All

Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup

You:doingmorewithless.Corporateprofits:up22percent.Thedirtysecretofthejoblessrecovery.
By Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery | July/August 2011 Issue

Also read harrowing first-person tales of overwork [1] and 12 charts on just how much is being demanded of American workers [2]. On a bright spring day in a wisteria-bedecked courtyard full of earnest, if half-drunk, conference attendees, we were commiserating with a fellow journalist about all the jobs we knew of that were going unfilled, being absorbed or handled "on the side." It was tough for all concerned, but necessaryyou know, doing more with less. "Ah," he said, "the speedup." His old-school phrase gave form to something we'd been noticing with increasing apprehensionand it extended far beyond journalism. We'd hear from creative professionals in what seemed to be dream jobs who were crumbling under ever-expanding to-do lists; from bus drivers, hospital technicians, construction workers, doctors, and lawyers who shame-facedly whispered that no matter how hard they tried to keep up with the extra hours and extra tasks, they just couldn't hold it together. (And don't even ask about family time.) Webster's defines speedup [3] as "an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay," and it used to be a household word. Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, to goose profits, or to punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) watched for and negotiated over itand, if necessary, walked out over it. But now we no longer even acknowledge itnot in blue-collar work, not in white-collar or pink-collar work, not in economics texts, and certainly not in the media (except when journalists gripe about the staff-compactedjob-expanded newsroom). Now the word we use is "productivity," a term insidious in both its usage and creep. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don't you want to be a productive member of society? Pundits across the political spectrum revel in the fact that US productivity (a.k.a. economic output per hour worked) consistently leads the world [4]. Yes, year after year, Americans wring even more value [5] out of each minute on the job than we did the year before. U-S-A! U-S-A! Except what's good for American business isn't necessarily good for Americans. We're not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory.

You have nothing to lose but your gains

Productivity has surged, but income and wages have stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

...Growth is back r a

...Bu ut jobs are en't

Click here [6] fo 9 more ch k or harts that w make your blood will boil. .

nd M g G izing you've been only h half-listening to your child for the g Soun familiar: Mind racing at 4 a.m.? Guiltily reali past hour? Check king work em at a stoplight, at the dinner tabl in bed? D mail e le, Dreading onc ce-pleasant d diversions, like dinner with friends, as ju one more thing on yo to-do list ust e our t? Gues what: It's not you. The might se like pers ss ese eem sonal problem msand certainly, the p pharmaceutical industry is ha appy to perpe etuate that notionbut they're really economic p t y problems. Ju counting work that's on the books ust (nev mind thos 11 p.m. em ver se mails), Ame ericans now put in an ave p erage of 122 more hours per year [7] than Brits, 2 s ] and 3 hours (n 378 nearly 10 we eeks!) more than German The diffe t ns. erential isn't solely accou unted for by longer hour of course rs, worldwide almost everyone except us has, at least on pap a right to weekends off, paid e, t per, o vaca ation time [8] (PDF), and paid matern leave [9 (The only other count d nity 9]. y tries that don mandate p time of n't paid ff for n moms ar Papua Ne Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sa new re ew S amoa, and Sw waziland. U-S...A?) To u understand how we got here, first let''s consider th Ben Fran h he nklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-m o myth: To balk at working hardreally really hard y, dbrands yo as profou ou undly un-Am merican. Who besides the o e anese salary yman derives so much of his self-ima from self-sacrifice o the job? S s f age on Slacker is one e archetypical Japa he ng ailable in polite company y. of th most bitin insults ava And so we kowtow tonay, embrace cultural maxim that ju happens t be enormo , a m ust to ously conven nient to corporate Ameri "Our cul ica. lture has enc couraged me to only feel valuable if I'm barely h l hanging on to my o sanit one frien emailed as we were working on this article. In fact, each time we mentioned this topic to ty," nd a w t n some eonereade source, fr er, riendthey first took pa to say: I 'm not lazy. I love my job I come fro a long f ains b. om line of hard work kers. But the it would pour out of th en p hemthe fa atigue, the is solation, the guilt. m ," rt or s. lp with ework "I am exhausted, said a "par time" college instructo in Illinois "I can't hel my son w his home beca ause I am gra ading papers until late in the night. I get up ver early duri the week skip lunch to save not s nto . ry ing k, h mon but time, and the wor ney rkload never lets up. My employer u r y uses and abu full-time employees even more uses e so th those of us that are hourly. My su han h upervisor, fo example, runs a large department. He was jus promoted or st to a n new, even more demand m ding position but his pos n, sition runnin the depart ng tment will no be filled. He will now ot w be do oing what is a 60-to-70-hour job 'on the side.' I can't compla of overw s n c ain work, because everyone is competing e s to ge enough cla et asses to pay the bills. If you lose a cl y lass, you los a chunk of your paych se f heck. If we c can't handle

it, the class can always be given to another teacher who will be desperate for the work or money."

