The Working Day

Working time is the period of time that an individual spends at paid occupational labor. Unpaid labors such as housework are not considered part of the working week. Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays and a maximum number of working hours per week.

Contents [hide]
1 Prehistory
2 History
2.1 Annual hours over eight centuries
3 Importance
4 Days of the work week
4.1 Day nicknames and expressions
5 Differences among countries and recent trends
5.1 South Korea and Japan
5.2 Western Europe
5.3 Mexico
5.4 Australia
5.5 United States
5.6 Other countries
5.7 Trends
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links


[edit] Prehistory
Anthropologists have argued that, contrary to popular perception, early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by complex modern societies.[1] For instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day.[2]

[edit] History
The industrial revolution made it possible for a larger segment of the population to work year-round, since this labor was not tied to the season and artificial lighting made it possible to work longer each day. Peasants and farm laborers moved from rural areas to the factories, and work times during a year has been significantly higher since then.[3] Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as arduous as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites.

The automobile manufacturer, Henry Ford, was an ardent proponent of shorter work hours which he introduced unilaterally in his own factories. Ford stated that he pursued this policy for business rather than humanitarian reasons. He believed that workers (who were also the main consumers of products) needed adequate leisure time to consume products and thus perceive a need to purchase them. Over the long term, consumer markets needed to be grown. This view of the economy never gained widespread hold.

Over the twentieth century, work hours declined by almost half, mostly because of rising wages brought about by a renewed economic growth, with a supporting role from trade unions and collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about forty hours after World War II. The decline has continued at a slower pace in Europe - for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000 - but not in North America. Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily.

Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours declined.[4] However, in the absence of declining work hours in goods-producing industries, there has been a shift in the nature of output in national economies. Economic growth in monetary terms tends to be concentrated in health care, education, government, criminal justice, corrections, and other activities that are regarded as necessary for society rather than those which contribute directly to the production of material goods.[citation needed]

[edit] Annual hours over eight centuries
Year Type of worker Annual hours
13th century Adult male peasant, UK 1620 hours
14th century Casual laborer, UK 1440 hours
Middle Ages English worker 2309 hours
1400-1600 Farmer-miner, adult male, UK 1980 hours
1840 Average worker, UK 3105-3588 hours
1850 Average worker, U.S. 3150-3650 hours
1987 Average worker, U.S. 1949 hours
1988 Manufacturing workers, UK 1855 hours
2004 Average worker, Germany 1364 hours
2008 Average worker, India 2817 - 3443 hours

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[edit] Importance
Working time is a quantity that can be measured for an individual or, in the aggregate, for a society. In the latter case, a 40-hour workweek would imply that employed individuals within the society, on average, worked 40 hours per week. Most often, the concern of sociologists and policy-makers focuses on the aggregate variables.

Some industrialized nations legally mandate a maximum work week length of between 35 and 45 hours per week, and, require 2 to 5 weeks per year of holiday. However, the actual hours of work per week cannot fall below a certain minimum without compromising a nation’s ability to produce the material standards of living to which its citizens have grown accustomed.

If the work week is too short compared to that society's ideal, then the society suffers from underemployment of labor and human capital. All else being equal, this will tend to result in lower real incomes and a lower standard of living than what could be had with a longer work week in the same society.

In contrast, a work week that is too long will result in more material goods at the cost of stress-related health problems as well as a "drought of leisure." Furthermore, children are likely to receive less attention from busy parents, and childrearing is likely to be subjectively worse. The exact ways in which long workweeks affect culture, public health, and education are debated.

Several nations have imposed limits on working time in an effort to combat unemployment. This has been done both on a national level, as in France's 35-hour workweek, and on the company-union level, for example the agreement between Volkswagen and its union to temporarily reduce the workweek to 29 hours to preserve jobs. This policy is controversial among economists.

[edit] Days of the work week
Main article: Workweek
The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday through Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.

Several countries have adopted a workweek from Monday morning until Friday noon, either due to religious rules (observation of shabbat in Israel) or the growing predominance of a 35-37.5 hour workweek in continental Europe. Several of the Muslim countries have a standard Sunday through Thursday or Saturday through Wednesday workweek leaving Friday for religious observance, and providing breaks for the daily prayer times.

[edit] Day nicknames and expressions
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Among salaried workers in the western world, Monday through Friday structure of the work week has led to the coining of phrases reflecting shared states of mind or moods among workers as they traverse the week.

'Blue Monday' or 'Mondayitis' or "having a case of the Mondays" is a feeling of weariness and apathy that some workers express when starting the work week on Monday. The latter phrase entered the pop culture lexicon after its use in the 1999 American comedy film Office Space. Saint Monday is the tradition of absenteeism on Mondays.

'Hump day' is a synonym for Wednesday. The idiom is based on the notion that if a worker has made it half-way through the week, struggling uphill from Monday, that the rest of the week is an easier slide toward Friday and the weekend; the end is in sight from the hump, the top of the hill.

'TGIF' is an acronym meaning "Thank God It's Friday" or "Thank Goodness It's Friday" an expression of relief that the work week is finally over and that even if the weekend is not full of leisure, at least the drudgery of the workplace is temporarily over.

'Pau Hana' (pronounced "pow hana") is a Hawaiian phrase literally meaning, "finished work", but generally refers to the practice of leaving work early on Friday to start the weekend.

POETS day is an acronym meaning "Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday", a term for Fridays, used in industries where it is common practice to finish work early at the end of the week. Variations on this are "Punch Out Early Tomorrow's Saturday" (referring to a manual punch time clock),"Push Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday" and "Push Off Early Tomorrow's Sunday" (based on the old 6 day work week). Used in UK[6] and Australia but appears less popular in the US.