> I'm not sure. I've interviewed UAW people who say their
> members prefer long hours and lots of overtime to leisure.
Doug, while that may be true, it's still fucked up, and not incidentally, it's precisely what the apologists in the FT article were saying. To the FT's credit -- because it is a real newspaper, unlike anything published in the US for instance -- these people end up looking like total lunatics. The much more measured economists quoted by the FT point out that well into the 60s, the Germans and Italians worked longer hours than US workers, and that it was only trade union political power -- beginning particularly in the 70s -- that changed that.
I've talked to plenty of union organizers who say the same thing about US workers that your UAW contacts say, but putting it down to "cultural differences" is begging the question. US workers think in terms of getting more of that coveted overtime because they have a fucked-up perspective on life owing in no small part to the US labor movement's failure to do its job in raising workers' expectations over the last 30 years. And that is just sad.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories