A
shorter workweek would create more jobs and could help stop the unsustainable
cycle of rampant consumption and resource wastage.
Pollution
mounts. It's time for us to collectively
climb off the hyperconsumption-hyperproduction treadmill. Our environment and biosphere -- some see it
as "Mother Nature'; the ancient Greeks called her Gaia -- can no longer
accommodate unrestrained consumption and production. By continuing to ignore this increasingly obvious
truth, we permit the murder of the very thing that keeps us all healthy and
alive: our "Mother' Gaia. Therefore, somehow, we must collectively find
a way to focus our production on the goods and services we most need, and somehow begin to pare back most all the rest. This means gradually bringing to an end much
of, if not most all of, the production of the most superfluous. But how many people would lose their jobs in
this transition? Obviously millions would,
-- unless . . unless we somehow succeed in making the transition to the 21-hour
workweek, so that the work that remains can be shared, and so that the burden
on Gaia can be greatly reduced.
As Michael Coren at FAST Company recently
said, "To
save the world -- or even just make our personal lives better -- we will need
to work less."
As
Coren points out, a 40-hour week in factories once was necessary, but is no
longer. Most of us have more "stuff'
than we know what to do with. Hence
storage lockers costing anywhere from $50 to $150 or more per month have
sprouted up everywhere. Most garages are
stuffed to
the gills, even as garage sales proliferate.
But so does pollution and global climate change proliferate. This means that our workaholic behavior and
madcap rates of consumption are totally out of step with what should be our
most fundamental human priorities and the kind of steady-state economy we need.
To
lay the foundations for a "steady-state" economy -- one that can
continue running sustainably forever, this recent paper argues that it's time for advanced
developed countries to transition to a new normal: the 21-hour work week.
This
does not mean a mandatory work week
or some kind of leisure-time police, says Coren. People could choose to work as long, or
short, as they please. What we're
talking about is resetting social and political norms re: the freedom to work fewer hours per
week, if you want -- without having to be subjected to the
penalties (such as no benefits) that today accompany such a choice.
This
is to say that the day when 1,050 hours of paid work per year becomes the
"new standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade
unions, employees, and everyone else" (50 weeks a year times 21 hrs./week
equals 1050 hours) . . is not far off -- nor should
it be.
Gaia
is telling us that three days a week, for 7 hours each, or four 5-hr. days, is
plenty. And let's face it, with all of
today's computerized technology and automation, there's no longer nearly enough
work to keep the large majority of us busy 40 or 50 hours a week, which is the
amount of work-time most employers try to squeeze out of us, to generate the
profits they crave. But the only way to
keep that many people that busy is to
somehow con most of them into buying and consuming a whole lot of crapola that
they don't really need. And think of the
cost, in terms of pollution, resource wastage and global warming, that results
from that! Not to mention the heart
attacks and strokes from overwork, lack of exercise, and compensatory greasy-food-&-alcohol
indulgence.
The
New Economics Foundation (NEF) argues
that there is nothing natural or inevitable about what's considered a
"normal" 40-hour work week today.
Because of that traditionally imposed normality, many people remain
caught in a vicious cycle of work and consumption. They live to work, work to earn, and earn to
consume. Missing from that equation is
an important fact that researchers have discovered about most material
consumption in wealthy societies: so much of the pleasure and satisfaction we
gain from buying is temporary, ephemeral, and mostly just relative to those
around us (who, when they see what we buy, and have, they also strive to consume still more, which leads to a kind of self-perpetuating
spiral). What we see on TV and in the
movies also compels many of us to buy, want and consume much more than we would
otherwise want. And when American movies
and TV programs are shown in the poorer countries, it has the same poisonous
effect there.
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