Working time
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Working time refers to the period of time that an individual spends at paid occupational labor. Unpaid labors such as housework are not considered part of the working week. Many countries regulate working time by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays and a maximum number of working hours per week.
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History
Popular belief depicts pre-industrial life as grim and full of toil. While the standard of living then certainly does not match that of today, several labor historians have pointed out that "full of toil" fails to describe pre-industrial life accurately. In those times, non-enslaved people generally worked fewer hours per year than they do today, though on a less regular cycle: their workweeks exceeded the modern standard during seasons when the extra work would be useful, but fell short of it during others. This depended on the productive system of the land. Intensive agriculture and pastoralism demand a variable amount of effort over the course of the year.
The industrial revolution made it easier to find work year-round, since this labor was not tied to the season, and artificial lighting made work possible for the greater part of the day. Peasants, often manipulated into positions of debt and disadvantage by individuals of higher social class, moved from the farms to the factories to work at labor that was tedious and dangerous, for long periods of time. Technological advances during early capitalism made it possible to extract upwards of seventy hours per week of working time from a person. Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery in spite of the suffering of workers. Records indicate that work schedules as arduous as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week, were demanded of wage earners. This nineteenth century work schedule was the most intense work effort in the history of labor.
Over the twentieth century, work hours declined by almost half, mostly because of rising wages brought by economic growth, with a supporting role from trade unions and collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about forty hours after World War II. The decline has continued at a slower pace in Europe - for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000 - but not in North America. Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily.
Annual hours over eight centuries
| Time | Type of worker | Annual hours |
|---|---|---|
| 13th century | Adult male peasant, U.K. | 1620 hours |
| 14th century | Casual laborer, U.K. | 1440 hours |
| Middle ages | English worker | 2309 hours |
| 1400-1600 | Farmer-miner, adult male, U.K. | 1980 hours |
| 1840 | Average worker, U.K. | 3105-3588 hours |
| 1850 | Average worker, U.S. | 3150-3650 hours |
| 1987 | Average worker, U.S. | 1949 hours |
| 1988 | Manufacturing workers, U.K. | 1856 hours |
| 2000 | Average worker, Germany | 1362 hours |
(Compiled by Juliet B. Schor from various sources; Germany figure from OECD data)
Importance
Working time is a quantity that can be measured for an individual or, in the aggregate, for a society. In the latter case, a 40-hour workweek would imply that employed individuals within the society, on average, worked 40 hours per week. Most often, the concern of sociologists and policy-makers focuses on the aggregate variables. If an individual works 60 hours per week, it could simply mean that he or she is enthusiastic about his or her job, not a cause for concern. However, if long workweeks become the norm in a society, these hours almost certainly are not voluntary, and it represents a drought of leisure and a threat to public health.
Each society's definition of the ideal workweek differs, but most industrialized nations place this value between 30 and 40 hours per week, during non-vacation time, with between 3 and 5 weeks of (usually paid) vacation. Societies differ in their ability to realize this: For example, in the United States, many workers are afforded little vacation time, or even none at all.
If the work week is too short, this represents underemployment of labor and human capital. This will tend to result in lower real incomes, and a lower standard of living.
Alternately, a workweek that is too long will result in stress-related health problems, on the large scale, as well as a drought of leisure. Furthermore, children are likely to receive less attention from overworked parents, and childrearing is likely to be subjectively worse. The exact ways in which excessive workweeks affect culture, public health, and education are debated, but the existence of such a danger is undisputed.
Furthermore, if demand for labor remains constant, increasing working time for employed workers will correspondingly reduce the number of workers. Firms will lay off employees, and unemployment results. This is profitable for companies and for the upper classes, but a losing situation for all within the labor force: Employed individuals are worked more hours than they wish (if salaried, for constant pay) while individuals who would like work cannot find it.
Several nations have imposed limits on working time in order to combat unemployment. This has been done both on a national level, as in France's 35-hour workweek, and on the company-union level, for example the agreement between Volkswagen and its union to temporarily reduce the workweek to 29 hours to preserve jobs. This policy is controversial among economists.
The work week
The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday through Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. This stereotypical structure of the work week has led to the coining of phrases reflecting shared states of mind or moods among workers as they traverse the week.
