February 25, 2023

Diamond Crater

Julie Anderson sings about her favorite things in the Sound of Music. Do you have time to enjoy yours.

The Four-day Workweek.

Two days ago, ten inches of snow fell by my home in the hills of Portland. The forecast is for more snow next week. It took double the time and triple the effort to shovel my drive than it did last year. I found it to be invigorating. As I worked, I stopped to chat with the dozens of men and women walking dogs or carrying sleds by my house. The best hill in my neighborhood is across from my property. Yesterday, the hill rang with the screams and laughter of children. I too was counted as one of the crazies, speeding downhill.

Without having to work, fathers and mothers were having fun with their families. Gone was fear and worry that the pandemic wasn’t over. The world was as it should be with people having a good time.

I was reminded of a trial conducted in the U.K. It tested the four-day workweek where employees received the same pay for a thirty-two-hour week as for forty-eight hours. The results were so positive that most of the sixty-one firms involved say they will continue the policy. Fifteen percent of supervisors and employees agreed that no amount of money could convince them to return to a five-day workweek.

Contrary to expectations, corporate revenue increased and absenteeism and resignations fell. Participant well-being registered high on the list of reasons. With less fatigue and more time to spend with children and elders, people felt less stressed. They had fewer guilt feelings from being away from their children. People who worked in nonprofits and professional services spent more of their free time exercising. Those in construction and manufacturing jobs reported declines in burnout and sleep problems. Having a better work-life balance was the main reason sighted for the trial’s success.

After reading anthropologist, Yval Noah Harari’s book, Sapiens, I thought about how work-life balance was an advantage for prehistoric foraging groups. According to Harari, hunter-gatherers worked fewer hours than people do today. Foragers had more nutritious varied diets, stronger immune systems, and more time for leisure. It wasn’t until the agricultural revolution that diets became limited due to the variety of crops that could be successfully farmed. Agriculture ushered in a need for permanent housing that in turn affected population growth and the spread of disease.

Growing out of a desire to make life easier, farming had the opposite effect. Planting crops and harvesting them was hard to do and less nutritious than foraging. Female foragers breastfed children until four or five years, limiting how often they were conceived. Village and city women weaned infants earlier, giving birth annually. They needed the labor. The need to feed, clothe, and shelter large families, required more work hours than before.

The industrial revolution didn’t make life easier. Most laborers worked twelve-hour days. In 196, Illinois became the first state to pass a law for an eight-hour workday. It didn’t get much traction elsewhere until Henry Ford adopted the eight-hour, 5-day work week for his employees in 1926. Ford touted that workers need time to spend with their families. It took another twelve years for labor unions, advocates, and lobbyists before President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, requiring employers to dispense overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.

Despite current laws on the books, a 2022 Gallup World Poll shows that the average worker spends 41.36 hours per week on the job. Those who switched to remote work, spend even more hours working. Clever employers find ways to get around the law by classifying employees as exempt or independent contractors not entitled to be paid overtime pay. Other tricks include; working off the clock, averaging hours over a two or four-week pay period, and misclassifying workers by calling them salaried. Many immigrants and illegal migrants, work dawn to dusk, six or seven days a week–some two several jobs to do so.

Long hours are common for executives as well. Thinking they will work hard and retire at thirty-five, executives are surprised when mortgages, cars, and college tuition don’t allow that to happen. Harvard Business Review reports the fifty to seventy-hour workweek to be common, though a slippery slope that can lead to disaster. The U.S. has fewer days off for vacations and holidays than any first-world county.

Following is a list of professions that tend to require long hours; Health care providers, corporate executives, sales managers, commercial hunting and fishing workers, teachers, lawyers, truck drivers, firefighters, water transportation workers, construction workers, derrick operators, agricultural workers, mining and extraction workers. Feeling the pinch of extended work hours, and on their way to burnout, many are asking, “Is this all there is to life?”

The thirty-two-hour workweek is being discussed worldwide. But will it work in the U.S.? It was tried in Iceland to great success, the Spanish government will shortly start a three-year trial run. Belgium’s new reform package, entitling workers to a four-day, thirty-eight-hour workweek, gives workers the right to turn off devices and ignore work-related messages after hours without fear of reprisal. Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill incentivizing 32 hours, and California has a stalled one in its state legislature. Does it make sense?

From 1979 to 2020, the productivity of the typical U.S. worker increased sixty-two percent, while the average pay only increased seventeen percent. Company profits weren’t shared with most employees. Instead, profits went into the salaries of the top 20 percent, and to shareholders who make money from owning company stock. It is why the young people I speak to, are redefining what they want from life. I hear, “If I’m not seeing the benefit of increased productivity, what motivation is there to keep putting in 40 hours a week?” They may have a point. What do you think?

My Favorite Things

composed by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for The Sound of Music,

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Silver-white winters that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I’m feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don’t feel so bad…

References:

Jernandes, J. (2023) Dozens of U.K. companies will keep the 4-day workweek after a pilot program ends. NPR. retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158507132/uk-study-companies-four-day-workweek

Tiimsit, A. (2023) A four-day workweek pilot was so successful most firms say they won’t go back. The Washington Post. retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-work-week-results-uk/

Hewlett, S & Luce, C. (2006) Extreme Jobs: the Dangerous Allure of the 70-hour Workweek.Harvard Business Review. retrieved from https://hbr.org/2006/12/extreme-jobs-the-dangerous-allure-of-the-70-hour-workweek

Ward, M. & Llebowits, S. (2023) Maryland considers a bill incentivizing the 4-day workweek. Insider. Retrieved from WORK.