I don't know about you, but I feel like I haven't had a free minute since the early '70s. (And I was born in 1974). Do you feel like you've been working a lot recently? Do you feel just a little guilty when you choose to take a vacation-or just take a few hours off?
You're not the only one. It's a societal phenomenon, and community organizers and activists are becoming conscious of this as a social problem. Free Time/Free People is a project designed to educate us about the issue of overwork--and work at finding solutions to it.
The problem
Juliet Schor, in The Overworked American (Basic Books, 1992) concludes: "If present trends continue, by the end of the century, Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs as they did back in the 1920s." For instance, she writes, "with nearly two-thirds of adult women now employed...many working mothers live a life in perpetual motion, effectively holding down two full-time jobs." She adds "Thirty percent of men with children under 14 report working fifty or more hours a week." Her book is filled with statistics of how overwork leads to unhealthy trends-like the replacement of community activity with excessive television watching!
Most Americans feel overworked in one way or another. Most of us think our inability to find time is simply a personal flaw or personal problem rather than one affecting our entire community. We find ourselves saying:"I have no time for my family;" "I would love to be involved in this issue or that issue if only I had a few hours;" and "Let's have coffee; I think I will be available for an hour in two to three months from now." We tend to say to ourselves: "I am overworked; I need to work harder; I seem to be unable to change my mode of living to have more time" rather than "we are overworked; we work plenty hard; we need to change our modes of living to have more free time."
Once we admit that overwork is a societal issue rather than merely one of personal control and decision making, we become empowered to address the problem on a societal level. In the spirit of our not-so-distant celebration of Passover, let's imagine the 4 children from the Seder, "enslaved" by the problem of overwork:
1.The one who works two full-time jobs just to feed his or her family.
2.The one who has reached a level of stature. This one must work at least 60 hours per week to keep his or her job and income level.
3.The one who wants to move up in management. This one dare not take a break lest someone without family obligations take his or her place.
4.The one working in the community and public interest sector. He or she feels that the numbers of hours worked is a reflection of his or her personal commitment to the issue or cause at hand.
This tension, the push to be always working, always productive, always using every minute, is something felt by both low income African Americans in Baltimore and upper-middle class Jews in Bethesda.
The solutions
Barbara Brandt, (director of The Short-Time Work Group) has been trying to address the problem of overwork for a number of years. She points out that overwork makes it harder for people to sleep, concentrate on the job, spend time with their kids, and get involved in community groups. She demonstrates how the almost unquestioned focus on work has spiraling effects, including increased drinking and drug use, decreased citizen participation, less productive work time, as well as a host of other problems-causing the need for more social workers and social activists.
Brandt has been teaching and writing about overwork for a number of years, including a co-authored article published in the July/August 1991 issue of Utne Reader. Ironically, she reports, many activists, upon hearing her presentations, have reacted: "We see your point, but we don't have time to deal with it."
She is excited by the Free Time/Free People project organized by The Shalom Center and others, a coalition of religious and other leaders committed to addressing overwork through educational, cultural, and legislative means. (Click here for what we can do if you are too busy to read the rest of this essay!) She believes that the Free Time/Free People coalition is likely to be more successful than past coalitions because the religious community is taking a leadership role.
Brandt attributes the labelling of the problem of overwork to Professor Ben Honeycut, who calls overwork "the American religion." Because we are obedient and loyal to the culture of work-work-work, we find ourselves sacrificing our communities, our religions, and even our personal passions. Once the concept of continual work and continual production has become a holy end, there is no excuse or reason to choose to eat with one's family, read with one's children, or reject a promotion. Perish the thought that we might take the time to study Torah or pray. How can we justify time worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when we could be worshipping the God of Work, Success, and Personal Achievement?
As Brandt explains, "if the problem of overwork is a religious problem, then it requires a religious response."
- To reduce the hours of work imposed on individuals without reducing their income;
- To strongly encourage the use of more free time in the service of family, community, and spiritual growth.
- To make work itself sacred by securing full employment in jobs with decent income, health care, dignity, and self-direction. (From the Free Time/Free People statement).
Waskow believes that "The Free Time/Free People project is responding to a crisis that people feel sharply in their 'private' lives but have not yet fully understood as a social and economic issue." Some of the specific legislative goals of this broad coalition include:
- A national living wage that allows people to live decently when working between 35-40 hours a week;
- An end to the overtime exemption on supervisors and professionals;
- No compulsory or forced overtime;
- Paid leave to be involved in community groups and the boards of non-profits (at present, only executives enjoy this privilege);
- Strengthening the Family Medical Leave Act and rewarding corporations that give workers more flextime for community.
To prevent this from being a dead-on-arrival legislative campaign, Waskow and the other members of the Free Time/Free People coalition are focusing on ways that we, as everyday citizens, can address the cultural aspects of the problem of overwork. Change is unlikely to occur until most Americans see lack of free time as a real social problem requiring governmental involvement for which they need to agitate.
1. Reach out to religious and community leaders. The Free Time/Free People project plans to publish pamphlets about worker's rights with respect to their Sabbath day, and to encourage more participation in Sabbath activities. Religious leaders will be encouraged to create a "Sabbath for the Sabbath" at least once a year, when their own congregation's Sabbath celebration could be focused on a full day of restful reflection.
Waskow is also working with congregations of various faiths and communities to encourage and support "community days," or community festivals when people can come to socialize and be together for an extended period of time. Time is set aside for singing, painting, sharing crafts,and storytelling. While leaders of the project are doing countless initial presentations, they hope to soon help local activists facilitate community days and annual "Sabbaths for the Sabbath' to respond to community-specific needs. Waskow aspires to help all Americans to realize their own need for regular Sabbaths. Signing the Free Time/Free People statement (see below) is also a good way to connect to this project.
2. Educate yourself and others. Meg Riley, Washington director of the Unitarian Universalist Association (which offers sabbaticals to all employees) likens our present approach to this issue to that of many family farmers in the Midwest. Family farmers, says Riley "saw the value of their work go down and down and they consequently worked harder and harder for less and less. They didn't see the issue as political." As do many of the activists involved in Free Time/Free People, Riley warns that unless Americans are empowered to identify overwork as a real social phenomenon that can be reversed, we will remain enslaved by our stress and our notions of powerlessness.
3. Consume Less. Riley also links the lack of free time to the issue of over-consumption. As we gradually have more resources at our disposal, we consequently become dependent on those resources, and consequently require we work harder and harder because the standard has been raised." She illustrates: "Now people say 'of course you should have a car;' There was a time when not everyone had a car and when one who didn't have a car needed a car, they simply borrowed from the person who had one," If we found ways to consume less, we would be comfortable making less and consequently, working less.
4. Take 7. Meg Riley has also taken a proactive step in her own office. She has enacted a policy of 7 minutes of silence a day where people can "think, breathe, snore, pray, or do whatever." She thinks people are more effective as a result.
The real challenge
The instinctive posture for social activists is to think about how institutional change can occur. But let us begin by each thinking about how we push ourselves and push others in ways that are unhealthy. Let's contemplate ways in which we overcommit ourselves and push ourselves to succeed in unrealistic timelines. Let's think about our families and what we can do to get to know them better-and ourselves better.
Can this focus on the self help bring about social justice? Can focusing on our own needs really help us effect real societal changes? The examples and blessed memories of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. tell us that it can. They were true to their own personal religious and needs-including prayer, reflection, and a weekly Sabbath-as a basis from which to find the energy and strength necessary to transform society.
[For the full text of the Free Time/Free People statement, a list of its signatories, and a form to join the project, go to www.shalomctr.org.html/comm15.html.]
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