The Case For A 21-Hour Work Week

[barts]

[Originally published at Co.EXIST, and republished here with author Michael Coren's permission, and Volconvo's thanks.]

A 21-hour work week would create jobs and stop the unsustainable cycle of rampant consumerism. Sure, it would also require a wholesale reordering of our economy, but that might happen whether we like it or not.

To save the world--or really to even just make our personal lives better--we will need to work less.

Time, like work, has become commodified, a recent legacy of industrial capitalism, where a controlled, 40-hour week in factories was necessary. Our behavior is totally out of step with human priorities and today’s economy. To lay the foundations for a "steady-state" economy--one that can continue running sustainably forever--a recent paper argues that it’s time for advanced developed countries transition to a normal 21-hour work week.

This does not mean a mandatory work week or leisure-time police. People can choose to work as long, or short, as they please. It’s more about resetting social and political norms. That is, the day when 1,092 hours of paid work per year becomes the "standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees, and everyone else."

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) says there is nothing natural or inevitable about what’s considered a "normal" 40-hour work week today. In its wake, many people are caught in a vicious cycle of work and consumption. They live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume things. Missing from that equation is an important fact that researchers have discovered about most material consumption in wealthy societies: so much of the pleasure and satisfaction we gain from buying is temporary, ephemeral, and mostly just relative to those around us (who strive to consume still more, in a self-perpetuating spiral).

The NEF argues we need to achieve truly happy lives, we need to challenge social norms and reset the industrial clock ticking in our heads. It sees the 21-hour week as integral to this for two reasons: it will redistribute paid work, offering the hope of a more equal society (right now too many are overworked, or underemployed). At the same time, it would give us all time for the things we value but rarely have time to do well such as care for our family, travel, read or continue learning (as opposed to feeding consumerism).

Not to mention, it may be the only way a modern global society won’t overwhelm the earth’s resources. Creating EU-level living standards for the entire world by 2050 would require a six-fold increase in the size of the global economy, with potentially devastating consequences. Instead of growing the economy, maybe we need to recalibrate society to make everyone happier and successful with less.

"The proposed shift towards 21 hours must be seen in terms of a broad, incremental transition to social, economic, and environmental sustainability," says the NEF in its report.

The challenges are great, none more so than figuring out how to make most of society be able to live on half of their current income. And no doubt, many will seize on this as socialism or worse. Many will object to being told that 21 hours is normal, or 80 hours is too much. But consider what John Maynard Keynes, (whose theories underpin much of the global response to the financial crises), said in 1930 about the goal of future societies. Keynes thought that by the start of the 21st century, we would work only 15 to 21 hours a week, and we would instead focus on "how to use freedom from pressing economic cares." As NEF writes: "Keynes was wrong in his forecast, but not at all wrong, it seems to us, to envisage a very different way of using time."

Michael Coren is the cofounder of the multimedia production studio + newsroom MajorPlanet Studios. He writes from San Francisco.

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[Jack]

It's worth considering, especially in light of this...

According to the Center for American Progress on the topic of work and family life balance, “in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.” I don’t care who stays home and who works in terms of gender (work opportunity equality for all – it’s a family choice). Either way, when all adults are working (single or with a partner), that’s a huge hit to the American family and free-time in the American household.

The U.S. is the ONLY country in the Americas without a national paid parental leave benefit. The average is over 12 weeks of paid leave anywhere other than Europe and over 20 weeks in Europe.

Zero industrialized nations are without a mandatory option for new parents to take parental leave. That is, except for the United States.

At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week; the U.S. does not.

In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week.

According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”
Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950.

One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.

There is not a federal law requiring paid sick days in the United States.

The U.S. remains the only industrialized country in the world that has no legally mandated annual leave.

In every country included except Canada and Japan (and the U.S., which averages 13 days/per year), workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30 – an entire month off, paid, every year.

The U.S. is the Most Overworked Nation in the World

[Apeman81]

To what avail?

If the 21 hour worker is paid based upon 21 hours instead of 40, his earning will be diminished. For what purpose would the worker voluntarily lower his earnings?

[barts]

To what avail?

If the 21 hour worker is paid based upon 21 hours instead of 40, his earning will be diminished. For what purpose would the worker voluntarily lower his earnings?

The ideal to move toward is fewer hours with equivalent pay.

[Apeman81]

The ideal to move toward is fewer hours with equivalent pay.

Thus inflating the cost of production, requiring a rise in cost to the consumer to purchase.

[barts]

Thus inflating the cost of production, requiring a rise in cost to the consumer to purchase.

All the while increasing the number of consumers, decreasing unemployment, decreasing underemployment, reducing the need for social security assistance, reducing crime, increasing leisure activities which stimulate the economy.

[Apeman81]

All the while increasing the number of consumers, decreasing unemployment, decreasing underemployment, reducing the need for social security assistance, reducing crime, increasing leisure activities which stimulate the economy.

The number of consumers, for the purpose of this discussion defined as employed workers, would increase. However, the imposition of a 21 hour work week cuts the productivity of a single worker by half, with no associated decrease in the cost of labor. Thus, instead of a single $1000/WEEK worker producing 10000 unit, it now cost the company $2000 in labor to produce 10000 units. That doubling of the cost of production must be recouped in order to allow further production. That dictates higher prices.

Thus your increased pool of workers faces a sharp inflation of the price of every good and service they seek to purchase. They wont have the funds for leisure activities, the price of which will increase as well. With exceptions like sleeping or unprotected sunbathing.

How does this plan compensate for the doubling of labor cost and resultant price increase?

[ruksak]

I would work 42 hours in a week and be rich.....now what?

[Apeman81]

I would work 42 hours in a week and be rich.....now what?

What? To be pilloried for greed, denying employment to another by hogging the work for your own avarice?

Do I smell tar heating up?

[Dieval]

I would work 42 hours in a week and be rich.....now what?

You greedy bastard! You're making the wealth gap even larger! How dare you even think of being wealthy!

We're so ingrained with having a 40 hour week that a change like this will never happen.

[ruksak]

What? To be pilloried for greed, denying employment to another by hogging the work for your own avarice?

Do I smell tar heating up?

Every man for himself, right? Is that not what America is all about?

What about overtime rates? Employeers would have to hire more people to complete the same tasks, and we all know that many folks don't want to work, or, they don't want to work hard. So now my employer is forced to pay me time and a half to work an 8 hour day, a shift that would only have costed them X amount now costs much more.

Change the work day in any way one wishes, it still takes X amount of hours to complete a given task.

I doubt it to be coincidental that this idea seems spawned from the desire to be lazy. It would be my bet that drug and alcohol use would frickin skyrocket with all that free time.

[BHownsall]

I doubt it to be coincidental that this idea seems spawned from the desire to be lazy. It would be my bet that drug and alcohol use would frickin skyrocket with all that free time.

I'm sure it would go up with some, but I'm also willing to bet that a lot of people would be more relaxed if they weren't pushed as hard, and wouldn't feel as strong a need for drugs or alcohol as a means of 'taking the edge off'.

Anyways, if America isn't ready for the metric system, why would anyone think we'd be willing to allow a change as drastic as this? We'll stick with our yards, pints, gallons and 85 hour work weeks without healthcare or paid vacation, we're rebels after all. Makes me feel like John Wayne.