Alternet: Trouble in Cubicle Nation

[Hestia]

Trouble in Cubicle Nation
By Joe Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on January 30, 2006, Printed on January 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31194/

It was a great year for labor -- if you worked at a call center in India, made your living as a CEO or sold real estate to big-box stores. But deep in Cubicle Nation, the average American worker remained on a fast track to the Industrial Revolution, with soaring workweeks, declining wages, and health, pension and vacation benefits vanishing faster than you can say job security.

Add to the siege outsourcing, cutbacks, the dismantling of ergonomics rules and forced overtime -- all while business is racking up historic profits, the most in 75 years -- and even a nearsighted dingo could see that the trends are unsustainable for families, personal health, company medical plans or an informed and involved citizenry. And completely unnecessary.

As all the productivity research shows, we can get the job done without finishing ourselves off. So let's fire some of the worst habits that got us here and ring in resolutions for a sane workplace in 2006:

Restore the 40-hour workweek. Almost 40 percent of us are working more than 50 hours a week, not exactly what the Fair Labor Standards Act intended when it set the 40-hour workweek in 1938. Chronic 11- and 12-hour days result in lousy productivity, expensive mistakes, burnout, triple the risk of heart attack and quadruple the risk of diabetes -- and leave families without a quorum for dinner. Two-thirds of people who work more than 40 hours a week report being highly stressed. Job stress costs American business more than $300 billion a year.