by the Families and Work Institute,
the average employed American now works over 47 hours
per week. Those are longer hours than we worked 50
years ago, despite a doubling in national productivity.
Add to that a half-hour commute (which would be blessedly
short for many Americans) and you have a workweek
that exceeds fifty-two hours. The Economic Policy
Institute reports that a typical husband-and-wife
household worked 500 more hours in 2000 than they
did in 1990. In more than four out of five marriages
today, both husband and wife work outside the home,
putting an especially heavy strain on working parents
and their children.
International
comparisons perhaps most clearly reflect that American
productivity in the workplace may be reaching the
point of diminishing returns. Americans now work more
hours per year than the people of every other industrialized
nation. We now work over two weeks a year more than
the average Japanese, and two full months more than
the average German. These days the average European
gets about three times as many days of paid vacation
as her counterpart in the U.S. The average American
takes 15 years to earn the vacation time that an Australian
gets after one year on the job.
Consider
also that after passing the 35-hour workweek into
law a little over three years ago, France surpassed
the U.S. in terms of productivity per hour for fiscal
year 1999-2000. It seems a more awake worker is a
more productive worker. Add to this that the productivity
rates of the Netherlands grew faster than the U.S.
throughout the 1990s. And nations including Denmark,
Sweden and Germany are matching America's pace of
growth step for step - despite the fact that they're
enjoying all that personal time to devote to their
families, their communities and themselves.
After
our recent return from many years living in Asia,
my hard-working wife is still reeling from the sudden
absence of holidays to which she (and I) had grown
accustomed. Beyond this, unlike the situation in Japan,
(as well as France, Sweden, Italy and many other countries),
my wife and I have felt the sudden impact of being
dependent on an employer for our health care needs.
What's
wrong with this picture? Why on Earth are we doing
this to our selves, our families and the environment?
To
be sure, there's a slew of macroeconomic rationale
and explanation as to how we arrived at this state
of affairs. And many of these factors can be out of
our easy control. Competitive work environments, as
well as fears surrounding corporate downsizing and
financial insecurity, can provide powerful incentives
to overwork.
At
a more systemic level, many scholars suggest that
what we're really experiencing here is a second Industrial
Revolution, every bit as powerful and disruptive as
the first. According to many experts, North Americans
are working more than ever in large part because of
new information and communications technologies that
bring about higher demand and expectations for more
output, performance and service. These technologies
also have the effect of reconfiguring traditional
jobs, supplanting some forms of labor, and realigning
organizational and management structures throughout
entire industries.
A study released this past summer by the New York
Federal Reserve Board suggests that technology is
indeed fueling America's recent productivity growth
spurt. This study found that those industry sectors
that had most aggressively adopted information technologies
had been those that had grown the fastest.
Accompanying
this technological remapping of the economy has been
an ever-increasing polarization of the American workforce
and income distribution. In the year 2000, Business
Week calculated that cash compensation for CEOs
at 365 top U.S. companies jumped 18 percent during
a year when shareholder values were plummeting. At
that time, annual compensation awarded to the country's
leading business executives already exceeded the salaries
of their lowest-ranking employees by a ratio of 400
to 1. The Council on International and Public Affairs
in New York estimates that we'd have to go back to
1929, right before the Great Depression, to find wage
and wealth inequality of the magnitude we're seeing
today. That leaves a whole lot of Americans scrambling
for the remaining, evermore slender slice of the pie
at the dawn of this new millennium.
Taken
all together, that's a great deal of instability and
insecurity tossed into the macroeconomic mix. It doesn't
take a great deal of clairvoyance to perceive that
Americans are likely to clock more hours when we're
feeling both man and machine breathing down our necks,
offering to scoop up that job.
The
Hard Work of Owning Up
And
then again, the problem sometimes lies in our own
priorities.
The
fact is that, more often than not, we choose to remain
on this merry-go-round of accelerating production
and consumption, of doing and getting more. In this
vicious cycle of bigger houses, more work, bigger
cars, more work, bigger debt, more work, we too often
do violence to our relationships, the subtle demands
of the soul, and even to the environment that sustains
us.
Yet
when we look up from the grindstone and beyond our
cultural biases, we can see that it simply doesn't
have to be this way. In fact, back in the 1930s, the
Senate passed a bill proposing a 30-hour workweek,
only to back down in the face of opposition from the
business community. Forty years later, President Nixon
again broached the subject of a four-day workweek
for Americans.
One
personal option now being exercised by a small but
growing number of Americans is to slow down, scale
back, pay down debt and work a reduced schedule. Of
course, this may not be an immediate option for everyone,
especially those who don't have a safety net, who
risk the loss of health coverage and retirement plans.
But today's American workers would surely benefit
by first taking some time to re-assess our cultural
notions of work and success.
Think
about how much time each week you spend at work, commuting,
carpooling kids to activities, and even de-stressing
at the end of a long day. How does that total look
when compared to the number of hours you spend relaxing,
socializing, reading, volunteering and caring for
children?
Consider
some alternatives to the typical workweek: flextime
lets you rearrange your work schedule to accommodate
childcare or other activities. Part-time work is also
a viable option in a two-income household; savings
on daycare, a second car, domestic help and take-out
food may make up for that loss in income. Job swapping
with coworkers is an excellent way to learn new skills,
and job sharing allows you to split responsibilities
with a colleague and cut your office time in half.
Or exploit some of the liberating effects of the new
communications technologies - try telecommuting, work
in your slippers from the comfort of your home, and
cut down on the expenses, hassle and pollution of
the daily commute.
If
you're inclined to take your convictions into the
public sphere, there are a great number of resources
for getting educated on the issues and joining with
other like-minded individuals to address these issues
at the local, state or national level. Numerous groups
help individuals evaluate their work and financial
priorities. Others advocate for new policies and employer
programs offering part-time or flexible work options.
A few organizations are even considering a national
campaign for a four-day workweek. For more details,
you can check some of the resources listed below.
In
the meantime, though we haven't spoken much since
that weekend, I know Peter's sorting through his options.
I imagine he's still looking for that killer job -
when he's not out with his clients, running, or determinedly
teaching his little boy to play poker. Who knows,
perhaps he'll discover that this life and these relationships
thrust upon him a few months ago are somehow just
enough, and that that hunger for something more, something
bigger, someone's else's American dream, will fade
away if you let it.
Easy
First Steps
Keep
a time diary for 4 to 5 days, recording the time you
spend on activities such as shopping, driving, working,
playing with kids, cooking, yard work and family activities.
When you're finished, sit down alone or with the important
people in your life and figure out whether your current
time allocation is in line with your values and priorities.
If it's not, start exploring possibilities for change.
Resources
New
Road Map Foundation, PO Box 15981, Seattle WA, 98115.
(206) 527-0437, www.newroadmap.org.
Seeds
of Simplicity, P.O. Box 9955, Glendale, CA 91226.
(818) 247-4332, www.seedsofsimplicity.org.
Northwest
Earth Institute, 506 SW Sixth Avenue, Suite 1100,
Portland, Oregon 97204. 503/227-2807, www.nwei.org.
Simple
Living Networks, Post Office Box 233, Trout Lake,
WA 98650. www.simpleliving.net.
And
Juliet Schor's The Overworked American and The Overspent American are considered by many
to be the definitive works on these issues. |
