Workers lament loss of leisure time

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 20, 2007 | by Tim Simmers

Time off and vacations are becoming an endangered species these days.

That's why there's a campaign to celebrate the fifth-annual "Take Back Your Time Day" on Wednesday.

With U.S. productivity up twofold since the 1970s, a grass-roots organization is trying to remind U.S. workers that new technology and automation ought to give them more time to enjoy family, friends and leisure.

"We're on a loop of infinite rising productivity, while our lives are getting gobbled up," said Joe Robinson, author of the book "Work to Live," and a member of Take Back Your Time, a grass-roots group advocating against overwork, "time poverty" and the harried lifestyle sometimes seen around these parts.

Robinson laments that the average American vacation is "down to a long weekend."

Some local workers agree the "24/7" mentality is creeping into their company culture.

"Scheduling has gotten much tighter," said Joe Tringali, a San Mateo sheet metal worker who works on San Francisco high-rises. "They want everything done yesterday."

Tringali added that commonly, while he's doing sheet metal work, "they've already brought in the painters and carpet layers, and the dust is still flying."

Steve Hales, a software progammer who lives in Palo Alto and works in San Mateo, said he's learned to "back off" when his bosses put too much on his plate.

"You've got to find a company that appreciates not burning you out," said Hales, 46. "The last thing I want to do is burn out at something I love doing."

Take Back Your Time is a U.S./Canadian initiative that challenges "an epidemic of overwork and over scheduling that threatens our health, our families, relationships and communities," Robinson said.

Some 14 percent of Americans will get a vacation of two weeks or longer this year, the group said. Compare that to the six-week vacation recently put into law in Austria and Finland. Workers in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other European nations get about five weeks of mandated vacation.

Robinson's group is pushing to get minimum paid leave of three weeks on the agenda.

for the 2008 presidential election. The group hopes to get a law on the books to end what it describes as a growing fear of replacement, demotion, or lost promotions for taking alloted vacation time.

Robinson spoke at a panel discussion on the subject Wednesday in Santa Clara. He said his group came to Silicon Valley "because it's the capital of overwork and the 24/7 economy."

"We're trying to provide a wake-up call to this automatic pilot of work without end," he said.

Robinson called Americans the hardest working people in the world, citing an International Labor Organization survey about U.S. workers logging the most hours on the planet. The report said American workers on average toil about 350 hours -- nearly nine full weeks -- more per year than workers in Western Europe.

Workers are putting in longer hours on the job than they did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000, he noted.

"Our notion that we can never stop because we have to keep up our No. 1 status is bogus," said Robinson, arguing that the falling dollar shows we're not No. 1. "Productivity is not about working until you're a zombie. You also need a refreshed and energized mind, and that's what a vacation does."

Reach Tim Simmers at tsimmers@sanmateocountytimes.com.