Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights_Article_24

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article twenty-four states “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” Americans appear to be workaholics. Reasonable limitation on working hours is not valued in the United States as it is in other countries. Our accounting system promotes asset attainment and wealth creation. The economic culture in America sends the message that the harder and longer one works the better off financially he or she will be. Working hours is defined as the time spent doing a paid activity. Activities that do not receive pay such as rearing children, housework, and caring for elderly parents are not considered when totaling the work week hours. Dictionary.com defines working hours as “any of the hours of a day during which work is done, as in an office, usually between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.” Work week hours in the United States have been well documented since 1880. Hours worked for the time prior to 1880 can also be estimated. Many believe that the term “sun up til sun down” shows a well-entrenched work ethic in the United States. Skeptics claim that work hours did not increase until the industrial revolution as employment shifted from agriculture and became less seasonal. With the move from cultivation to sweatshop, work divided into two domains of pursuit: the public or economically recognized, which is paid, and the private or domestic, which is unpaid. In formal pursuits, people are paid by the hour or week. This paid time dictates the way unpaid time is spent. Work in domestic activities, which used to be mainly left to women, are thrust to the perimeters of the capitalist economy, but persist as essential for the prosperity and endurance of civilization. The Factory Acts was a series of acts that began as laws to protect children and women from working excessive hours during this industrial revolution period. The Factory Acts of 1802, 1831, 1833, 1844, 1847, 1850, 1856, 1878, 1891, and 1901 did little to progress the welfare of the workers by our current standards. Maximum number of hours that could be worked by anyone was finally addressed in 1897 limiting the hours worked in one day to eleven and one half. Today, companies are required to follow guidelines laid out in the Federal Labor Standards Act. “According to the FLSA (Federal Labor Standards Act) a regular work week consists of forty hours per week. Any time worked over forty hours qualifies as overtime and will be compensated as such. The Federal Labor Standards Act does not put any restrictions on the amount of hours a person may work in a week with the exception of minors under the age of sixteen. In many states, a typical work day is eight hours, but this can vary from state to state.” The American Time Use Survey Summary from July 2012 revealed that workers spend an average of seven and a half hours working. Employed persons worked more hours on weekdays than on weekends. Men worked forty-seven minutes more than women. Twenty-one percent of men and women do their work at home. Employed persons over the age of twenty-five with a bachelor’s degree or higher are thirty-six percent more likely to work from home. The hardest working are self-employed by working three times more than wage and salary workers. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine, more than thirty-one percent of college-educated male workers are frequently recording fifty or more hours a week at work, up from twenty-two percent in 1980. The research paper used in the article by CBS News purports that Americans work fifty percent more than the Germans, the French and the Italians. Another report claims that Americans average twenty-five hours a week while the Brits average twenty-one hours a week, the French average eighteen hours a week, and the Italians average sixteen and a half. The American work week increased three and a half hours between the years of 1977 and 1997. Video game developers average a whopping seventy-two hours a week. Medical and financial professionals record an average of sixty to sixty-eight hours a week while journalists put in an average of fifty-seven hour weeks. As compared to Europeans, Americans often believe that hard work and long hours will pay off with promotions and raises. Our capitalist economy allows, through lower tax rates than those of Europe, for workers to keep more of the pay received. Europeans do not feel the pressures to work long hours because those countries have exceedingly liberal social safety nets. European labor markets are more unionized. Economic and social mobility opportunities are less hindered in the United States than in Europe. Therefore, working longer hours does pay off in America. Europeans value leisure time more than Americans. Compared with Europeans, Americans take fewer (and shorter) vacations. The average American takes off less than six weeks a year; the average Frenchman almost twelve. The world champion vacationers are the Swedes, at sixteen and a half weeks per year. France specifically has a national law that requires workers to have five weeks of vacation. Most employees have more. One journalist received eight weeks. The French have no qualms with taking so much time off and are on the job 300 hours less than an American counterpart. In addition to the vacation days, there are approximately twelve public holidays and a thirty-five hour maximum work week. No paid overtime is allowed. “The French are so passionate about their vacations, they put pleasure before profit. As tourists throng the streets and summer temperatures hit their peak, Paris' most popular ice-cream parlor is closed for a whole six weeks. It's the kind of business bonanza that would be seized upon by Americans, but the French don't seem to care.” Side effects of continuous long hours on the job are well documented. Musculoskeletal disorders, hypertension, heart attack risk, reduced efficiency and productivity, marital dysfunction, motor vehicle accidents, sleep deprivation, depression, lack of exercise, anxiety, anger, relationship deterioration, environmental effects, poor nutrition, developmental issues in children, injury, illness, and even death are just a few of the negative consequences resulting from over work. “Honk if this sounds like you: While much of