Mondayitis
'Mondayitis' or "having a case of the Mondays" is a feeling of weariness and apathy that some workers express when starting the work week on Monday. The phrase entered the pop culture lexicon after its use in the 1999 American comedy film Office Space. Many individuals claim that the "condition" is in fact a diagnosable illness based on the human circadian rhythm being incompatible with a 40-hour work week. However, the medical credibility of the condition is a matter of debate.
Hump day
'Hump day' is a synonym for Wednesday. The idiom is based on the notion that if a worker has made it half-way through the week, struggling uphill from Monday, that the rest of the week is an easier slide toward Friday and the weekend; the end is in sight from the hump, the top of the hill.
TGIF
Template:Main 'TGIF' is an acronym meaning "Thank God It's Friday" or "Thank Goodness It's Friday", an expression of relief that the work week is finally over and that even if the weekend is not full of leisure, at least the drudgery of the workplace is temporarily over.
Differences among countries and recent trends
Western Europe
In most Western European countries, working time is gradually decreasing, although the decrease does not nearly keep pace with the increase in productivity. The European Union's working time directive imposes a 48 hour maximum working week that applies to every member state except the United Kingdom (which has an opt out). France has enacted a 35-hour workweek by law, and similar results have been produced in other countries such as Germany through collective bargaining. A major reason for the significantly lower working time in Europe than in the United States is a greater amount of paid annual leave. Fixed employment comes with four to six weeks of vacation as standard.
United States
In the United States, by contrast, working time has actually been increasing.(disputed — see [[: talk:Working time#{{{1|Disputed}}}|talk page]]) Many workers put in longer hours than the forty hour standard. Two weeks of paid annual leave is standard, with some workers receiving three weeks after long periods of service. Frequently, workers are afraid to take up their full entitlement in case it might jeopardise their job security.
One reason for the return to longer hours is a work-oriented culture. For example, in industries like investment banking, a forty hour workweek is considered "slacker" behavior and may result in job loss. Also, some nations enforce their workweek policies more stringently than others, the United States being an example of a country where workweek policies are not strictly enforced. The U.S. legally allows many types of compensation, and two of the most common are wage and salary labor. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week basis. The 40-hour workweek, in effect, applies only to wage laborers. Legally, they may be required to work more than forty hours, but firms are required to pay time-and-a-half, or 1.5 times the worker's base wage, for each hour of work past forty. In some states firms are required to pay double-time, or twice the base rate, for each hour of work past 60. This has two major effects: First of all, it provides an incentive for companies to limit working time. Secondly, it makes these additional hours more desirable for the worker. In fact, it is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers, due to the premium pay. Unions often treat overtime as a desirable commodity when negotiating how these opportunities shall be partitioned among union members.
Salaried workers are not covered by overtime protections. At the time the laws were written, most salaried workers were relatively autonomous members of the upper-middle and upper classes. A side effect is that if a salaried worker's working hours is increased, his or her per-hour pay is effectively reduced, resulting in cheaper labor. From 1973 to 1996, average hours per worker in the US went up 19% [2].
Australia
In Australia, between 1974 and 1997 no marked change took place in the average amount of time spent at work by Australians of "prime working age" (that is, between 25 and 54 years of age). Throughout this period the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australians (including those who did not spend any time at work) remained stable at between 27 and 28 hours per week. This unchanging average, however, masks a significant redistribution of work from men to women. Between 1974 and 1997 the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australian men fell from 45 to 36 hours per week, while the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australian women rose from 12 to 19 hours per week. In the period leading up to 1997, the amount of time Australian workers spent at work outside the hours of 9 am to 5 pm on weekdays also increased (Bittman & Rice, 2002).
Trends
See also
References
Further reading
- Deirdre McCann (2005), Working Time Laws: A global perspective, ILO, ISBN 92-2-117323-2
- Madeleine Bunting (2004), Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives, HarperCollins
External links
- Hours of Work in U.S. History from EH.NET by Robert Whaples
- PhotoSydney: Overworked examines the issue of overwork in Australia.
- The Guardian, August 20, 2005, "Work until you drop: how the long-hours culture is killing us" (UK focus)
- Evans, J., D. Lippoldt and P. Marianna(2001), Trends in Working Hours in OECD Countries, OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers n° 45, OECD, Paris. [3]ang:Weorcdæg
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