No replies to this topic

[WorkingPoor]

It’s midnight on a Wednesday and I’m  sitting at my keyboard after a 10-hour day trying to finish an article  on whether Americans work too much. This is a prank, right?

Sadly,  it’s more like a typical day for most freelance writers, and we’re  becoming part of the norm. With an increasingly competitive job market,  Americans are logging in more time at work and skipping vacation time.  According to the left leaning Center for American Progress, 86 percent  of U.S. men and 67 percent of women work more than 40 hours a week, and  American families worked an average of 11 hours more per week in 2006  than they did in 1979. Though the shift has helped companies cut  expenses and increased U.S. productivity, a growing number of studies  show that the extra work is negatively affecting our health, family  lives, and effectiveness at work.

For one, workers and their  bosses often are not being paid for their extra time. Twenty-four  percent of employees and forty-seven percent of employers work six or  more hours a week without pay, concluded a 2007 study by corporate  staffing firm Randstad. And research  in 2008 by the Pew Research Center showed that 22 percent of Americans  are expected to respond to work email when they’re not at work, half  check job email on weekends, and a third do so while on vacation.

That  is, of course, if they ever get to take a vacation. According to a 2009  report by the human resources firm Mercer, after 10 years of service  U.S. worker bees normally get 15 days of paid leave, while the Germans  get 20, the British 28, and the Fins 30. But now come several new  surveys last November announcing that we’re not even taking the vacation  we do have. One, by travel company Expedia, found workers left 2 of  their 13 days on the table—that’s $34.3 billion in free labor.


http://www.thefiscal...rked.aspx#page1