Australians who are interested in getting out of the rat race usually share a number of common preferences and philosophies. They generally see life in terms of quality and not quantity, and some have aligned themselves with a Buddhist ideal whereby life is conducted mindfully, purposefully and deliberately.

The hours of unpaid overtime worked in Australia represent more than a million full-time jobs.

As individuals, time is our most valuable resource and we never seem to have enough of it. Our lives are becoming ever busier and more complex. Hours are devoted to electronic gadgets, maddening bureaucratic procedures and handling advertising spam emails.

Another ubiquitous cause of lost time is our jobs. In some cities, especially Sydney, commuting has become a nightmare. Australians work the longest hours in the Western world — an average of 44 hours a week — and among OECD countries only South Koreans stay at their jobs for longer.

At a time when working hours in Australia, America and the UK are rising, those in most of Western Europe are slowly decreasing. The EU’s Working Time Directive limits weekly hours to 48, with the exception of some industries and in Britain where it is voluntary. In 2000, France legally mandated a 35-hour week.

It has been said that, while Europeans work to live, Americans live to work. Although it may seem outlandish to American employees, many continental Europeans have five to six weeks of annual paid vacation, and a career is less commonly the central focus in life.

The Australia Institute (TAI), a leading progressive think-tank based in Canberra, has researched working hours and overtime in detail. It would like to see a reduced working week and a cap on the maximum number of hours over a given period, and it supports changes that would help employees to refuse long hours.

An historical perspective

Before the Industrial Revolution, labour on the land was hard but was free from the modern obsession with measuring productivity, efficiency and competitiveness. Plus, the hours were shorter; during the 13th and 14th centuries, peasants and labourers toiled for an average of about 30 hours a week after the many religious holidays were taken into account.

Today’s attitudes to work go back to the 17th century, when the Protestant work ethic took shape from the preachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Until then, virtue was largely tied to pursuing refined interests and had nothing to do with amassing personal wealth, as such behaviour would have been seen as a lack of faith in divine providence. This work ethic, which was strongest in Scandinavia, Northern Germany, the UK and America, was linked to a new materialism and desire for status that led naturally to capitalism.

Following the birth of the eight-hour working day in New Zealand (see sidebar), a similar call in Australia for reduced labouring hours was made by stonemasons in Melbourne, who with the help of union support won this right in 1856. By the 1860s, eight hours was championed as the central goal of the international labour movement, but it was not adopted throughout America until as late as 1940.

In Australia, average working hours dropped steadily until the 1980s, which were characterised by a deregulation of the labour market and the arrival of economic rationalism. Since then they have been bucking a global trend by heading upwards. Under the laidback, easygoing exterior, Australians are caught up in a morality system in which being busy is a cardinal virtue, and being idle is the vice.

The best example of the connection between overwork and a deregulated working environment is the US, where hours are already long and are slowly increasing. Minimum wage earners commonly need two, or even three, jobs to survive.

Workplaces themselves may have a range of unhealthy characteristics, including unsafe working conditions, unavoidable chemical exposures and ladder-climbing office politics. The boss-worker relationship can infantilise people who feel they are too closely monitored and lack the autonomy to make independent decisions. In some extreme examples, young male employees are targeted in unpleasant initiation rites.

Effects of overwork

Long hours can lead to numerous problems and impacts at the individual and societal levels:

 

• Less sleep time (it tends to decrease proportionally to the number of hours worked)
• Difficulty in concentrating on the job, and industrial accidents
• Stress-related illness, anxiety, depression, headaches and sleep disturbances
• Alcohol consumption and smoking
• Binge eating
• An increased use of throwaway packing
• Threats to marriage and family bonds
• Damage to one’s social life
• Lack of time to engage in volunteering and other community involvement
• Lack of time to become politically informed
• Lack of time for self-development and spiritual growth
• Missed opportunities to get away from people to experience nature and relative silence
• Lack of quality care for children, or even child neglect
• Neglect and abuse of pets

As part of the corporate culture in Japan, employees are often expected to devote a greater loyalty to their company than to their own families. Karoshi is the Japanese term for sudden death from overwork, in the form of either a heart attack or stroke, and it is now being encountered in other countries, too. The overtime tendency

Among Australian employees, 19 per cent regularly put in paid overtime beyond the official working week of 38 hours. This may be part of the package or a regular feature of the job. Non-essential paid overtime is often linked to “affluenza”, the name given to unnecessary consumerism and a shift in outlook where luxuries are seen as necessities.

