Way We Work

Thesis statement

People are lot wiser about their choices now. They want a better quality of life; they're asking for more flextime to spend with their families.

Introduction

Today, work dominates Americans' lives as never before, as workers pile on hours at a rate not seen since the Industrial Revolution. Technology has offered increasing productivity and a higher standard of living while bank tellers and typists are replaced by machines. The mismatch between available work and those available to do it continues, as jobs go begging while people beg for jobs. Though Kellogg's six-hour day lasted until 1985, Battle Creek's grand industrial experiment has been nearly forgotten. Instead of working less, our hours have stayed steady or risen--and today many more women work so that families can afford the trappings of suburbia. In effect, workers chose the path of consumption over leisure. But as today's job market shows so starkly, that road is full of potholes. With unemployment at a nine-year high and many workers worried about losing their jobs--or forced to accept cutbacks in pay and benefits--work is hardly the paradise economists once envisioned (Stott, pp 45-289).

Discussion

The backlash comes after years of people boasting about how hard they work and tying their identities to how indispensable they are. Ringing cell phones, whirring faxes, and ever-present E-mail have blurred the lines between work and home. The job penetrates every aspect of life. Americans don't exercise, they work out. We manage our time and work on our relationships. In reaching the affluent society, we're working longer and harder than anyone could have imagined, says Rutgers University historian John Gillis. The work ethic and identifying ourselves with work and through work is not only alive and well but more present now than at any time in history (Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell, pp 1-832).

It's all beginning to take a toll. Fully one third of American workers--who work longer hours than their counterparts in any industrialized country--felt overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do, according to a 2001 Families and Work Institute survey. Both men and women wish they were working about 11 hours [a week] less, says Ellen Galinsky, the institute's president. A lot of people believe if they do work less they'll be seen as less committed, and in a shaky economy no one wants that(Shergold, pp 45-289).

The modern environment would seem alien to pre-industrial laborers. For centuries, the household--from farms to cottage craftsmen--was the unit of production. The whole family was part of the enterprise, be it farming, blacksmithing, or baking. In pre-industrial society, work and family were practically the same thing (Shergold, pp 45-289). Innovation gave rise to an industrial process based on machinery and mass production. This new age called for a new worker. The only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts, mused one turn-of-the-century writer.

Business couldn't have that, so instead it came up with the science of management. The theories of Frederick Taylor, ...