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FYF Trouble
in Cubicle Nation
By
Joe Robinson, AlterNet, January 30, 2006
It was a great year for labor -- if you worked at a call
center in India, made your living as a CEO or sold real estate to big-box
stores. But deep in Cubicle Nation, the average American worker remained on a
fast track to the Industrial Revolution, with soaring workweeks, declining
wages, and health, pension and vacation benefits vanishing faster than you can
say job security. Add to the siege outsourcing, cutbacks, the dismantling of
ergonomics rules and forced overtime -- all while business is racking up
historic profits, the most in 75 years -- and even a nearsighted dingo could
see that the trends are unsustainable for families, personal health, company
medical plans or an informed and involved citizenry. And completely
unnecessary. As all the productivity research shows, we can get the job
done without finishing ourselves off. So let's fire some of the worst habits
that got us here and ring in resolutions for a sane workplace in 2006: Restore the 40-hour workweek. Almost 40% of us are working more than
50 hours a week, not exactly what the Fair Labor Standards Act intended when it
set the 40-hour workweek in 1938. Chronic 11- and 12-hour days result in lousy
productivity, expensive mistakes, burnout, triple the risk of heart attack and
quadruple the risk of diabetes -- and leave families without a quorum for
dinner. Two-thirds of people who work more than 40 hours a week report being
highly stressed. Job
stress costs American business more than $300 billion a year. Establish rules for e-tools. The e-invasion is burying us alive.
Human resources departments and individuals need to set tough-love boundaries
that would determine message urgency, limit reflexive responses and establish
no-send zones (i.e., no forwarding of multiforwarded emails and absolutely no
work email at home or on vacation). Give face time the pink slip. In the knowledge/digital age, it
doesn't matter where your body is; what counts is inside your head. More
telecommuting and flex schedules could save millions of dollars in office costs
and hours reclaimed from gridlock, while providing workers much-needed
flexibility, especially for time-crunched mothers. Legalize vacations. Almost a third of American women and a
quarter of men don't get vacation leave anymore because, unlike 96 other
countries, the U.S. has no paid-leave law. Those who still get a vacation
seldom get to take the whole thing. The average American vacation unit in the
travel business is now a long weekend. It's barbaric. And myopic. Studies show
that vacations improve performance on the job, not to mention cut the risk of
heart disease and cure burnout. More than three-quarters of Americans say they
would like to have another week off, which they'd get with the three-week
minimum paid-leave law I've proposed. Provide guaranteed sick leave. No one should have to lose a job
because they get ill. But across this land, hardworking people are getting
fired simply because their company offers no sick days and they got sick. It's
time to join 139 other countries with a minimum sick-leave law and protect those who can't protect themselves. The Healthy Families Act by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-Conn., would provide 7 days of guaranteed sick leave. Make Lou Dobbs secretary of labor. The CNN anchorman's dogged coverage of
outsourcing and the forgotten middle-class worker has single-handedly kept the
plight of wage earners in the public eye. He's mad -- why aren't more of us? --
and he's not going to take it. Support a living wage. With the skyrocketing costs of gas,
food and rent, an increase in the minimum wage is long overdue. Consumers need
to support companies that pay a living wage, such as Costco, and shun ones that don't. Hold the back pats. This year, make a point of not
supporting workaholic martyrs ("I worked all night! I came in on the
weekend!" "Really? How lame.") who don't drive productivity but
stress everyone around them. Tighten the salary test. One of the main -- and unacknowledged
-- drivers of overwork is the expanding definition of salaried employees. When
the Fair Labor Standards Act codified the salary designation, it was intended
to apply only to top administrators and managers, people who could hire and
fire. Over the last two decades, the classification has been stretched to
include more and more of us, particularly after new, elastic rules by the Bush
administration that could turn everyone from chefs to preschool teachers into
salaried workers. In addition, hundreds of thousands of hourly workers, from
burger flippers to insurance adjusters, are misclassified as salaried. The explosion of salaried employees -- now
40% of all workers (including
a huge jump in salaried caregivers) -- is without doubt having major
repercussions on divorce rates, child care, civic responsibilities and drug
sales. Wake up and smell the Paxil. Provide paid childbirth leave to all
working Americans.
Family values start here. Only 40% of American workers are eligible for the 12
weeks of unpaid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act, and fewer still are
brazen enough to actually take the time off. There are 163 countries that offer paid family
leave. The sterling
bunch that doesn't includes Papua New Guinea, Burkina Faso, Swaziland and the
richest nation on the planet. At a time when the people who make the products and services
-- without whom there would be no economy -- are considered disposable, I'd
like to see political candidates in '06 resolve to do a head count and tally
the number of disaffected wage earners desperate for leadership. This group
includes not merely the 8% of private-sector workers who belong to unions but a
vast legion of American
Dreamers,
including 70-hour-a-week video game programmers, biotech engineers and
retail-sales moms pressed to the gibbering edge. One Republican pollster has
found that lack of time is the No. 1 issue for young working mothers, more of a
concern than Iraq and health care. American workers have done their part, doubling productivity
since 1969. How about producing a workplace worthy of them in 2006? Joe Robinson is the author of "Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life." http://www.alternet.org/story/31194/ |
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