[Newfie]

Ah, but it’s all about you.

Nothing fair here. We set the rules and apply them across the board.

Doesn’t matter how hard you have worked, you are done, worn out, a non- productive drain on society.

To the trash heap along with all the other worn out non productive units!

[Newfie]

Actually, given our “comsumption” society, workers are not very useful.

The bigger problem the economy has is that it needs to grow, it need more and better consumers.

And what could be a better consumer than some guy who never has a job, he relies on the government, he gets arrested and put in prison. There he needs to be fed, clothed, guarded, medical care. He needs the prision which creates construction and maintenance jobs, lawyers, clerks, judges, Social workers. Why he is a veritable one man 24 hour consumer. A perfect consumer that is required to make the society go round.

Hell, he contributes much more to the consumer economy than your productive worker. Without the consumer the producers would make huge excesses of stuff and that would drive prices into a deflationary spiral.

Yes, it’s high minded people like you that give economist nightmares.

Didn’t you ever read Brave New World? How the Authoritiary Elite was stressed to come up with a solution to over production and over production?

[wildbourgman]

Boy I'd love to give up my 91 hour work week and trade it with 35 hours for the same pay. Somehow I don't think my employer would agree.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wildbourgman', 'B')oy I'd love to give up my 91 hour work week and trade it with 35 hours for the same pay. Somehow I don't think my employer would agree.

[Tanada]

I find it interesting that the advocates of working a very long work week are basically all admitting to the same thing. They seek money more than time with family, friends, or community.

That is fine of that is how you want to live, but most people given the choice would choose to live a more rounded existence balancing emotional fulfillment with financial accumulation.

In the 1930's the basic labor laws were passed defining a full work week as 40 hours with overtime hours paid at 1.5 times that rate. There was a considerable push back by employers in that era to define a 'regular' work week as 48 to 60 hours before overtime rates were started because up until that point in some industries 60 hours made up of six days of ten hours was considered typical work pattern. On the other side the AFL (before the AFL-CIO merger) was pushing for 30 hour weeks with 5 days of 6 hour shifts. They got labor contracts agreed to in their strongholds in Michigan and Ohio where companies agreed to the 30 hour work week and those practices held for anywhere from a decade and up to 5 decades in the longest lasting cases. It was the accounting measure of benefits that caused the companies to renegotiate harder and harder for 40 hour weeks starting in the 1970's because that allowed them to eliminate a whole shift and thus 1/4 of their benefits package by cutting staff.

If you work a salary job and you value whatever it is you get rewarded with for 91 hour weeks nobody is going to stop you. If you find working more rewarding than family, friends or community involvement then even with a 30 hour week standard nothing would prevent you from taking two jobs and working 60 hours a week.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'S')ome jobs require that you work 60-70 hours a week. Been there and done it.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wildbourgman', 'B')oy I'd love to give up my 91 hour work week and trade it with 35 hours for the same pay. Somehow I don't think my employer would agree.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'S')ome jobs require that you work 60-70 hours a week. Been there and done it.

[aspera]

Work Less, Consume Less, Live Better

Simple living advocates have argued that people in Northern industrial, work-and-spend societies, could all cut back and still live better. If the premises of this volume bear out (i.e., that there will be an unavoidable downshift in consumption), then we will soon find out. But we don’t have to wait for the future. A glance at the past, in particular at the life of a company town, suggests what is possible – namely below-average work hours, below-average consumption, and above-average quality of life.

Battle Creek, Michigan, has been the home of Kellogg Company’s ready-to-eat breakfast cereal for nearly a century. When, in the 1920s and 1930s, the country, especially business, was debating what to do about excess production capacity and insufficient consumer demand (i.e., excess frugality), W. K. Kellogg and the company president Lewis Brown decided to reduce work hours rather than lay off workers. They wanted to show that the “free exchange of goods, services, and labor in the free market would not have to mean mindless consumerism or eternal exploitation of people and natural resources,” as author Benjamin Hunnicutt put it. Rather, “workers would be liberated by increasingly higher wages and shorter hours for the final freedom promised by the Declaration of Independence – the pursuit of happiness.” Brown wrote to his employees about the “mental income” of “the enjoyment of the surroundings of your home, the place you work, our neighbors, the other pleasures you have [that are] harder to translate into dollars and cents.” All this would lead to “higher standards in school and civic . . .life.”

