IMPORTANT: The following is based on my personal opinion only. I have not found any hard scientific research to back up that what I'm proposing might help national unemployment. I just call it how I see it based on my personal experience. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you don't read any further.
With the official national unemployment rate hovering around 9.6% and new job offerings remaining scarce, the need for more jobs is evident. I believe there’s a relatively simple solution to induce job growth for thousands of well-paying office jobs.
The answer I believe can be found in the FAQ posted on the Department of Labor website which asks how many hours per day or per week an employee can work: The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not limit the number of hours per day or per week that employees aged 16 years and older can be required to work. Read it here...
As a salaried exempt office worker, I don’t qualify for overtime pay or compensation time for hours I work above the regular 40 hours per week (I should note that the only time I ever "work" 40 hours is if I'm on vacation all week and get to put down 8 hours a day on my time sheet). I knew all of that when I signed on for the job and I am not asking for compensation of any kind for the overtime hours I put in. Neither am I complaining: I'm just trying to illustrate what I believe is a larger problem.
What nobody seems to realize is that, if the maximum working hours for salaried employees were capped at a reasonable limit, I proclaim that there would be enough work/time left to employ more workers. If you don’t believe me, consider this:
Out of approximately 120 million American workers, nearly 50 million are exempt from overtime laws (U.S Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, 1998).
Source info...
And this...
According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, the average employed American works a 46-hour work week; 38% of the respondents in their study worked more than 50 hours per week.
Source info...
What I'm about to say flies in the face of charts like this that state that the average work week of non-farm workers is decreasing. I don't know how they arrived at these numbers but I do know that I can't reconcile that with what I see and do everyday at work.
Since I started in the tech/consulting industry in 1999, my co-workers and I have seen an increase in the weekly hours we need to put in to get the work done. For the first few years it was just the occasional, even rare 60+ hour work weeks. In the recent two years, it’s not uncommon for people in my department to work 70+, even 90+ hour work weeks.
If you want to keep your job and not be put on a blacklist, you learn quickly to not even complain about it. In fact, my manager told me a few weeks ago, that he doesn’t care for the employees in our department who dare to complain about frequently having to work overtime just to get everything done. He showed me with a smile on his face how a few of my colleagues were working over 90 hours in the prior weeks. That’s job security for you.
I’ve recently had an 18 hour work day from Sunday morning to Monday morning and was still at work for a full work-day on Monday and that entire week after only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before. I worked 78 hours that week. It was tough mentally and physically but I didn't complain. I need my job and have no legal protection to avoid getting canned if I dare to speak up.
Granted, these are the extreme cases.
The basic mentally of my various managers in the past 10 years has been that even though the official company policy states 40 hours per week and such things like "work and life balance", if you want to get anywhere or make sure you get the annual raise, you better work at least 45 hours per week. And we do. So most everyone in our small department of 20 employees is working 45 hours per week. It's no big deal right? Five extra hours are easy to get in, especially if you just skip lunch everyday.
However, with unemployment as high as it is, maybe it's time we need to look at all of this from a different angle?
Just based on five extra hours everyone works in my department, it appears there’s obviously enough work for at least two more full-time employees. These will never get hired though because the 5 hours per week from existing employees is much cheaper (free) for the company and helps our bottom line.
However, when the weekly hours worked are a grueling 74 or an unfathomable 98 (like two of my co-workers had to put in several times this year), you have to ask yourself why the government let’s this happen when there are so many unemployed looking for jobs. And these are good paying jobs at that!
I’m not even going to mention the ill effects this has on family life and the worker’s health and work quality.
As it stands, none of the current options available to exempt salaried employees in at-will-employment states are any good:
- Talk to your boss and risk retaliation.
- Try to find another job with the illusion that working hours will be any more reasonable there.
- Just quit. Join the "ghost" unemployed who don't receive unemployment benefits.
I don’t know how many jobs could be created if we limited the maximum number of hours those 50 million exempt employees can work. But I highly doubt, that my small department is an exception when it comes to overtime abuse by employers for their salaried exempt employees. I'm also not talking about a 40 hour limit...that would be stupid. But at what point do hours worked per week just become too much? 70? 100? 168?
So what do I propose this country should do to create more jobs?
Amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to restrict the maximum number of hours exempt salaried employees can work.
I specifically excluded hourly workers because I know they make most of their income working overtime, although I believe it should always be the worker’s choice to do so.
With that bombshell of a radical idea (oh no run for your lives or put your silly bitch-slap hats on to shout me down), I’d like to leave you with a new proposal by the European Union regarding overtime work for their member states. Yes I know we are not part of Europe. I'm really just sharing this with you to broaden your mind and show you how other civilized nations are addressing this issue. Please note that the EU already has some limits in place but here are the new proposals:
The directives require:
• maximum average working week (including overtime) of 48 hours
• minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours in every 24
• breaks when the working day exceeds 6 hours
• minimum weekly rest period of 24 hours plus the 11 hours daily rest period in every 7-day period
• minimum of 4 weeks paid annual leave
• night work restricted to an average of 8 hours in any 24-hour period
The directives apply to:
• all sectors of activity, both public and private
• Doctors in training will work a maximum week of 58 hours until 2009. From 1 August 2009 their maximum working week falls to 48 hours.
Exemptions:
• Member States of the EC may exempt: managing executives or other persons with autonomous decision-making power; family workers; and workers officiating at religious ceremonies. These are workers whose working time is not measured and/or pre-determined or can be determined by the workers.
• Other categories can be exempted from the directive's key provisions provided compensatory rest or appropriate protection is granted. These include employees who work a long way from home, or whose activities require a permanent presence or continuity of service or production, or who work in sectors which have peaks of activity. Examples include off-shore workers, security guards, journalists, emergency workers, agricultural workers, tour guides, etc.
I don't have any hopes of anything like the EU proposals being implemented in the United States. After all, I understand we don't live in Europe and we are not part of the European Union. I do worry about the limitations of my own body but maybe I can find a doctor to give me some speed so I can perform well continuously for 24/7. Hey, maybe there's enough time left to have prescription "speed" prices lowered in whatever health care bill we'll end up with.
But to illustrate my point, let's do some basic math if the proposed EU rules were to be applied in the US:
Total number of employees: 120,000,000
Percent of employees working over 50 hours: 38%
Number of employees working over 50 hours a week: 45,600,000
Gained Weekly Hours for new jobs(If capped at 48 hours per week and just taking away 2 hours of those 19 million working over 48 hours): 91,200,000
Potential Number of Jobs created: 91.2 million hours/48 capped weekly hours = 1,900,000
I AM FULLY AWARE THAT THIS MATH IS FLAWED. It is based on both exempt & non-exempt employees and really needs an in-depth study and analyses to confirm all the inputs and to calculate the true number of Gained Weekly Hours for New Jobs if we had a cap on weekly hours. If you have the time and resources, it might be worth looking into!
I apologize in advance if any of this is giving you a heart attack and would like to offer the following:
If you've never been in a situation like this, where more and more work gets piled on you requiring you to work more and more uncompensated hours, you'll likely won't get where I am coming from. Lucky you - I hope you've written a book and travel the world to enlighten the rest of us.
If you are addicted to work and don't mind working 12 hours a day every day of the week because you have no other life to live, I understand that a limit of working hours might inconvenience you. I am sorry for that but maybe you could spend the extra time volunteering for a good cause in your community.
If you are unemployed, please don't think I'm not thankful to have a job. I am very thankful but I think it's unfair to the unemployed, if those with jobs are asked to work so much so that there's no need to hire an additional employee.
If you are an employer who likes to squeeze his salaried employees as illustrated above, please hire someone (if only temporary) to help out!
Peace & Out!