Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Workweek Or Work Weak?

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There are seldom enough hours in the day to accomplish what we attempt to accomplish when we are young and energetic. Maybe my work ethic is slipping due to age but an article in the NY Times reintroduced an idea that appeals more to me with every passing year, a shorter workweek. Working 1978 hours per year is not a really great burden in order to live the life that we live here in the USA. That is currently the average work-year of US workers. Lots of people in the world work longer hours for far less than we have here. The difference in income to some extent can be related to productivity. The more you can produce per hour the fewer hours you should have to work to make a living wage. Not much of the real connection in relation to wages and hours worked is really that neat or simple. We work more hours in this country and produce more per hour than other industrialized nations. So why can't we have more time off and still make a living wage? We can but the redistribution of wealth in this country toward the few percent on the top of the income structure would have to reverse itself first.

Now I will tell you that I am not talking about Communism here, no sirree Bob I'm not. I'm not even talking about socialism; which sometimes looks better as I get older. I'm just talking about changing things so that wages track productivity gains a little more accurately. When a worker produces more they ought to get paid more proportionally to the increase in productivity shouldn't they? Well the economics of that kind of thing are not really quite that simple, there is the role of capital in that process to consider. But it would help most of us if the productivity gains of the last twenty years had accrued more to the people who produced them rather than to the people who wound up with the money. Who got the money? The people who provided the capital got a bunch of it, the managers of the companies got a big share of it, and the workers got a smaller share of it. Redistribution of wealth during that time period has been increasingly directed into the hands of the wealthiest one percent of Americans.

This is not a call for class warfare! I do not believe that there is a reason to call every conflict of interests in the world warfare. It degrades the potency of the term war to use it that cavalierly! War is about people killing other people! This is about the conflicts of interests in the labor market and how our society resolves them. That is as far from war as we humans get when we deal with emotionally loaded topics like who winds up with the money. I don't want to kill the employers and capitalists because I be one! Wow the grammar checker didn't underline that sentence until minutes after I wrote it. And then it didn't matter whether I used is, are or be, it still underlined the same word space. I love confusing the programs designed to keep my grammar on the straight and narrow path! I am a capitalist on a small scale, I own part of a small business. It employs a few people and I have been involved in it for fourteen years now. It has taught me a great deal about redistribution of wealth. It has also often been a humbling experience, but it has made one thing clear. There is often a smaller relationship between the productivity of the individual and their income than there would be if our enterprise system were redesigned.

Currently we are rewarding CEO's greatly because we believe that their leadership vision contributes greatly to the value of the company. In a sense then, that compensation structure is based on productivity. Of course when you look at it closer it is really seldom really tied to real productivity at the company at all. The most important factor in the evaluation of how a company is doing for its public capital investors is its price per share. There is an enormous variance between share values based largely on the perceptions of investors. So, by that logic, the best CEO is the one that convinces new investors to buy the shares at the most inflated prices. The deflation of the recent bubble is showing us the wisdom of that manner of choosing the CEO. The stock value deflation along with scandals at Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing and other major companies has cast doubt on the wisdom of using the ability to pump stock prices as a measure of the effectiveness of a CEO. These were companies where the CEO' s gratuitous greed was tolerated because the price of the stock kept rising. Of course one could hardly fault the workweek of these modern Robber Barons. A twenty-hour day in pursuit of ill-gotten gains is still a lot of work isn't it?

What is productivity? That is a variable answer based on what type of production is being measured. The amount of goods or services produced in a standard measure of time would probably do if we could agree on the standard measure. One hour is reasonably standard. When we get to one day or one week the standard needs further definition. In Europe the workweek is substantially shorter than it is here in the USA. A lot of barriers exist in the labor market related to shortening the workweek here. Adjustments to real substantial workweek changes are sometimes complicated enough to prevent such changes from taking place. The critical issue is does productivity even when it is accurately measured really have anything to do with what workweek is right for us. The answer is probably not much; productivity is only one factor in defining a workweek.
The heart of the issue of whether or not we are working longer hours for less pay than we should be getting is still more closely related to what we want out of our jobs. If we are looking for more free time the current system of forty-hour weeks will not offer it to us. If we want to be good consumers and have bigger houses, drive bigger cars and wear more costly clothes then the forty-hour workweek might not be enough. On the other hand if you just want to live in a modest house drive a five-year-old vehicle and wear non-designer jeans a thirty-hour week might be just right for you. The heart of the issue is what we want out of life, and how much of our life we are willing to spend at work getting it.

We are the least taxed industrial nation and we consume more on a per capita basis than any other nation in the world. How much is enough? It may be time to start asking that question in earnest, but we seem to be too busy winning wars, consuming resources and fearing our neighbors. We are demonstrably the most powerful nation on the planet, but we have not yet discovered what our power is good for. We fought to set Iraq free in the eyes of most of the citizens of our nation, but that is not the view of most of the other citizens of our world. In the eyes of most of the people in the world we are a giant with huge appetites and little self-control.

Contrary to the mantra promoted in the 1990's the one who dies with the most toys does not win. The one who dies with the most satisfaction derived from the life they lived wins if there are any winners in the cosmic game of life. Having lived a life during which the nature of what humanity is doing to his(her) own planet has become a major issue I feel obliged to do something about the damage our children will inherit. I find it immensely interesting that the majority of my generation does not seem to share that concern. If we worked thirty hours per week and consumed less it would help preserve the planet substantially. I guess that we will have to do what we can, those of us who have enough time to make the effort. I hope that there is time enough. God bless you all and keep you safe in these trying times.