Sure, but these are tough timesemployers struggling to survive the recession are just tightening their belts, right? That's true for some. But in the big picture, the data show a more insidious pattern. Consider the charts above [6]: After a sharp dip in 2008 and 2009, US economic output recovered nicely to near pre-recession levelswe did better than most of our fellow G-7 economies. But not so American workers: Far more people here lost their jobs, and fewer were hired back once the recovery began, than anywhere else. Now, some jobs always get "rationalized" away, thanks to technological or organizational improvementsan area where, it's not jingoistic to say, the US has led its European counterparts. But that "productivity gap" has narrowed considerably, and in any case, there certainly was no dramatic tech or efficiency breakthrough between 2008 and 2010 (quiteTwitter/Facebook/FarmVillethe opposite). What about offshoring? That's certainly a factor. But increasingly, US workers are also falling prey to what we'll call offloading: cutting jobs and dumping the work onto the remaining staff. Consider a recent Wall Street Journal story about "superjobs," [10] a nifty euphemism for employees doing more than one job's worth of workmore than half of all workers surveyed said their jobs had expanded, usually without a raise or bonus. In all the chatter about our "jobless recovery," how often does someone explain the simple feat by which this is actually accomplished? US productivity increased twice as fast in 2009 as it had in 2008, and twice as fast again in 2010: workforce down, output up, and voil! No wonder corporate profits are up 22 percent since 2007, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. To repeat: Up. Twenty-two. Percent. This is nothing short of a sea change. As University of California-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong notes [11], until not long ago, "businesses would hold on to workers in downturns even when there wasn't enough for them to dowould put them to work painting the factorybecause businesses did not want to see their skilled, experienced workers drift away and then have to go through the expense and loss of training new ones. That era is over. These days firms take advantage of downturns in demand to rationalize operations and increase labor productivity, pleading business necessity to their workers." How does corporate America have the gall? You pretty much know the answer, but for official confirmation let's turn to Erica Groshen [12], a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: It's easier here than in, say, the UK or Germany "for employers to avoid adding permanent jobs," she told the AP [13] recently. "They're less constrained by traditional human-resources practices [translation: decency] or union contracts." In plainer English, here's Rutgers political scientist Carl Van Horn [14]: "Everything is tilted in favor of the employers...The employee has no leverage. If your boss says, 'I want you to come in the next two Saturdays,' what are you going to sayno?" And lest CNBC hornswoggle you, this is not just a product of the recession. Throughout the past decade, salaries stagnated and workloads grew, but Wall Street's bubble allowed us to drown our sorrows in credit. (Sure, I'm working crazy hours and our pension fund is history, but check out my granite countertop!) Then came the crash, and the speedup...speeded up. Which brings us to another shared delusion: multitasking. Our best efforts at collective denial notwithstanding, simple arithmetic reveals that even after housewives entered the workforce, the work of housewives still had to be done. Sure, some of itespecially child carewas outsourced, often at rock-bottom wages [15]. But for many women, and a rising (though not yet sufficient) number of men, the second shift awaits each night. And it's increasingly being joined by a third shift, as we remain digitally tethered to the office in the diminishing hours we're actually home.

Mult titasking see the obvious fixlet me just answ this ema while I he with your homework But here's ems t wer ail elp k! the s scary researc news: Min a few fre ch nus eakish excep ptions, most of us cannot actually mu t ultitask [16]. Try to keep p up a conversation with your spouse whil scanning the BlackBer and emp le t rry, pirical data s shows [17] ( (PDF) that you do both thin poorly. And not only that: If you multitask co ngs A y onstantly, yo actual m our mental circuit erodes, try your brain lo its ability to focus. (Same with sleep: Aside from a tiny minority of mutants, hu oses ( e y f umans and y perfo distinctl and progr orm ly ressively wor [18] whe they get fe rse en fewer than ei ight hours [1 a night. G ahead 19] Go and c cry.)

