[lbo-talk] Why is America so violent

tfast tfast at yorku.ca
Sun May 13 16:31:43 PDT 2007


If one wants to know, as a group, if workers are working less all one needs to do is create and index that takes two factors into account average hours and the employment to population ratio of 16 and over.

For example say we wanted know how given the above two factors the workers in 1964 would have made out if they faced the same combination of hours and employment to population ratios at different periods of time. We can calculate this by holding constant for the number of employed and then multiplying by the employment to population ratio (using it as a percentage) and then multiplying by an hours index (setting 40 hours equal 1) and thereby derive a number which allows us to compare points in time. In other words this is how we can see how declining hours stacks against increased labour force participation.

And the results look like this.

1964........37020 1970........37116 1985........36340 1990........37498 2000........38389 2006........36943

Setting 1964 as one by dividing the subsequent years gives us an index

1964.......1.00 1970.......1.003 1985.......0.982 1990.......1.013 2000.......1.037 2006.......0.998

What is remarkable is just how stable perception of work time ought to be at the level of the working class as whole. So why the deviation. One of the hypothesis I would venture is that as more members of the family have ventured into the paid labour force there has been an increasing perception that the family is always working because someone is always at work (now always in this context should be read as more likely to be at work). When you include non-standard work arrangements such as split shifts and the like along with services which go 7 days a week my suspicion is that paid work more fully dominates the consciousness of households.

It is also interesting that If I were to have used the labour force as opposed to the number of employed the results would have shown a slight increase overtime and then a more sharp decrease by 2006 (owing to the decreasing unemployment rate). Of course a whole series should be calculated controlling for the cycle so that we can better compare one period to another.

Travis Fast


>
> Do these figures about the glorious explosion of
> leisure control for the increase in two income
> families?
>
> There just must be something wrong, not just something
> "subjective," and so "to be explained" (away) as
> leftist prejudice or false consciousness of the
> working classes deluded about the joys the
> increasingly unbridled capitalism has brought them.
>
> Real wages have been falling for thirty years, A
> vastly increased number of families have been forced
> will-they-nil-they to put both parents in the labor
> market. Union representation has dropped through the
> floor. The number of workers (in the US) covered by
> the FLSA mandating the 40 hour week has shrunk
> dramatically. Productivity has risen while the labor
> force has shrunk. How is all this consistent with the
> supposed explosion of leisure? I don't think it's just
> that folks are spending more tome at the gym, btw.
>
> --- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that Marv, Gar, Chuck, Carrol and the
> > Bitch are all
> > illustrating the point by their subjective reaction
> > (disbelief) to the
> > objective statistics.
> >
> > The Time Use studies show that US leisure time is
> > holiding up pretty well
> > despite the pressures from work time and domestic
> > labour.
> >
> > Which is interesting (ok, maybe in a bit of a
> > geekish way) because nobody
> > believes that to be the case (i.e. their subjective
> > experience is that they
> > are very short of time). The disjuncture between
> > subjective belief (we have
> > no free time) and objective fact (you have) is
> > something (maybe not the only
> > thing) that has to be explained.
> >
> > Wainwright's (in his book with Calman, Work Stress)
> > point is that other
> > social changes make people experience work pressure
> > more intensely than
> > before.
> >
> > Doug asks does this mean that people are less
> > willing to put up with what
> > they did before?
> >
> > Maybe. My answer would be to look at what has
> > changed - principally the
> > declining role of organised labour, which leaves
> > people in an unmediated
> > relationship with their employers. That makes them
> > more vulnerable. And it
> > makes them feel even more vulnerable.
> >
> > I also think that the anarchist point about unions
> > ought to be taken into
> > account. Unions did not only defend workers, they
> > also acted as 'labour
> > lieutenants of capital', enforcing negotiated
> > settlements upon the
> > workforce. The wage-labour capital relationship was,
> > ironically, more
> > disciplined with organised labour's role.
> >
> > Older generations of more organised workers felt
> > loyalty and confidence.
> > They also felt greater pride in their work, and a
> > greater sense of duty
> > towards work and family, and approached that duty
> > with a degree of stoicism
> > that is less widespread today. That is because they
> > felt more ownership of
> > the workprocess themselves, because, even if they
> > did not own it, they felt
> > that they had at least a stake in it, that people
> > are less likely to today.
> >
> > Not in the way that craft workers did, but as
> > industrial workers, they
> > identified with the work process because they had
> > tentatively some
> > identification with the organised labour side of the
> > bargain, that
> > translated into a degree of loyalty to the firm, the
> > product, the work
> > process, that today's more atomised workers are much
> > less likely to feel.
> >
> > That is the overall psychology of which the
> > intensity of belief that we are
> > more overworked than our parents persists, even
> > though it is not true.
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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