May 31, 2023
Dolly Parton’s
signature song “9 to 5,” and the 1980s sitcom of the same name reflect a
quintessentially American hustle culture of working 40 hours a week in
thankless jobs. Even though many people work even more than that—earning the US
the title of “the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World”—our
expectations of the ideal work scenario are built on a hard-fought labor
victory, one that was still not nearly enough to curb worker exploitation.
In 1926, Henry
Ford instituted a 40-hour workweek for his auto factory employees, perhaps
because he truly believed workers needed more time for rest and leisure, but
also because he expected they would be more productive if they worked less. The
move paid off for Ford’s bottom line and also helped shift national culture
toward working fewer hours.
A decade later,
auto workers at General Motors in Flint, Michigan, went on strike protesting
terrible working conditions. The 1936 labor action came to be known as “the
strike heard around the world,” and in February 1937, General Motors conceded
to worker demands, sending a powerful message across the nation that worker-led
strikes can win. In 1937, about 1.9 million Americans participated in nearly
5,000 strikes – considered the most seminal year in US labor history.
It’s no wonder
then that a year later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 imposing a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour and a 44-hour
workweek, as well as overtime pay. Two years later, in 1940, that act was amended
to further reduce work hours to 40 per week. That should have been the
beginning, not the end of improved labor conditions. The biggest failure of the
Fair Labor Standards Act was that it did not link the minimum wage to
inflation.
Strangely the poll
did not ask whether workers would prefer working 32 hours over four days with
no reduction in pay.
Now, more than
80 years later, Congress is considering a 32-hour workweek. Representative Mark
Takano (D-CA), with the support of major labor unions like SEIU, introduced a
bill in the House of Representatives to reduce the workweek to four days.
While on the
surface a welcome move for labor rights, the problem is that unless corporate
employers are forced to give people the same (or greater) annual take-home pay
and preserve benefits, moving to a four-day workweek may not amount to much.
According to a 2018 Economic Policy Institute report, because wage growth
remained stagnant, “For most workers… annual earnings growth has been driven by
their ability to work more hours.” Why would workers desire a reduction in work
hours if it meant taking home less pay?
A recent
Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that three-quarters of those polled
preferred working 40 hours over four days – that is 10-hour days – to working
40 hours over five days. And, nearly as many said they would prefer working 40
hours over five days rather than lose a fifth of their salary. This is hardly
surprising.
Strangely the
poll did not ask whether workers would prefer working 32 hours over four days
with no reduction in pay. Is it because the pollsters knew that reducing work
hours without reducing pay would be so popular that it wasn’t worth asking? Or
was it that corporate employers would consider such a question to be the height
of worker hubris? By leaving out the question the pollsters tacitly embraced
corporate profit-driven values.
Casting the idea
of reducing work for the same pay as a novel notion, the Washington Post said,
“[S]ome advocacy groups are pushing through pilots for a 32-hour, four-day
workweek without decreasing pay.” The paper immediately followed that with
corporate talking points: “Hurdles including concerns about staffing, lower
productivity, increased costs, and complex changes to operations are keeping
the shortened workweek from being widely adopted.” There was no mention of who
views increased costs as “hurdles.”
There’s a move
to change US culture to relinquish our attachment to work.
The US economy,
valuing worker productivity in service of corporate profits over all else, has
continued to push cultural attitudes toward more work, not less, with papers
like the Washington Post doing their part. While 40 hours a week may be part of
the cultural fabric, an unwritten rule of corporate America is that in exchange
for job security, one is expected to work 60 or more hours a week.
Indeed.com’s
pros-and-cons list of a 60-hour workweek opens with the sentence, “Working 60
hours a week can be one way to earn a higher salary, while also proving your
dedication to your job and the company.” Further, with the rise of the gig
economy, a significant number of workers in low-wage jobs have had to rely on
unreliable work hours, low pay, and no benefits. They might work 9 to 5, or 5
to 9.
This economic
status quo also fuels a stubborn gender pay gap. This year Equal Pay Day fell
on March 14, which means that women would have had to work an extra three and a
half months to make as much money as men did in 2022. For Black women, it falls
far later, on September 21, 2023. A new study published by the American
Sociological Association concluded that men’s overwork is contributing
significantly to this gap. “The overwork effect on trends in the gender gap in
wages was most pronounced in professional and managerial occupations,” said the
study’s authors, “where long work hours are especially common and the norm of
overwork is deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupational
cultures.”
Merely reducing
work hours will not close the gender wage gap. It might even increase if women
take on extra housework on their day off while men work extra jobs. In her new
book The Good Enough Job, author Simone Stolzoff pointed out that, “Despite
gains in wealth and productivity, many college-educated Americans – and
especially college-educated men – have worked more than ever. Instead of
trading wealth for leisure, American professionals began to trade leisure for
more work.”
There’s a move
to change US culture to relinquish our attachment to work. Stolzoff’s book is
one of several urging Americans to work less. In her new book Saving Time:
Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, best-selling author Jenny Odell views the
current economic structures that we operate in as having arisen from European
colonial culture. She urges people to reimagine our relationship with our time.
But is it that
we are all trained to want to work, or that we don’t have the luxury to choose
leisure? The problem is that overall pay is still so low compared to the cost
of living that those who can work more – perhaps because they have partners
willing to do more child care and housework – do so, earning overtime pay to
ensure that their household’s needs are met. A four-day workweek is likely to
do the same, freeing up an extra day merely to work more in a second job or
take on more childcare or housework.
If workers were
paid a minimum of $100 an hour (not unlike what most corporate executives get
paid) and had the choice to work a 32-hour week versus a 40-hour week, I
believe most would choose the former.
Trials of a
four-day workweek by some companies have shown this is precisely what is
happening. Some corporate heads love the idea of reducing work hours and
salaries and are happy to have their workers take on side jobs to make up for
the loss in salary on their day off. “[W]e believe that we’re providing value
through flexibility,” said one startup CEO to Business Insider as justification
for lower salaries. Another CEO touted how one of her employees now has the
free time to work side jobs like Spanish translation and bartending.
If a four-day
workweek comes with pay that’s still not enough to live well, then it is merely
offering workers the freedom to work less in order for them to work more
elsewhere. What is the point? The federal minimum wage remains stuck at an
appallingly low $7.25 an hour, with tipped workers surviving in serfdom at
$2.13 an hour.
I am writing
this weekly column on my day off from a four-day job that pays a decent wage
but is still not enough to provide for all my household expenses, and it is
certainly not as much as my male spouse earns. To be fair, my main employer
reduced work hours without reducing my salary – a wonderful step in the right
direction. But the problem, again and again, is low pay. While I love writing a
weekly column, I do it for the meaningful joy it brings and for the
compensation. It’s a side hustle.
When
Representative Takano was asked about the barriers to realizing his bill for a
32-hour workweek, he addressed the potential loss of pay by saying that, “We
also have to pay attention to the ability of workers to unionize to bargain for
higher wages.” In other words, workers and their unions (that is, if they are
lucky enough to be among the minority of Americans represented by labor unions)
have to fend for themselves in ensuring a living wage.
Senator Bernie
Sanders has joined the call for a 32-hour workweek, emphasizing that such a
move should come with “no loss of pay.” But even if that happened, wages still
remain too low to live on and most workers might spend their free time on side
hustles, like I do.
If workers were
paid a minimum of $100 an hour (not unlike what most corporate executives get
paid) and had the choice to work a 32-hour week versus a 40-hour week, I
believe most would choose the former.
“It’s a rich
man’s game no matter what they call it,” sang Dolly Parton. The real problem of
overwork is underpay. •
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