[6 6]Click here [6] for more maps and charts on e how Americans are workin more and earning le w s ng d ess. Thin you're the exception? Nope. "Virt nk e tually all mu ultitaskers thi they are brilliant at m ink multitasking," warns [20] Stanford sociologist Cli ifford Nass [21]. "And one of the big discoveries is, you kno what? Yo [ o g ow ou're really lousy at it. [It's] been demon y nstrated over and over an over. No o talks abo itI don know whybut in r nd one out n't fact t there's no co ontradictory evidence to this for abou the last 15 20 years." ut 5, " Actu ually, it's not hard to gue why no one talks about it: We nee to believe there's a pe t ess ed e ersonal work karound for what we're conditioned to se as a person shortcom t ee nal ming. When, in fact, the problem is t absurd pr , the remise that our e economy can produce ev more wit ever less. n ver th But t take heart! Up in the cor U rner offices, there's a gro owing recogn nition that u unrealistic de emands on time are destr roying the so of...exec ouls cutives. "Alw ways-on, mu ultitasking w work environ nments are killing produc ctivity, damp pening creat tivity, and making us unh m happy," note a recent ar es article in McK Kinsey Quar rterly [22], th research he publ lication of th giant global consulting firm that has been corp he g h porate Amer rica's chief e efficiency ch heerleader. "The scourges hit CEOs an their colle ese nd eagues in the C-suite par e rticularly ha ard." McKins sey's advice to belea aguered exec Do one thing at a tim delegate; take more b cs? t me; ; breaks. Just try telling th to the millions of peo whose work has bee downsized, offshored and sped u thanks to hat ople w en d, up Kinsey. McK

How have we be so brainw w een washed? For a lucky few money and perks help sugarcoat [2 the daily frenzy r w, d p 23] y anyth hing from th workaday onsite gym to the rock-climbing wa free dryhe y all, -cleaning, ma assage parlo and or, unlim mited sushi you'll find at the Google y t eplex [24]. Some heed th siren song of Tony Ro he g obbins [25]/F Franklin Plan nner [26]/4-H Hour Workw week [27]/Lif fehacker [28]pick you productivi guru. But for most Am ur ity t mericans, it's ju fearof being passe over at best, downsize at worst. E ust f ed ed Even among college gra unemplo g ads, oyment is twice what it wa in 2007, an those stat as nd tistics don't take note of all the B.A.''s stocking s t shelves and a answering

phones. McDonald's recently announced [29] that it had gotten more than a million applicants for 62,000 new positions. Enough said [30]. Meanwhile, what's passed off as the growing pains of a modern economy isnot to go all Marxist on you simply about redistribution. For 90 percent of American workers [31], incomes have stagnated or fallen for the past three decades, while they've ballooned at the top, and exploded at the very tippy-top: By 2008, the wealthiest 0.1 percent were making 6.4 times as much as they did in 1980 (adjusted for inflation). And just to further fuel your outrage, that 22 percent increase in profits? Most of it accrued to a single industry: finance. In other words, all that extra work you've taken onthe late nights, the skipped lunch hours, the missed soccer gamespaid off. For them. This will keep up as long as we buy into three fallacies: One, that to feel crushed by debilitating workloads is a personal failing. Two, that it's just your company or industry strugglingwhen in fact what's happening to hotel maids and sales clerks is also happening to project managers, engineers, and doctors. Three, that there's nothing anyone can do about it.
MuleDesignStudio,awebdesignshopwithanumberofbluechipclients,hasasanerpolicy:"Ourofficehoursare MondaythroughFriday96.Wedonothandoutourcellphonenumbers.Ontheweekend,weceasetoexist."

No, no, and no. We got to this point because of decades of political decisions. To name but three: turning over the financing of elections to wealthy interests [32]; making it harder for unions [33] to organize; deregulating Wall Street (and completely wimping out on reregulating [34] it after the financiers nearly destroyed the global economy). And even after having watched these policies bring the global economy to its knees, Mitch McConnell & Co. [35] say that any questioning of corporate power is tantamount to rolling out the tumbrels. Please. It would take a boatload of arrogance, and an essay four times this length, to prescribe a solution. But suffice it to say there are companies in the US that have figured out a way to thrive and maintain a sane, even engaging, work environment. (Take the policies of Mule Design Studio [36], a web-design shop with a number of bluechip clients: "Our office hours are Monday through Friday 9-6. We do not hand out our cell phone numbers. On the weekend, we cease to exist.") European companies face the same pressures that ours doyet in Germany's vigorous economy, for example, six weeks of vacation are de rigueur, weekend work is a last resort, and companies' response to a downturn is not to fire everyone, but to institute Kurzarbeittemporarily reducing hours and snapping back when things start looking up (PDF [37]). Sure, they lag ever so slightly behind us in productivity. But ask yourself: Who does our No. 1 spot benefit? Exactly. So maybe it's time to come out of the speedup closet. Rant to a friend, neighbor, coworker. Hear them say, "Me too." That might sound a little cheesy, and it's not going to lance Mitch McConnell from the body politic of America. But if you're in an abusive relationshipwhich 90-plus percent of America currently is the first step toward recovery is to admit you have a problem.
SourceURL:http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedupamericanworkerslonghours