Welcome to the Working Week
Work has been eating up my bloggin’ time, and no, I don’t mean sneak-in blog time during regular work hours; I mean at 10 PM when I’m usually winding down and spilling some thoughts and refilling my sanity on this virtual page, but have recently been catching up on work overflow instead.
And, so I sit here wondering, did people really used to work a lot more? Or a lot less? How does the work time of different cultures compare today? And what other interesting things about working time might I find on, where else, Wikipedia?
Medieval Working Time Versus Today
First off, Wikipedia has these working hours statistics: in the 13th century, an adult male English peasant worked an average of 1620 hours a year. Today, an average U.S. worker works about 1949 hours a year.
Now, don’t feel bad if you’re working more hours than a 13th century peasant. If you’re average, you’re spending 24 minutes commuting to work in a futuristic machine blasting recorded music and rocketing an incredible 80 miles an hour on an Interstate highway! Don’t kid yourself; any 13th century peasant would work an extra 6 paltry hours a week if they could spend dang near an hour a day emmersed in the heretic miracle of canned rock ‘n’ roll at bullet speed.
And things could be worse…you could live in South Korea and work 2,390 hours per year.
And things could also be better: Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks.
Birth of the 40 Hour Work Week
Until the end of World War I, most workers worked six days a week. Finally, during the Great Depression, in 1938, the unions got the Fair Labor Standards Act passed. It capped the workweek at 44 hours (it didn’t get shortened to 40 hours until 1940). Part of the reason for a shorter work week was to spread scarce depression-era work across as many employees as possible.
But then came WWII, and corporations wanted workers to work as much as possible to nurture the burgeoning Military Industrial Complex.
Today’s Work Week Confusion
Today, it’s just darn hard to guess what’s going on. Some studies show that average work hours have declined, but the addition of spouses to the workforce has increased work hours per family, and declining work hours per job don’t reflect the increase in people working multiple jobs. And then there’s the big move away from hourly jobs to salaried job, and all the tricks corporations are playing to get fewer people to work longer hours (that means you) because, despite what it does to your health, fewer workers mean less health insurance payments for the employer. And, by definition, corporations are all about making bucks.
Read More: 40 hour work week, work time
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June 17th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
The old word “FEAR” is making people work longer hours. Everyone is afraid of loosing or being by passed at their jobs so that they are working longer and harder.
I learned a big lesson from my dad one day at quiting time. The foreman called out “pick up” which meant to pick up your tools and put them away as we were done for the day. As we were doing so I saw some very dark storm clouds approaching us, and looked at my dad and told him I was worried that if it turned out to be a big storm; it would knock down everything we had just put up.
Calm as can be, my father asked me what the foreman had just said. I replied pick up. He then told me that when the foreman yells pick up, that means we pick up our tools and take everything related to work and put it in the tool box and close it and leave everything there until the next morning. He said that if the storm did knock anything over we would put it back up the next morning.
From that day on I learned to leave anything related to work at work and not worry about it at home.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Good philosophy pelmo!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Good advice, Pelmo. Still, it’s hard to turn work off. Today’s gadgets…cell phones, laptops, handhelds, wifi connections…they’ve really blurred the line between “work” and “not at work.”
June 19th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Joe, you should try it. It is surprising how much easier something appears after you have spent a relaxing evening at home and then tackle it the next day. You will find yourself wondering why you worried so much about it the previous day.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Here is a true stat for ya on this topic from one of my recent posts:
Workers productivity has increased 76% but wages have increased less than 2% in the last 30 years.
If that doesn’t burn your ass, your medicated far too heavily. ;)
June 19th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Pelmo…that does really tick me off when I spend the last several hours of a day working on a hard problem I can’t solve, only to come in the next morning and fix it in a few seconds…Funny how the universe is self correcting that way, and pushing us to keep the work separated from non-work time.
Dusty…after reading that statistic, my backside is feeling really hot…I think it actually just burst into flames! ;-)
June 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
I have been lucky the last few years to find work that I am passionate about. It hasn’t seemed like work. Some of the work has been volunteering my time to assist others. Many days, it seems like I get more out of it than I put in.
I have noticed the danger of my avocations changing into vocations. Then it starts getting old and I feel less passionate and creative.
I think I’m going to experiment with how I eat and see if it helps me convert to a more humane work and lifestyle.
The French way. Lots of creative variety, make meals a social event. Kind of celebrate. Maybe I can get this new attitude to creep into other aspects of my life.
I wouldn’t be at all unhappy if I find myself with as yet unknown opportunities to live there.