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2. A reasonable workweek On April 6, 1933, a bill was passed by the Senate to establish a thirty-hour workweek and the House of representatives was on the verge of passing it. Unfortunately for all of us, it didn’t quite make it, as the Roosevelt administration – you figure out which one – didn’t approve of the idea. You can read more about this failure in Take Back Your Time, a book of essays on work edited by John de Graaf. Throughout history, the numbers of hours that made up the weekly grind has generally decreased. This is true for the majority of the working class even though some did put in more hours than the norm. Somewhere along the way in the last quarter century or so, this number started to rise once more to the point that sixty hours seemed to be a “reasonable” request of employees. I worked on a truck farm in the late 1950’s, including Saturdays during school in the spring and fall. During the summer, we worked eight hours each day from Monday through Friday as well as a half-day on Saturday, when we got paid – in cash. Farmer George probably figured I didn’t have a checking account or else he was printing his own money. The cash payment also gave me the opportunity to skim a few pennies off the top if I had to turn over my pay to my parents. At that time and for a few years to follow, most of the jobs involved a workweek of forty hours. When I began teaching, my day of instruction may have been from 8 am to 2 pm, but it generally involved more than eight hours, depending on circumstances. After all, it is a good idea to prepare a lesson before class – your department chairman might observe you and you don’t want him to get the wrong idea – and I did volunteer at times for after school activities. I never did do any time calculations as to what I really earned by the hour, as I was too busy preparing for geometry class. In the summer of 1975, I began a new career in the business world of computers and I was required to work a thirty-seven and one half hour week. Assuming this constant progression for the better, you can see that today, if the maximum labor time happened to be thirty hours per week, that number would be appropriate and fitting and not unexpected. However, we know that this idea is like seeing an honest politician. It just isn’t happening since employers are demanding sixty hours per week from the help. I will get into some of the reasons why today we are burdened by this long week – if we have a job. For now, let me try to show why the sixty-hour workweek just isn’t good for anyone – the reply Gary Schandling gave after being questioned by his lady friend after an evening of engaging with her without buying her a ring, if you know what I mean. This long week might have come about because a project at the office had three employees working forty hours each. A decree came down from upper management to cut staff in the group, going from three to two workers. In this country, that is what is known as downsizing but in England, it’s called being “made redundant.” I like to be realistic and call it getting fired. In our example, this meant that the remaining unfortunates had the thrill of now contributing a sixty-hour agenda each week. No one can “work” that many hours. In fact there is not a soul who could be at the office that long during the week and not get tired. It overwhelms me just considering the possibility. How do you think these two employees feel? However, let us look at these two workers and their reaction to their “promotion.” The first week would result in a certain amount of productivity, but quite short of that sixty number requirement. After all, this goal means working ten hours a day for six days a week or twelve for five days. Either of these is nothing more than a killer schedule. Psychologically, they’re off to a rough start. By the time our two employees have finished for the week, they are rewarded with a one or two-day weekend where about the only thing they can do is rest. It wouldn’t be enough time to get ready for the next week, so by the time Monday came around, each employee would probably not want to go full assault after the weekend. Each would need to have his batteries recharged, being somewhat burned out, resulting in a week of even less productivity. The cycle would continue with a few outcomes. First, less and less would be accomplished as the weeks wore on and each employee would be frazzled. Second, burn out would continue and proceed at an exponential pace, as would stress and health problems. Obviously, the company bottom line would suffer as much as those two workers, who may even wind up sick or in the hospital, or even worse. I should mention a few words about burnout. This phenomenon occurs on a few levels: over a short period like a week as well as over the years. When I entered the computer world, someone related to me that burnout generally shows up there after about ten or twelve years. I was working a contract at Xerox in Rochester in 1986 when I felt the sting. If you have been paying attention and can do the mathematics, this prediction was right on the money – eleven years in my case. In the treatise of our two workers under consideration, the burnout came almost immediately. Just thinking about the responsibility of sixty hours each week is enough to cause stress and concern. If either worker is hospitalized, it means someone else will have to be trained. That situation will involve a significant period of time and investment for the company and once a new candidate is hired, this same scenario of stress might play out. Even if neither individual has to miss work, you can see that projects just aren’t getting done in the group. Someone might say – probably a manager – that they can routinely do sixty-hour weekly gigs without any difficulty. Well, maybe they are at the office for that time, but I doubt that much gets done. I worked a ten-week contract in Orlando at Sea World for a workaholic who felt that fifty hour weekly stints were nothing. He could do it, so why couldn’t we? We all wound up putting in ten-hour days. Besides being at the office for that time, I also had a ninety-minute commute each way, so I was saddled – pun intended – with a thirteen-hour day. That meant that if it took me a half hour for shaving, showering and breakfast, starting work at 7 am meant I had to rise at 5 in the morning. Assuming they paid me for lunch or I didn’t have to take it – I could eat at my desk while coding – I would be home by 6:30 in the evening. As you can see, that was a rather long day. How did I do it? As I mentioned, the contract was about two months or so, so I psyched myself out. The first week wasn’t bad and at the end of it I told myself I had nine weeks to go. