A Workaholic Economy Reading Passage
A Workaholic Economy Reading Passage
Paragraph 1
As a result of the Industrial Revolution, or for the first century, increased productivity led to reduced working hours. Employees who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, found working hours of 10 hours a day, and then, finally, eight hours, five days a week. A generation ago, only social planners were worried about what people would do with this new free time. In the United States, at least, they seem to have nothing to worry about.
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Although the result for one-hour work has doubled since 1945, rest time seems to have been mainly reserved for the unemployed and the unemployed. Full-time workers spent as much time at work as they did at the end of World War II. In fact, working hours have increased significantly since the 1970s, and maybe real earnings have stagnated since that year. Bookstores now have plenty of manuals explaining how to handle time and deal with stress. There are many reasons for missing rest time. Since 1979, companies have reacted to progress in the business environment by hiring more employees than making the employees overtime, says Juliet B., an economist at Harvard University. In fact, the recent economic recovery has achieved a certain degree of reputation for its “unemployment” nature, which has completely cut off increased productivity from employment.
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Some companies are cutting back on their profit margins. A labour economist at Cornell University, Ronald G. Snyder, observes that since all things are equal, it is good to spread the workaround.
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Nevertheless, many factors push employers to hire fewer workers for longer hours while at the same time forcing workers to spend more time at work. Most of those motivations involve what Ehrenberg calls the compensation structure, quirks in the way wages and advantages are arranged that make it more lucrative to ask 40 employees to labour an additional hour each than to hire one more employee to do the same 40-hour job.
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Professional and managerial staff offer the clearest lesson in these ways. Once people are paid, it is the same for a company whether they spend 35 hours a week or 70 hours. Income will decline as overworked employees will lose performance or move to more arable pastures. However, in the short term, the employer’s motivation is clear.
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Hourly employees also receive advantages such as pension contributions and medical insurance, which are not connected to the hours they work. Hence, it would be more fruitful for employers to make existing workers work harder.
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Although employees complain about long hours, they also have causes not to trade money for leisure. Schor claims that those who work part-time pay higher fines based on work. It's taken as a negative signal about their dedication to the company. Lotte Bailyn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their footnotes to a company's well-being, so they use the number of hours they work for publication. “Employees comprehend this,” she expresses, and they adjust their behaviour accordingly.
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Bailey says that although the image of the good employee belongs to the company, it does not agree with the facts. She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies showing that part-time workers have increased productivity, that they make better use of the time they have, and that they are less likely to become exhausted from stressful work. She emphasises that companies that hire more workers in less time also benefit from the resulting layoffs. More individuals can cover up coincidences, you know, which means troubles will take people away from the workplace. Positive experiences with lessened times are beginning to change the culture even better in some companies, Schor reports.
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Larger companies, in particular, seem to be more willing to test flexible work arrangements ...
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Successful trading of money for greater productivity and leisure can take more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers, Schor argues. She says the U.S. market for goods has been skewed by the belief of full-time, two-business families. Automobile makers no longer produce cheap models, and developers no longer build small bungalows to serve first-generation home customers. Even the simplest household item is not made without a microprocessor. As Schor points out, the situation is an interesting reversal of the designers' view of "appropriate technology" for developing countries, where American products are only suitable for high earnings and long hours.
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