From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Book: The Overworked American
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 06:51:49 GMT

The Overworked American:
The Unexpected Decline of Leisure
By Juliet B. Schor
New York: Basic Books, 1991
247 pp.
Reviewed by Robert Weissman

Reprinted from Multinational Monitor April 1992

It is not often that U.S.  critics of capitalism are able to appear on a
network news program and say, "The system is not working."

But Juliet Schor's provocative, compact and accessible The Overworked
American:  The Unexpected Decline of Leisure has enabled her to do just
that.

Her basic proposition is that people in the United States are working
significantly more than they did 20 years ago.  As a result, she argues,
leisure time has fallen and the U.S. quality of life has suffered.

Analyzing a variety of sources, Schor concludes that the average fully
employed person in the United States worked 162 more hours a year--at
both paid employment and household labor--in 1987 than in 1969.  This
is the equivalent of an extra month of labor a year.  Men worked 166
hours more and women 160 hours more.

The average fully employed person spent 163 more hours a year on the job
in 1987 than in 1969.  Women spent an additional 305 hours a year on the
job,and men an additional 98 hours.

Time spent on household work has also undergone dramatic changes during
the last two decades.  Fully employed men spent 68 hours more on
household work in 1987 than in 1969.  Fully employed women spent 145
hours a year less.

The increases in work time come as technological developments have
rapidly pushed up workers' productivity (the amount the average worker
produces during a given period of time).  U.S. workers' productivity
has more than doubled since 1948.

Productivity increases offer a choice.  A society can choose to keep
working hours constant and increase production (and consumption) levels.
It can choose to cut back work time and maintain a constant level of
production.  In the case of the United States, Schor points out, "We
could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of
marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took that
year.  We actually could have chosen the four-hour day.  Or a working
year of six months.  Or, every worker in the United States could now be
taking every other year off from work--with pay."

The United States has chosen to reap the benefits of productivity
increases almost solely in terms of increased consumption.  'In 1990,
the average American owns and consumes more than twice as much as he or
she did in 1948,but also has less free time," Schor notes.

The reason for this, she argues, is due primarily to a series of biases
built into the capitalist system in favor of longer work time, and
secondarily to the U.S. consumerist culture.

The argument that capitalism lengthens work time contradicts widely held
notions of peasant societies in which work is all pervasive.  Relying on
previous research (mainly concerning medieval England), Schor asserts
that "before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at
all.  The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely."

The amount of time devoted to work skyrocketed with the growth of
capitalism.  The work day became longer, and most of the numerous
holidays of medieval culture disappeared.

The driving force behind the lengthening day was capitalists.  Early in
capitalist history, workers were paid by the day, which gave employers
an incentive to lengthen the work day.  The "putting-out" system, in
which workers were paid for each piece of work they did, also
contributed to longer hours, since employers set piece rates so low that
workers had to put in long hours just to survive.

In the twentieth century, a new set of factors led capitalists to prefer
long hours.  First, as manufacturing became more mechanized, the
business interest in seeing equipment put to intensive use increased.
Employers prefer relying on fewer workers working longer hours because
they cannot count on finding additional workers with sufficient skill or
experience, Schor contends.  A second factor was associated with the
advent of Henry Ford's $5-a-day wage--more than twice the prevailing
wage at competitor companies.  The high wages reduced labor militance
because workers placed a high value on these jobs (meaning, in economic
terms, that they had a high "employment rent").  Long hours --if they
bring higher pay--increase jobs' rent, and thereby strengthen workplace
discipline.  Third, in the post-World War II era, the structure of
fringe benefits has led employers to favor longer hours.  Although
overtime work from hourly employees is rewarded with time-and-a-half
pay, it brings no additional fringe benefits, a major cost to employers.
Finally, among salaried workers, overtime is free time for employers,
giving them a strong incentive to demand long hours.

From the worker perspective, things look very different.  Individual
workers have very little power in setting their hours.  This was true in
the early years of capitalism, when peasants were thrown off their land
and faced with the choice of working on capitalists' terms or starving,
and it is true today, when it is extremely difficult to maintain a
"normal" standard of living on anything less than full-time work and
pay.

Of course, an individual worker could choose to forsake a "normal"
standard of living, and Schor acknowledges that the consumerist
culture plays a large part in workers' decision to accept higher
consumption levels instead of shorter hours as the reward for in-
creasing productivity.  But she rejects the view that this reflects
workers' choices.  It is not the case that workers get what they want,
she argues.  Rather, they want what they get--they adjust expectations
in response to prevailing circumstances.

Citing various opinion surveys, Schor argues that while workers are
unwilling to give up their present material standard of living for less
work time, they express a strong preference for sacrificing future in-
creases in their material standard of living in favor of more free time.

The experience of Western Europe shows that that "human nature"does not
automatically lead to choosing increased consumption instead of
increased leisure.  Due to the efforts of strong trade union movements,
West German workers put in eight less weeks of work a year than their
U.S. counterparts and Swedes 11 weeks less.

The U.S.  Iabor movement also has a long history of fighting for shorter
working hours, an effort which culminated with the attainment of the
40-hour work week, and Schor credits the labor movement with being
responsible for the big decline in working hours between the Civil War
and World War II.  But fighting for a shorter work week largely dropped
off the U.S.  Iabor agenda after World War II.

Schor makes an excellent case that working hours have lengthened,
provides convincing reasons for why they have and makes clear that there
are in fact options to the long work day.  She is careful to note that,
as the first major examination of these issues, The Overworked American
offers tentative explanations and raises questions as much as it
provides answers.

The book is weakest, at least in my view, in explaining why these are
matters of concern.

Shortening the work week is the great undiscussed answer to the now
chronic U.S. problem of unemployment and underemployment.  Yet Schor
avoids explicitly pointing to unemployment as a justification for
reducing working hours, and she does not call for a shorter work week.
Her recommendations to cut work time--which include forcing employers to
specify the normal or expected work week of salaried workers, ensuring
that part-time workers receive fringe benefits and replacing overtime
pay with "comp" time (meaning workers get an hour off tomorrow or next
week for an hour extra worked today)--would ensure that individuals
would have the choice to work less, but not necessarily that enough
would do so to create enough job openings for the burgeoning ranks of
the unemployed and underemployed.

The only apparent reason for Schor's decision to not cite unemployment
as a reason to cut work time is related to her discussion of labor's
support for the 30- hour work week during the Depression.  Labor's
justification for the shorter work week was undercut by the sharp
decline in unemployment after the outbreak of World War II.  Perhaps
Schor does not want to tie her proposals to unemployment for fear it
might subside or to the labor movement, due to its its weaknesses.

The other potentially urgent rationale for cutting work time is the need
to limit consumption, especially in the United States, for ecological
reasons.  Schor discusses the interconnections between consumerism and
long working hours at length, but only in passing does she tie
consumerism to impending environmental catastrophe.

Schor rests her case for shorter working hours on the need for leisure,
on the need to devote more time to the pursuit of happiness--off the
job, at home and at work.  This is certainly a legitimate concern, but
it is not as compelling as the other potential reasons to cut work time.

Indicting capitalism for failing to improve people's levels of
satisfaction even while raising material standards of living is in
some ways a trenchant critique of the system.  But, as Schor
acknowledges, efforts to cut working hours will face strong resistance
from business and only have a chance of succeeding with the strong
support of social movements.  Urging society to opt for leisure for its
own sake lacks the sharp-edge of other potential justifications of
cutting work time, however, and is unlikely to appear high on the agenda
of labor, environmentalists or any other organized social force.

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