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and just kept going. Not having a contract for a couple months and needing to pay the mortgage was an incentive as well. Of course, if management used their heads for more than nose and ear rings, they could have started the project a month earlier and let us work forty hour weeks for three months or until the job was done. That approach would not cost the company a cent more and may even have saved a few bucks. In other instances, I worked on projects that seemed to have no limit to the hours each week. In addition, I had over an hour commute each way on too many occasions. This made for really long days, which I could have done without. Besides the big bucks, the Y2K projects that I became involved in brought truly long hours from Monday to Friday. The good news for me on any of those projects was that since it was a contract, I would be doing it for a limited amount of time and it would eventually end. Had it became too much, I could always have given my two weeks notice. Health is so much more important than money any day. The same thing can’t be said for our two employees. They may not have the option to leave, although that may have been the best thing for them. The real solution to the problem that management should have seen is to have four people, each working a thirty-hour week. This idea will result in a host of benefits for employees and employer alike. There will be more productivity, happier and more rested workers. This proposal means everyone is putting in a six-hour day – what a change. Laborers won’t experience that much stress, if any at all, and there shouldn’t be any health problems to speak of. No doubt, some head honcho will complain of costs as well as profits but I shouldn’t have to bring home the point that our two workers alone almost brought the company to ruin – or at least the department – so that situation needs to be scrapped. It will cost more, but you need to spend money to make money, so what’s the big deal? You will save a great deal of money because people won’t be deserting the corporation or committing hara-kiri, saving the organization replacement costs and cleanup expenses on the premises. I worked at one company where an individual asked for a well-earned raise but she was turned down. She left and the company wound up spending more getting her replacement and training that new person than had they simply compensated this veteran for her past efforts with a much deserved increase in pay. People in management sometimes do dumb things! There are a few other things that can be done to make the company better. Students in high school wind up with at least two months vacation between school years – provided they don’t attend summer school. For collegians, the break is closer to three months. However, following commencement day and with the arrival of a full time job, the graduate realizes that her vacation will turn out to be a mere two weeks. That could be a bit hard to accept. Granting each new employee at least a four-week vacation will change this. Simultaneously, those who have been with the company for some time shouldn’t have to wait so long for increments in their vacation time. Many countries have implemented these ideas, very successfully. Happier workers make better, more productive employees. They won’t need or want to look for other jobs, either. You don’t need to spend a cent on any kind of study to come to that conclusion. Other considerations by management to alleviate problems as well as increase efficiency on the job include telecommuting, the four-day workweek and true flex time. The first means less stress, less road rage and less gas used, a great boon to the planet. Environmentalists will be leaping for joy in the streets! (They may want to consider moving over to the grass – you know how some people drive.) The reason why working at home is not allowed too often is because management can’t even control the help at the office, so how do you expect them to have a handle on the workers when they are away from the shop? Maybe the answer isn’t to keep workers in the office. These are all great ideas to make the company better and who can argue with that? Today, it seems that corporations care nothing about the earth, their products or the people they employ. Corporations in the past may have acted even less ethically. The only considerations seem to be the bottom line, the stockholders and the owners. For success, you really need only three things: a good product, customers and workers who make sure that the goods are available. Any creation that is toxic and dangerous, such as bombs and blue vinyl, isn’t going to help the air, land, sea and people who work in the plant or the consumer. Thus the product needs to be safe and something that is desired. Without employees, the greatest gadget in the world is useless since it can’t make it to the market. By concentrating on what is to be sold – goods or services – and the workers, there need be no concern for owners or shareholders as each will be satisfied. You may not even have to worry about the customers! With neither good product nor people behind the scenes, there can be no profit and the company will fail. Let us say that a business is successful but management wants to improve matters. This can be done by hiring more help and making the product better or perhaps even adding some new items. Allowing the goods to become inferior or downsizing and outsourcing will only result in the demise of the company, or at least no betterment. This has been shown on too many occasions, as studies have pointed out. If the customers refuse to buy, the products will sit in the warehouse, but the shortage of workers will contribute to the end for the corporation if the product is worthwhile. Along the way to success, the owners may need to accept fewer profits overall, but they should accept the fact that less cash in their pockets is much better than none at all. After all, how many millions does one really need?

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