Hi Ed, The article you posted on FW of the Globe and Mail of 13 February, "Work winning out over family in the struggle for balance" by Elizabeth Church, concerning longer working weeks was interesting.
I meant to reply to this at the time because concern over here has also been growing in recent years. However, it must be noted that the phenomenon has been mainly confined to management and professional people rather than most workers and, almost always, the overtime is voluntary. Now that we're heading into calmer times, not to say recession, I think we'll find that the enthusiasm will wane considerably. I wouldn't want to doubt the research of Prof Linda Duxbury on which the article was based, but here's a longer term view -- three paragraphs from Johan Norberg's recent book, "In Defence of Global Capitalism" (Timbro, 2001): (JN) <<<< The time we all spend working has diminished with rising prosperity, for the simple reason that growth enables us to do less work for the same payment -- if we want to. Compared with the parental generation, most of today's workers go to work later, go home earlier, have longer lunch and coffee breaks, longer vacations and more public holidays. According to American statistics, working hours today are only about half of what they were 100 years ago and have diminished by 10% since as recently as 1973 -- a reduction equaling 23 days per annum . . . [or] five extra years' waking leisure. This is also because we have begun working progressively later in life, are retiring earlier and are living longer. A western worker in 1870 had only two hours off for each hour worked, spread out over a lifetime. By 1950 this had doubled to four hours off, doubling again to the present figure of about eight hours off for each hour worked. Economic development, thanks partly to trade enabling us to specialise, makes it possible for us to reduce our working hours considerably and also to raise our material living standard. We have never taken less time to earn our living. >>>> Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