Kellogg’s bold experiment cut across the grain of American business, especially the newly emerging fields of retail and marketing aimed at spurring consumption and, it might have seemed, work hours. But Kellogg succeeded – for the company, the workers and the broader community. One business reporter found “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies…libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers…becoming richer.” Canning became popular for many, not just to preserve food but, as Hunnicutt writes, as a “medium for…[sharing] stories, jokes… practical instruction, songs, griefs, and problems.” A U.S. Department of Labor study of the Kellogg Company found “little dissatisfaction with lower earnings resulting from the decrease in hours.” And after long work hours during World War II, in a vote by workers in 1946, 77 percent of men and 87 percent of women wanted to return to a thirty-hour week.

Writer Jeffrey Kaplan sums up Kellogg’s unusual practices: “This was the stuff of a human ecology in which thousands of small, almost invisible, interactions between family members, friends, and neighbors create an intricate structure that supports social life in much the same way as topsoil supports our biological existence. When we allow either one to become impoverished, whether out of greed or intemperance, we put our long-term survival at risk.”

According to an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, both our social and biological existence is indeed being impoverished by working too many hours and consuming too many products. Maybe the cereal town in Michigan offers a better way.

Source: Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Gospel of Consumption: And the Better Future We Left Behind,” Orion May/June 2008.

The Localization Reader (2012).

[dolanbaker]

Well, almost all level crossings here are now automatic these days, but still a manual job in many places because it's cheaper to give a family a rent-free house to man the gates than to install the automatic equipment.

[Newfie]

I think part of what is going on here is nostalgia for pre-industrial revolution environment. Back then the Puritan work ethic made a lot of sense. Ben Franklin argued the colonies would never have a strong industrial base as long as land was sufficiently cheap. People would farm and be independent.

But that also meant long hard hours of manual labor.

We live in a different world today. IF we were to use our productivity efficiently we would really require on the order of an 8 hour work week. In fact having a meaningful job that truly contributes is a privilege. I hold that many if not most of our labor is simply a glorified means of wealth redistribution. Take our stupid health insurance system as exhibit 1. It provides no meaningful benefit except that it employs hundreds of thousands in zero productive jobs. It redistributes the wealth

The REAL problem is what would we do with our free time? We really want to work to feel as though we contribute.

[Newfie]

Aspera

Our posts crossed. That stuff about Kellog is interesting because it’s success depends upon folks having something other than work to do.

Back then folks had gardens and places to effect civic betterments. I don’t know if that would work so well now. How do you direct those free hours to satisfying occupation? I’d like to hear some modern examination.

[aspera]

Newfie: ("Back then folks had gardens and places to effect civic betterments. I don’t know if that would work so well now.")

Maybe. My experience has been different. If you slow down (either voluntarily or involuntarily) and have the mindspace to just "look around" then you can often discover a great many things needing your help.

On a "meaningful job" often being a privilege in this day-and-age (i.e., rare these days) I'd quote Emerson, "the reward of a thing worth doing is doing it" and David Brooks on meaning being derived from doing a behavior not an innate feature of that behavior. That is, don't seek meaning since behaviors rarely come with tags indicating their meaningfulness, instead do something that needs doing and you might then construe that your time was spent meaningfully.

Blame no one. Expect no help. Do something.

[ROCKMAN]

Ghung - "wildbourgman wrote: Boy I'd love to give up my 91 hour work week and trade it with 35 hours for the same pay. Somehow I don't think my employer would agree."

Get a different employer?

So true Ghung. I hear Burger King is looking. LOL.

A big problem with workers like me and the Wild Man is transportation and housing. First, if we worked 8 hour shifts instead of 12 the company would have to fly that extra hand half way around the world. But even with a local gig like the GOM they would need extra quarters. And then it's still a 7 day job for 28 days so it would still be a 57 hour work week. And then off for 28 days. But understand how budgeting for such operations work: $X for manpower. So it would be $X/2 or $X/3.

And then there's this aggravation: instead of having 12 hours off shift on a rig with not much to do but shower, eat and sleep it becomes 16 hours. Trust me: you don't need more then an hour to sit in a stall and jack off...unless there's something wrong with you. Right Wildman? LOL.

