Lengthening work hours and the effect on workers

When was the last time you worked a true 40hr week? Last week? If it was you are very lucky. Average weeks, according to government statistics have crept above 40hrs. If you are hourly paid this is good news, it's a pain when you want to do something with your own time (of which you now have less of) but at least all those extra hours transcribe into a fatter pay packet.

Salaried workers have no such relief. The longer the week they work, well, the longer it is. They are salaried so there is no overtime, it is working for free. It is, of course, couched in terms like: "We need to do this to get the project finished, it will just be for a few months..." or "If we don't get our heads down our competitors are going to take the shirt off our backs..."

Management By Crisis is one of those wonderful Management methodologies that were put into action in the 80's, failed terribly then, and strangely enough continue to fail today. It has burnt out more people, alienated more employees and led to more cases of Post office mayhem than we even care to think of.

For a short period in the 80's there was the prospect of people doing 35 hour weeks. In the 90's such working habits were limited to people working in some of the main metro areas, and it was retained only because the commutes faced were insurmountable without the shorter working days.

Recently I came in contact with a company that expects its employees to do a mimimum 45 hour week. A few years ago I interviewed with the NFL in New York, they expected 100 hour weeks. Our grandfathers must be rolling in their graves at the thought.