Unpaid overtime applies to some extent to more than half of Australian full-time workers. This represents a gift of about $72 billion a year from employees to their employers and has received special scrutiny by TAI. Last year, TAI found in a survey that this unpaid overtime averages 70 minutes a day, adding up to 6.5 working weeks over the course of a year, usually exceeding the annual leave entitlement. It’s more common among white-collar employees and often comes down to corporate culture; many workplaces have an unspoken assumption that employees will put in some extra time for the benefit of the company.

As a challenge to this syndrome, last year TAI dedicated November 25 as Go Home on Time Day. Members of the workforce were encouraged to download a special “leave pass” from the internet, giving them permission to abandon their inbox and leave on time. Despite support from the union movement, a follow-up survey estimated that only about 55 per cent of participants had downed tools at the official end of the working day.

Taking a break

In a bid to shore up the lagging domestic tourism market, last year Tourism Australia launched its No Leave, No Life campaign. Australian employees have stockpiled a total of 123 million days of annual leave and the adverts encourage us to “win the work/life battle” by taking a holiday in Australia. The campaign was followed by a spin-off Channel Seven TV series hosted by Ernie Dingo.

Some employees are reluctant to take leave due to job security concerns, being worried that if they are away for too long somebody else may have taken their role or that the company might find it can manage perfectly well without them. According to TAI, many Australians report difficulties in being able to take the four weeks annual leave they are entitled to by law.

In the US and Canada, the Simplicity Forum has allocated October 24 as Take Back Your Time Day, with humorous actions designed to raise awareness about similar issues. The US is notable for being the only developed country where there are no guaranteed vacations, and paid holidays are instead dotted throughout the year. Using the slogan that Time Day shares with clock retailers, “There’s no present like the time”, organisers are calling for the passing of a Bill that grants Americans a period of annual leave.

Downshifting

The modern downshifting movement took shape in the late 20th century with the publication of books such as Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s Your Money or Your Life. One of its key ideas is to allocate a time-spent-working figure to items purchased to determine whether each acquisition was really worth the effort.

Downshifting generally reflects a conscious choice to reduce personal income in favour of less tangible benefits, while usually cutting back in some areas of consumer spending. If a large chunk of our time on the production line is spent on buying stuff we can get by without, the argument for downshifting is a persuasive one.

Australians who are interested in getting out of the rat race usually share a number of common preferences and philosophies. They generally see life in terms of quality and not quantity, and some have aligned themselves with a Buddhist ideal whereby life is conducted mindfully, purposefully and deliberately. It is a matter of paying attention and being in the present.

Back in 2004, TAI surveyed a number of people about their decision to downshift and estimated that over the previous 10 years this move had been made by nearly one-quarter of adults:

 

• The largest segment (35 per cent) wanted to spend more quality time with their families.
• A substantial group (23 per cent) were motivated to exit their jobs by health factors such as stress, tension and depression.
• Another 16 per cent were looking for more balance in their lives.
• A further 16 per cent of respondents were searching for greater fulfilment. This might be achieved in a different type of employment or through community involvement.
• The “post-materialists” (12 per cent) were acting in line with their values by rejecting consumerist excesses, in turn enabling them to work fewer hours.

This group is aware that every product is associated with some environmental impact and is concerned about issues such as climate change and sustainability.

• Other diverse factors came into play in 18 per cent of cases.

TAI has coined the term “deferred happiness syndrome” for a situation where an employee puts up with unsatisfying work or a low quality of life in exchange for future economic benefits. According to the TAI’s criteria, this applies to about 30 per cent of the Australian workforce. Switching to a job with shorter hours is a solution, but many people fall victim to inertia or a fear of the unfamiliar.