America is watching Jon Stewart, Letterman, or Leno, you're stumbling out the office door into a car-service Town Car or groping for the clicker to the BMW in the company parking lot. Once home, you slug down a beer or the last of a bottle of white wine in the door of the fridge, stuff some leftovers in your mouth, and collapse into bed beside your sleeping spouse. A half-dozen hours later, you crawl to the shower, throw on a clean shirt, pour some coffee down your throat, maybe drop a kid or two at school, and jump back on the frenetic work treadmill that you can't shut off.” The National Sleep Foundation reports that forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep during the week. This is up from thirty-one percent in 2001. About sixty percent are occasionally or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third gobble down lunch at the desk, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Association. Cell phone use while traveling to work prevents idle time. Answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to receive a call from Europe, and principally multi-tasking to the extreme. In a study, two American economists found a significant association between work hours and energy consumption. Their economic model showed that if European nations adopted American work hours, they would consume some twenty-five percent more energy while the United States would consume roughly 20 percent less energy if it moved to Europe’s work/leisure balance. In comparing member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with some non-OECD nations, John Shandra and Anders Hayden found statistical support for the idea that longer work hours are associated with larger ecological footprints. Two Swedish researchers looked at the household level and concluded that a one percent decrease in work time reduces household energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 0.8 percent on average—mainly by lowering incomes and consumption. Extended hours in front of a computer, more than eight, can increase hand and wrist disorders by 2.3 times as compared to those using the computer two hours or less. Working more than forty hours a week can increase the likelihood of hypertension by 1.87 times. Workers putting in more than sixty hours per week are nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack when compared to those working forty-one hours or less. Outside of the effects on individual employees, long hours can influence employers and communities. Employers can see decreased productivity, surges in occupational injuries, an increase in time lost due to illness that raises health care costs, and rises in turnover rates. Communities deal with motor vehicle accidents and lack of volunteer activities. The immediate family can suffer through the deterioration of martial bonds and hinder the ability to rear children successfully. Relationships are essential to mental health. Working long hours prevents interaction with family and friends. It is well known that poor nutrition has its own detrimental side effects. While working under high pressure and in prolonged periods, it is tempting to just grab whatever there is in the vending machine. However, these nutritional choices are harmful. Combine those poor choices with the inability to find the time for exercise and workers are asking for long term problems including high cholesterol, heart disease, hypertension, anemia, diabetes and many others. Now pile on the stress associated with long hours, employees fall into depression, experience anxiety, and suffer from exaggerated anger and emotional eating. For employees, the fundamental realization is that an employer who asks for more than eight hours a day or forty hours a week is stealing something vital and precious. Every extra hour at work is going to cost, big time, in some other critical area of life. How will the lost time be made up' Will dinner be some fast food' Skip the workout' Miss the kids’ game this week' Sleep less' (Have Sex' What’s that') And how many consecutive days can those trade-offs be made before weakness appears in some permanent and substantial way' Changing this situation starts with the knowledge that an hour of overtime is a very real, material taking from long-term well-being — and salaried workers are not even compensated for it. There are now whole industries and entire branches of medicine devoted to handling workplace stress; but, the bottom line is that people who have enough time to eat, sleep, play a little, exercise and maintain their relationships do not have much need for help. The original short-work movement in 19th-century Britain demanded “eight for work, eight for sleep and eight for what we will.” It’s still a formula that works. For every four Americans working a fifty-hour week, every week, there is one American who should have a full-time job, but does not. Our widespread unemployment problem would evaporate overnight if we simply worked the forty hour week prescribed by law. If we worked a reduced hour work week, thirty-five hours, every four Americans would create one full-time thirty-five hour job and one part-time twenty-five hour job. In addition, Americans could then experience a fuller more well-rounded life. The American accounting system does not distinguish between rich and poor. All the rules apply equally. However, those with immense assets are able to afford the best accountants and lawyers who then seek out and apply all the loop holes to the advantage of the paying customer. In this way, the accounting system applies unfairly. As article one and two deal with the equality of all, the accounting system does encumber equality in this way. Article four states no one should be held in servitude. Poor Americans are not slaves except to the confines of being poor. The accounting system amplifies the awareness of the have-nots about the advantages the haves enjoy. Do the poor feel enslaved to the restraints of being underprivileged' The laws of the land were intended to apply justly to all those living in this country. Yet, those with more assets (good accounting) seem to have the upper hand in receiving advantages, suitable living standards, and proper treatment under the capitalist system in America. -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/work-hour [ 2 ]. 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