But I scanned back thru the thread and didn't notice an obvious question: are we talking hourly pay or salary? It seemed most dealt with hourly wage earners. Even as a consultant I charged by the day and not the hour. Usually charged "door to door": if I left home at 2200 hrs...full day charge. Got home at 0200...full day charge. But only got away with that when times were good. LOL.

But the issue seems split between mandatory hours and what the pay is. So if you don't want to work X hours per week then find that job. If you want to make a certain income then find that job...if you're qualified for it. I don't recall a single incident when a person was required to do a certain job. Excluding being drafted, of course. LOL.

If the only well site jobs available require 84 hours a week and I just want to work 40 hours a week and sleep in my own bed every night then I'm not going to be a well site geologist. LOL. And the old timers didn't want to hear us young farts bitch about 28 day overseas rotation: in the "good ole days" it was a 6 to 12 month rotation.

Personally I liked the 28 day rotation: 6 months vacation per year. LOL.

[Ibon]

The deferred gratification Cog mentioned earlier regarding working toward a later goal actually pretty much fits my case. I paid my dues in the world of commerce for a couple decades to be able to do what I am doing now. Loving what you do like what Baha is doing means that you can work 60 - 80 hour weeks and it does not feel like work. This is directly related to being your own boss. In my case the creativity factor keeps me engaged from 5:45 am in the morning when the howler monkeys start calling until hanging with guests on the bug lights sometimes until midnight.

About storing nuts and delayed gratification. For many in todays declining wage market you end up indenturing yourself as a wage slave only treading water or slowly going deeper into debt. Especially if you use consumption as a compensation for feeling stuck and unfulfilled. Believe me, this fits a large percentage American workers. We need to focus this conversation on exactly that demographic, the young generation emerging with reduced opportunities to first find fulfilling work and then to earn enough to be able to store nuts or delay gratification toward some future goal.

Those partially employed in developing countries playing checkers with friends in town squares keep coming to mind. None of those individuals feel any pressure to better themselves. I also have here in Panama a number of employees, particularly in construction, that work for a couple months, take a month or two off, hang around with friends and family, get another temp job and this on and off employment becomes their permanent life. This is not the worst life by the way. There is no real stress, I see these folks quite integrated in their families and communities. Since they never had greater expectations they do not see their position in life as something deficient. There is little or no anxiety.

Contrast this with the high entitlement of your average American now confronted with an inability to find employment that can get you out of debt let alone store nuts. This creates lots of anxiety.

Let's remember this is only the first generation. There is going to be with every generation a larger percentage unemployed or those who will look at the cost / benefit of being a wage slave and reject it. This demographic will grow...

We assume they will be less happy and fulfilled then previous generations. This might be false. They might learn to play checkers and cultivate friendships and drop some of the expectations that have lead many into debt.

[Newfie]

Rock
While it’s true there are certain instances where a longer work week makes sense it’s far from the norm.

Who cares if a health insurance clerk works 35 hours a week? It’s meaningless work anyway. Or how about “stylist”, or TSA workers?

I know this, by nature I’m a fairly high strung “pusher.” I’ve had a job where there were 5 identically equipped crews doing the same task. On an average week my crew would beat the other 4 crews combined. We latter found out it was worse, some crews were cheating to make production. In my last job there we tasks I would accomplish no other engineer would even start, and I was a part timer. So I get the “high” that comes from accomplishment. And the rush from making others eat your dust. I sense you share that.

Because those of us who have that drive are rare birds. Thats not what we are talking about here. You have to look to the fat part of the Paredo curve. Look at all the average Joes and Janes in some schmuck job. They just want their paycheck, a big screen TV, some juicy gossip, and a meal. Nothing’s gonna collapse if they don’t show up for work.

I wish everyone here would read this little ditty. I think he makes some analytical errors but the factual basis of the argument is sound.

https://libcom.org/files/Bertrand%20Rus ... leness.pdf

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')
I know this, by nature I’m a fairly high strung “pusher.” I’ve had a job where there were 5 identically equipped crews doing the same task. On an average week my crew would beat the other 4 crews combined. We latter found out it was worse, some crews were cheating to make production. In my last job there we tasks I would accomplish no other engineer would even start, and I was a part timer. So I get the “high” that comes from accomplishment. And the rush from making others eat your dust. I sense you share that.