The most traditional downshifters, if you ignore the fact that they have generally never been exposed to the cash economy, are indigenous people. In the 1960s, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins found that, on average, hunter gatherers need to work only about 20 hours a week to meet their needs. However, in these cultures, working-hours data is inevitably rubbery because there is no exact demarcation between work and leisure activities.

Companies thinking outside the square

Some workers in high-stress jobs are burning themselves out, while others who are currently unemployed would like to generate an income or relieve a sense of boredom. Although the idea of redistributing work may appear too idealistic, it’s being taken increasingly seriously. One motivation behind the introduction of the French 35-hour week was to help relieve unemployment. The hours of unpaid overtime worked in Australia represent more than a million full-time jobs.

Following the global financial crisis, some media giants, including Channel Ten and News Limited, handled the squeeze by offering the option of a four-day-week as an alternative to redundancies. Their employees were largely supportive of the idea.

If a reduction in working days during the week is not balanced by a corresponding increase in daily hours, it has been found on the whole to increase overall levels of education and health while raising per-hour productivity. Less use of transportation also translates into reduced carbon emissions.

Dropping the pace

In 1989, the Slow Food Movement began in Italy as a response to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in an historic quarter of Rome. As it has evolved, the movement has branched out into slow parenting, slow money, slow cities and a range of other leisurely initiatives. Its motto is, “A firm defence of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.”

With a goal of addressing “time poverty”, the Slow Movement believes our culture is too fixated on doing things hurriedly and that this permanent state of speed is breaking vital connections in society that large numbers of people are searching for. Community fabric is eroded by full-time paid work in its present form and can be strengthened by its partial absence.

These sentiments are shared by Tom Hodgkinson, a British author and editor of The Idler. Feeling an undisguised sense of horror when faced with advocates for meaningless drudgery and mindless busy-ness, Hodgkinson embraces a neo-peasant existence characterised by community, celebration and a connection with the land.

Do what you love

Many years ago in a radio interview, a religious spokesman expressed a view that work is an essential part of life and it was by definition doing something you don’t enjoy; in other words, if you like doing it, it can no longer be considered work. If this is the case, then one easy way to avoid overwork is to find employment, or self-employment, that you find appealing.

While some work is interesting and fulfilling, some other jobs serve no socially useful purpose and this can have impact on personal motivation. If Australians are significantly over-consuming, then by definition much of the labour in the manufacturing and retail sectors is unnecessary. In an economy largely centred on human needs, if people cut back significantly on consumption, most of us would have abundant free time. Mainstream economists would not be impressed, though.

Working hours in New Zealand

New Zealand was the first country in the world to see the eight-hour day, following a stand taken in 1840 by a Wellington carpenter named Samuel Parnell. He agreed to carry out a job, but only on the condition that he started at 9am and clocked off at 5pm. He talked to workmen arriving on incoming ships, with the result that the 40-hour week became standard throughout the city. Everyone today who works for less than 60 hours each week owes him a debt of gratitude.

Today, New Zealanders spend an average of 38 hours at their jobs, but with no maximum limits on hours, some sectors, including management, agriculture, and road transport, are prone to longer shifts. More than 40 per cent of the population is at work for more than 45 hours a week and for 21 per cent of Kiwis this extends to 50 hours.

The rights of employees have been improved by a couple of recent reforms. In 2007, New Zealand came in line with Australia by increasing the weeks of paid annual leave from three to four. Last year, another law was passed that requires employers to seriously consider employees’ requests for flexible working hours.

Resources

No Leave No Life: www.noleavenolife.com New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Get a Life campaign: www.union.org.nz/campaigns/get-a-life Finding Time report (NZ): www.nzfamilies.org.nz/research/work-life-balance/finding-time Take Back Your Time Day campaign: www.timeday.org Go Home on Time Day: www.gohomeontimeday.org.au The Slow Movement: www.slowmovement.com The Idler: www.idler.co.uk Martin Oliver is a writer and researcher based in Lismore (Northern NSW.)