Burned Out Workers Unite

This morning on MSN's home page, I noticed in honor of the upcoming Labor Day holiday they're running a series about Americans and How We Work. This is dovetailing nicely into my own personal reading right now, as I've been reading a chapter each night of Joe Robinson's excellent book: Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life.

Robinson outlines how Americans in these shaky economic times of rampant downsizing are working longer and longer hours at the job -- Americans put in two to three more MONTHS in total hours on the job each year than the Europeans, 2.5 weeks more than the Japanese.  And we're not only working longer, but compared to just about any other country in the world, workers here get the least amount of vacation.

And what's all this hard work getting us? Lower productivity and higher levels of stress, health care costs and burn out. Another statistic from the book: Workaholics actually have a shorter lifespan than alcoholics. Think about that one as you're staring bleary-eyed at your computer late at night in your office cubicle, churning out one more report.

Robinson's Work to Live Vacation Campaign's proposal is for a federal minimum paid-leave law that would provide three weeks of vacation for anyone who has worked at a job for a year, increasing to four, the standard in the rest of the industrialized world, after three years.

You go, Joe and all you burned out workers who can't or won't take a vacation, check out this book.

Happy Non-Labor Day to all.

11:08:48 AM    comment []