American Workaholics

The overworking of the American workforce is prevalent and overbearing and demands solutions, which can only come in the form of support for different economic pursuits and new policies. One of these economic pursuits we must move to support is the 80 percent solution. In an article by Juliet Schor, she explains the concept of the 80 percent solution by describing how in the 1980s workers in Europe were hired to work 80 percent of a fulltime schedule, and this schedule drastically increased productivity and gave workers the time off they needed for other aspects of life. Schor uses the Netherlands as an example and states that, “Dutch hours stood at 1367 in 2009 in comparison to the US, where hours are 364 higher. (That’s about 9 weeks more work here than in the Netherlands). Dutch productivity per hour has been considerably higher than in the US”, and that, “If the US started down the 80% solution road it would make a huge dent in unemployment. Employers could hire 5 people for every 4 jobs that are available” (Schor 1). This solution could thus not only aid the overworking issue but also the unemployment rates we have here in the U.S. by allowing those who want to work more the ability to and those who work too much to work less.

This same solution of pursuing less work is explained in an article by David Spencer. Spencer’s article focuses on the need to shift our attention from the traditional view of creating more work to one that focuses on creating less work so as to promote a better quality of life. Spencer presents the solution that, “Sharing out work more evenly across the available population by reducing average working time would enable those who work too much to work less and those do not work at all to partake in so...

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...rdable child care. In a world where mothers and fathers are at the workplace to stay, we need an expanded network of supports to care for the next generation of workers.

These changes will not be easy to achieve, but in one form or another, they have been effectively adopted in other societies throughout the modern world. And while no one policy can provide a panacea, taken together, they offer a comprehensive approach for creating genuine resolutions to the time squeezes that confront growing numbers of American workers and their families. Ultimately, these new time dilemmas cannot be resolved by chastising workers (and, more often, mothers) for working too much. Rather, the time has come to create more flexible, family-supportive, and gender-equal workplaces and communities that complement the transformations in work and family life that have already taken place.