The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure

Aspects of this work are dated but Shor's book invigorates the term "wage slave" with new meaning. In this work you'll learn: * USA citizens are the most overworked and among the least rewarded in real terms in the industrialized world. * Most USA citizens would rather have more time off than higher pay. * Overwork brings stresses to families and individuals that have huge costs which are largely unknown. * The assault on the 40 hour work week, which itself is onerous and unnecessary. * The so-called golden age in the 50's and 60's of the stay-at-home mom is largely a myth. * Had Social Security been allowed to thrive instead of tampered with by elected officials, a retirement age of 50 would have been possible in the 1990s. * How a 4-day, 32-35 hour work week at full pay is not only possible but economically desirable as well. We've been duped by the American (over)work ethic, which is little more than an ideology that has evolved to enrich others by making overwork seem both inevitable and natural. Shor shows us that overwork is neither.

Juliet Schor presents many balanced and interesting facts, stats, and trends in the past and present individual and collective work environment in the United States. Do most Americans realize this or even think about it?....I've met only a few who do. Since World War II worker productivity per capita has more than doubled. And, the hours worked has increased so steadily that work hours will be at the levels of what they were in the 1920s. The average American takes 12 days off per year, which is the lowest in the industrialized world. Yet Americans are in more personal debt than at any time at our history. Most today, will work into their 70s as the thing called retirement is not possible for most. Question: is it worth it? The Puritanical work-consume-work-consume-die mentality is being questioned by some Americans, now that their investments, pensions, and 401-Ks have lost the principal to allow them to live and do what they have always been wanting to do. This book may seem contrary to the way most Americans have been raised and advised throughout their lives. Do Americans have time to reflect, think, relax, and pursue anything to their liking? The answer depends on who you are, so ask yourself that question. This is a relevant book for a very relevant topic.

When Schor's book came out in the early ninties, people were somehow blind to the fact that Americans were working more and had significantly less leisure time. Her book functioned very much like the child who sees that the emperor has no clothes. Once this book was out, everyone began to realise what should have been obvious about the changes in the American workplace. But what give's Schor's book continued value is her analysis of the reasons why American's are still in this time trap. She goes beyond the usual analysis of the effects of advertising and consumerism by taking a look at labor history and showing why the people who run the workplace prefer to offer workers a productivity dividend of money, not time. She raises important questions about how much choice workers have about the hours they spend at work. A terrific book.

Ten years ago, then recently appointed Harvard sociology professor Juliet B. Schor wrote a disarmingly truthful book, titled THE OVERWORKED AMERICAN, about the dramatically lowered yet unpublicized quality of life in America. She claimed, accurately, that work in America is overdone and overemphasized, wheras leisure and "quality time" away from work is underdone. Her very worthwhile book became a New York Times listed best seller, then shot into obscurity with amazing, almost devastating rapidity. A decade later, following eight years of the Clinton administration's non-stop, machine gun style propaganda campaign advising America it "never had it so good" (quality of life-wise), Schor's book is almost forgotten, never discusssed seriously, and not regarded as what in fact it was and is, one of the great and important classic works by a scholar on the subject of labor in America at the close of the twentieth century. Schor has gone on to write other, far less impressive books. Her recent books lack the gusto and fervor of THE OVERWORKED AMERICAN (1991), and are not about subjects as important. She seems, de facto, to have joined the people who nay-sayed the importance of her 1991 book. That's a shame, because the book was good, she was right to write it, and deserved/deserves far more acclaim and gratitude than she got when, it seems, she stuck her then young neck out and told the truth about a painful and politically incorrect subject, the brutal yet undiscussed and mostly unchallenged bad conditions which face American workers. Her book, THE OVERWORKED AMERICAN, had implications discussed only by Ralph Nadar among Presidential candidates in the 2000 elections, and only briefly and superficially by him. Do get a hard-back copy of this book (the paperback, which I haven't read, may well lack some of the good stuff included in the hard-back version....changes occur when hard back books appear in paper-back versions). ... if sold new today, and tells the truth about the American labor situation and quality of life situation not found elsewhere at any price. Sometimes, only old books tell the truth about important subjects. That's what classics, even ones not yet accorded "classic" status, are all about.

Juliet Schor show us not only are we working longer than anytime in the past 50 years, we are trying to squeeze more activities into our days. The important things, like spending time with our families, helping with school work, cooking a decent homecooked meal, are sacrificed because if we try to go home at 5p.m. we are considered slackers. But it is the workers' fault as much as the employer, because we need the overtime pay to pay off our credit card debt, to send our kids to private schools, to pay for the new SUV and Minivan and the suburban dreamhouse. It's a ratrace and we are the rats and we wouldnt dream of sitting it out.