Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Sara Robinson

Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity
One hundred fifty years of research proves that shorter work hours actually raise productivity and profits -- and overtime destroys them. So why do we still do this?

March 13, 2012 |


If you’re lucky enough to have a job right now, you’re probably doing everything possible to hold onto it. If the boss asks you to work 50 hours, you work 55. If she asks for 60, you give up weeknights and Saturdays, and work 65.

Odds are that you’ve been doing this for months, if not years, probably at the expense of your family life, your exercise routine, your diet, your stress levels, and your sanity. You’re burned out, tired, achy, and utterly forgotten by your spouse, kids and dog. But you push on anyway, because everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs.

This is what work looks like now. It’s been this way for so long that most American workers don’t realize that for most of the 20th century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that working people more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive — and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot.

It’s a heresy now (good luck convincing your boss of what I’m about to say), but every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul. And it may sound weird, but it’s true: the single easiest, fastest thing your company can do to boost its output and profits -- starting right now, today -- is to get everybody off the 55-hour-a-week treadmill, and back onto a 40-hour footing. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/visions/154518/why_we_have_to_go_back_to_a_40-hour_work_week_to_keep_our_sanity/

[leftyohiolib]

1. unionize that'll help .. "but i cant b/c of reason x,y, and z "

[Lawlbringer]

2. I'd love to.

But I make my bread and butter off of O/T.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Businesses should be required to pay for all overtime work

My husband and many other IT professionals work long hours, but don't get paid beyond their regular 40 hours. They don't even get comp time off. They got screwed many years ago when corporations pressured Congress to make many IT workers "exempt" from getting overtime pay. Now Congress wants to "exempt" even more people in IT and other fields.

If companies were required by law to pay for all overtime, even if they paid regular time and not time-and-a-half, it would significantly cut down on the forced labor situation that is wearing people down.