Something that I came across while I was figuring out what to write about was the idea of overtime in the work field. I was reading an article written by Miriam Schulman, Time to Go Home, and found a lot of facts about overtime that were a bit shocking. To start off, There are 168 hours in a week. 56 hours for sleep, 5 hours for the commute to work, and 40 hours for work. This leaves you with 67 hours left which is roughly 9 hours a day for extra time. This is a healthy week. In the article Schulman state, "the average 40 hour-a-week job no longer provides sufficient income for many families". Most men and women are lucky if they get out of the office on time and to top it off, most of these people do not get paid overtime! This is unethical because you should be able to use your 40 hours a week to work and the rest with your family. Overtime at work has put a stress on not only the workers but the families as well. Schulman wrote, "42 percent of employees reported that their workload was excessive" and "long hours at work have been blamed for family breakdowns". This is unethical because families should not have breakdowns and feel stressed because they can not be together all because a member or two has to work almost 60 hours in a week! This whole article brings up amazing but upsetting points about the amount of stress overtime puts on a person. Schulman goes on and states, "we all get tired, pressure builds up, people get edgy, and tension breaks out" so why not give "people without jobs the extra hours"? This would solve so many ethical and normal issues throughout our world. People would not be as stressed and others would have jobs and be able to support their families! It is a win win situation that I believe should be done to eliminate stress on a worker that should be able to see their family more often and not be worried about getting fired because they do not want to work overtime.
To continue a bit, Schulman states that "downsizing, which has created both a surplus of work to do and an insecurity that makes employees feel they have to do it or lose their job" is insane! It is unethical because people should not feel threatened that they will lose their job. This will make their stress levels even higher and cause them to do a poor job. It is unfair to ask an employee to stay longer and work harder but get paid the same amount of money they were for the work they did before. In the end I believe it is unethical for the amount of pressure that business owners put on their employees and on top of that it is unethical to expect them to work twice as long for what they are getting paid to do.
Lol! You for President - and we will all work less hard and make more money!
ReplyDeleteYou should provide a link to the article you cite - is Miriam Schulman a business consultant? a psychologist? an angry blogger? Should that make a difference in how your read her article? There is no doubt that the economic situation over the last 10 years has been very stressful for workers - even as corporate profits have hit record highs again and again. I can certainly appreciate that people get frustrated by demands at work, but the notion that individuals should not have to work hard because it might be stressful is just unrealistic. Additionally, I would actually NOT want some other person to do part of my job if it entailed more than 40 hours of my attention in any week (which it almost always does); and I'm willing to bet that most professionals would agree with that sentiment. It's kind of fun to consider the idea of having an assistant take care of another hour or two of paperwork each day - but when you start to consider things like accountability or qualifications, that sort of arrangement quickly becomes unworkable.
Now, if you would want to discuss labor laws and whether companies should be required to pay time-and-a-half for labor beyond 40 hours, then you are discussing issues involving labor unions and the rights of business owners. I appreciate the principle you articulate here, but to properly debate this issue, you would need to be more specific - the hours spent putting stuff together on an assembly line are inherently different than the hours spent doing academic research or the hours spent pouring over merger paperwork for your own company or the hours spent driving a truck overnight on a highway. There are many variables involved, much more than simply the number of hours worked.
Keep working!