But let's examine the 40-hour week, shall we? New studies are showing that not only are workers happier when they work six hour days for the same pay scale as an eight hour day, but they are also more productive. Flatly put, an 8 hour day encourages goofing off. We've all done it: you punch in to work, get to chatting with a coworker, checking the news or even just daydreaming and before you know it it's halfway to lunchtime and you're out for a coffee break. Now, what fool is going to go up to their boss and say "Chief, I'm terribly sorry, but can you please dock my pay for the last two hours? I haven't been performing anywhere near up to snuff, I'm afraid." Heck, in a country like America where productive has far outpaced compensation, we're all scrabbling for every dime we can get.
And so, we have a fundamentally broken system: people don't work as hard because they need the hours, but they're essentially wasting up to 10, 15, maybe 20 hours a week doing not-work. But no one's going to say anything about it: we've got a good thing going here, don't mess it up. If I got bumped down in pay, we'd have to give up some of the few creature comforts we actually have in this stagnant economy. And so, solidarity takes on a strange new twist: we have a largely union-less working population staging what amounts to a 20 year slowdown in work, all just to make sure we have food on the table. And, most despressingly, while we could push for less hours, better pay, and ultimately a happier and more productive workforce, 30 years of Reaganomics has taught us that the system is hopelessly rigged and that you just need to keep your head down and get as much as you can before the next boom is followed by the next bust.
This isn't any way to live, particularly in the richest, most prosperous country the world has ever seen. Get involved: support labor, support organizing, support card checks, support solidarity. If we all were to work together, we could effectively spit in the eye of the selfish, objectivist, money-grubbing and greed-uber-alles culture that has put us in this thoroughly broken situation. As Ben Franklin one said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Who knows what the next crash in this money-mad system will do, or whether it will put you, or me, or all of us out of a job. We can't afford to wait for the noose to come around our necks, we must work to fix the broken system now!
At Your Service,
Doremus Jessup
