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Workweek Woes
By JOHN DE GRAAF


EATTLE
Last week was the 70th anniversary of a momentous yet forgotten event in American history. On April 6, 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have made the standard work week 30 hours. Anything more would be overtime.

The bill passed by the Senate was an effort to reduce a national unemployment rate that stood at 25 percent. It had strong support from labor and religious leaders who argued that working people needed time for family, education, recreation and spirituality as much as they needed higher wages. But the bill failed in the House. The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed five years later, gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek.

Yet today, in an era when American productivity is several times what it was then, most Americans find it hard to get all their work done in 40 hours. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are without work, even as many others are working mandatory overtime or far longer than they would if they had a real choice in the matter.

According to the International Labor Organization, Americans now work 1,978 hours annually, a full 350 hours — nine weeks — more than Western Europeans. The average American actually worked 199 hours more in 2000 than he or she did in 1973, a period during which worker productivity per hour nearly doubled.

What happened? In effect, the United States as a society took all of its increases in labor productivity in the form of money and stuff instead of time. Of course, we didn't all get the money; the very poor earn even less in real terms than they did then, and the largest share of the increase went to the richest Americans.

The harmful effects of working more hours are being felt in many areas of society. Stress is a leading cause of heart disease and weakened immune systems. Consumption of fast foods and lack of time for exercise has led to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Many parents complain that they do not have enough time to spend with their children, much less become involved in their community. Worker productivity declines during the latter part of long work shifts.

By contrast, over the past 30 years, Europeans have made a different choice — to live simpler, more balanced lives and work fewer hours. The average Norwegian, for instance, works 29 percent less than the average American — 14 weeks per year — yet his average income is only 16 percent less. Western Europeans average five to six weeks of paid vacation a year; we average two.

Work and consumption are not necessarily bad. But producing and consuming can become the focus of a person's life — at the expense of other values.

Americans should reflect on those values. Later this year, on Oct. 24, will be the first Take Back Your Time Day, the goal of which is to encourage Americans to lead more balanced lives. The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, nine weeks being how much more, on average, Americans work each year than Western Europeans. Perhaps this day will help American workers realize that, in the end, there's no present like the time.


posted 8:10 AM

Workers Who Feel Discarded
By BOB HERBERT


've gone through a few stages of depression and frustration," said Dina Ziskin, who is 31 and lives in Brooklyn. "Why is it taking me so long? I panic a lot. I did not think it would be this difficult to find a job."

"I can't tell you the number of divorces we hear about," said Janelle Razzino, who runs an executive search firm in Westwood, N.J. "The job loss in these cases was probably the final straw. Nobody needs that kind of pressure, stress, whatever."

"It's like someone ran an electric shock through your system," said Dr. Steve Korner, a psychologist in Cresskill, N.J. "People are anxious, depressed, feeling unwanted, powerless. The job market is really awful for a lot of people."

Among the many things overshadowed by the war is the substantial human toll that is quietly being taken by the faltering U.S. economy. Putting Americans to work is not part of the agenda of the Bush administration, and the fallout from this lack of interest is spreading big time.

The U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs. On Friday the government reported that 108,000 more jobs were lost in March. Some 2.4 million jobs have vanished since the nation's payrolls peaked two years ago.

The jobless rate held steady at 5.8 percent last month, but that is extremely deceptive. People who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work are not counted when the unemployment rate is calculated. This keeps the official rate artificially low. There are five million people in the discouraged category and their ranks are growing.

David Leonhardt, in an article in The Times on Saturday, wrote:

"Last month's job losses cut across almost every sector of the economy. Manufacturers reduced employment for the 36th consecutive month. The vast services industry, usually a source of stability, has cut 121,000 jobs in the last six months, with department stores, restaurants, airlines and hotels all paring their payrolls in March. After adding jobs through last year, local and state governments have also begun to make cuts to close budget deficits."

There is not much of a sense anywhere that things are about to improve. "It seems to me that the recovery's been six months away for two years running," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the international outplacement firm. "The latest version of that is that when the war ends the euphoria will trigger enough optimism on the part of either consumers or businesses to finally turn things around. I'm certainly dubious about that."

The loss of a job is like a blow to the solar plexus of an individual family. Grand plans give way to a state of emergency in which it is not at all clear how the rent or the mortgage will be paid, or how the bill collectors can be satisfied from month to month, then week to week, and finally day to day.

"I've got my own little Ponzi scheme going," a distraught former executive told me last week. "When the credit card companies pull the plug on me, I'm finished."

The executive, who asked not to be identified, said he was depressed but could not afford to see a therapist.

John Sampson helps run a support network in northern New Jersey for telecommunications experts who have lost senior positions. "This is the bleakest employment picture I've ever seen," he said. "The number of people looking for jobs is overwhelming. We've got a whole bunch of people now who are doing everything from selling cars to driving limousines to working in retail."

Mr. Sampson, who is 62, said he's been out of work for more than a year.

There doesn't seem to be much awareness in the Bush administration of the terrible distress of the unemployed American worker. This is an ache that does not extend to the gilded towers of the very wealthy, which is where the administration has always focused its concern.

The White House response to the latest job loss figures is the same response it has had all along to bad economic news: more tax cuts are the cure.

Mr. Sampson, who described himself as coming from a "Republican background," said he feels the American worker has been abandoned. "While I'm not a big Bill Clinton fan," he said, "I liked what his labor secretary had to say. Robert Reich always talked about the work force as a national asset. It is. We should treat it that way."


posted 9:51 AM

Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers
The move was part of a campaign by the Santa Cruz libraries to demonstrate their opposition to the Patriot Act, the law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that broadened the federal authorities' powers in fighting terrorism.

Among provisions that have angered librarians nationwide is one that allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to review certain business records of people under suspicion, which has been interpreted to include the borrowing or purchase of books and the use of the Internet at libraries, bookstores and cafes.
There are people, especially older people who lived through the McCarthy era, who might be intimidated by this," he said. "As of right now, the odds are very great that there will be no search made of a person's records at public libraries, so I don't want to scare people away."

At the same time, though, thousands of libraries have joined the rush to destroy records.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said libraries were not breaking the law by destroying records, even at a faster pace. The spokesman, Mark Corallo, said it would be illegal only if a library destroyed records that had been subpoenaed by the F.B.I.

I am more terrified of having my First Amendment rights to information and free speech infringed than I am by the kind of terrorist acts that have come down so far," Ms. Turner said.



posted 9:40 AM

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