Why Your Boss Expects More
Juliet Schor is a Harvard economist and author of “The Overworked American” (BasicBooks, 1992) and “The Overspent American” (HarperPerennial, 1998). In her books, Schor reports two unsettling trends: Americans are working 163 more hours annually than they did in the 1960s, and they are engaging in “competitive acquisition and spending” not only to keep up with the Joneses who work in the next cubicles, but to impress the corporate powers that be.
Combine the two trends, and a larger theme arises: Work is consuming more of our time, our thoughts, our behaviors and our lives. But American employers worry about the potentially harmful repercussions of this growing work fixation, right?
Not according to Schor.
Question: Are American employers placing more demands upon workers than ever before?
Answer: Employers are expecting more effort, requiring longer hours, higher levels of productivity and increased accessibility. On the other side, this is paired with reduced job security and a flattening out of career paths.
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Q: Are you surprised that more workers haven’t voiced discontent about the state of affairs?
A: Yes, I am, in fact. But there is a downshifting movement going on, a growing number of people who are changing jobs in order to reduce their hours. I also think people are not speaking up more because they’re happy today to even have a paycheck. There’s still a memory of the recent job shortages and downsizing. I’m not sure we’ve been in low unemployment long enough for people to feel secure enough to make more demands. And the so-called winner-take-all economy is offering higher remuneration and incentives to the small fraction who make it to the top.
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Q: In 1997, University of Maryland’s John Robinson and Penn State’s Geoffrey Godbey published findings that seemed to contradict yours and received quite a bit of attention from business and media. They said that American workers actually labored 2.8 hours a week less than workers did in the 1960s. What accounts for the discrepancy between your findings and theirs?
A: I used the Household Survey [a monthly government survey of 50,000 households] which is a large, nationally representative sample. They used time diary studies, which had more variability in sample selections. Also, there were questions about the diaries’ biases.
Busy people tend to drop out of diary studies, it’s been demonstrated. Plus, their studies only covered time working--for example, they left out lingering at the water cooler--whereas the Household Survey covers time at work.
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Q: More companies are offering fringe benefits such as office concierges, corporate gyms and even dry-cleaning services for their workers. Are they doing this to make employees’ job hours more bearable?
A: The workplace is asking the family to do the adjusting. It’s trying to make it easier for employees to cope with their overload without sacrificing work hours. [Employers’] thoughts are, “We can do this in such ways where people won’t resent the trade-off. We can do this without taking away something of great value to the employees.” Few people wouldn’t miss not having to pick up and drop off their dry-cleaning, for example.
But the question is, when that adjustment expands into arranging a child’s birthday party or planning sick-child care, we have to ask, are we going too far in terms of making families bear the costs of increasing corporate workloads?
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Q: Is there any parallel between the increased work hours of the Industrial Revolution and what’s now occurring with the “Technological Revolution”?
A: I think there are parallels. What’s similar is that there are no countervailing institutions like labor unions to prevent the increasing work hours. My basic theory is that when you introduce labor-saving technological changes, employers prefer to use laborers in other ways to increase hours of productivity. They don’t use the changes to reduce hours. It’s only when the government or unions push them to decrease hours that they do so.
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Q: Do American corporations give their workers a different message about work hours than do corporations in other parts of the world?
A: In Europe, average work hours are much lower. In general, European corporations are much less resistant to reductions of work hours. This is partly because more of their fringe benefits are socialized--their “tax” on workers is less. Also they’re less resistant because the strength of their unions has been much greater in the last 20 to 30 years, and these unions have pushed for shorter hours. There’s also less emphasis in Europe on workaholism and spending.
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Q: Are American workers colluding with their employers--or even being exploited by them--to integrate work and personal life into what Godbey calls a “seamless web”?
A: Well, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. A lot of hourly workers are being exploited. They’re working longer hours, putting in more overtime, for bad wages and with a lack of control. But at the top, people are simply being offered a bad choice: If you take the job, you work the long hours. But if you don’t want the long hours, you shouldn’t take the job. I think we could offer better choices to meet the needs of families and communities.
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Q: Why are people accepting the less-than-satisfactory choices being offered them by employers?
A: Overspending is certainly a part of it. But people also care about their work and the types of jobs they have. They want to succeed in the market, so they’re accepting being asked to give up a lot of life goals.
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Q: When you wrote “The Overworked American,” you indicated that American workers’ productivity has doubled since 1948. Is it still increasing?
A: Yes, it’s continued to increase. But people are surprised it hasn’t increased more, given the technological advances. The big question about productivity is why we’re not seeing more of an increase. There have been studies that have confirmed diminishing returns--that there’s a point where total productivity starts to fall as workers’ hours rise--from eight hours to nine hours to 10 hours a day. It’s possible that’s why people are too overworked.
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Q: So we’re overworked and overspent. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
A: I am by nature an optimistic person. But if I sit down and calculate the chances of various paths, I’m pessimistic. I feel pessimistic about growing corporate power and control and the influence of market values. As employers and consumers, I don’t think they’re acting in socially constructive ways.
