by Doug Collins

The Free Press

illustration by Dick Lande

Production is also stimulated. Factories here can have zero downtime, with red-eyed night workers keeping their snoozing CEOs safely in the black. The compliant American employee who is willing to work on-call is also very handy - at night on Tuesday, in the morning on Thursday, depending on when orders come in. The resulting efficiency gives our country acompetitive edge on practically every other country on the globe, few of which have tolerated such innovative strategies.

Even countries with abusive labor records, such as China, generally still value some notion of common time. In most countries, there are holidays, weekends, evenings, and siestas when hardly anyone works. Most countries in Western Europe are by-and-large unproductive during the evenings and weekends, and consistently rate higher than the US in life quality indexes. Even Japan doesn't have the 24-hour retail culture that we have. Although the lack of convenience is not popular among German shoppers, unions there are strong enough to demand common time. According to Prothmann, "The clerks and salespeople want the right to go home at a decent hour." As a concession, German stores are open in the evening one Thursday a month, and on Saturdays until 4 p.m. once a month.

When common time is lost, so are dinners with friends, time with the kids, or romance. Even if your horoscopes are compatible, it's hard for lovers to stay in synch if one works evenings and the other works days, one has Sunday off and the other has Tuesday off. The divorce rate in the US is 4.7 per 1,000 population per year, nearly double that of the next most divorce-prone country, according to UN statistics. As for children, many are being babysat by bloody combat video games while parents are working. No wonder US violence tops the charts, especially crimes by youth. But of course you can go grocery shopping any time you want here, if that's any consolation.

Activism is also weakened by working odd hours. It's harder to organize people who work different shifts. When are you going to hold union meetings or rallies that everyone can come to? As shift work increases, productivity rises, but solidarity is weakened. It's no surprise then that the standard of living of American workers has fallen despite record productivity. With less solidarity, new profits are headed straight for the board room. It's a perfect vicious cycle.

Unnatural work hours were not always common in the US. Previously, "blue laws" prohibited many businesses from being open at night or on weekends, similar to present-day Europe. Sunday closures were once the norm in the Northwest, due to a coalition between ministers and laborites. Sunday closures began to unwind in the mid-1950's, when union retail workers traded closure for double-time pay on Sunday, recalls Steve Whipple of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1105. A few years later, double-time pay became time-and-a-half, which is where it stands today. "There've been times when employers have even tried to take that away," notes Whipple.

Some businesses were still not exempt. As late as 1964, a car dealer in Mt. Vernon was fined for conducting business on a Sunday. A Sunday ban was in effect at the Pike Place Market until 1980, according to research by Marc Stiles in the now defunct Downtown Seattle Forum. But with competition from 7-11 and other convenience chains, many area grocery stores forced night work on their employees, for an hourly bonus of less than a dollar. Recently, stores are forcing Thanksgiving work. QFC is the only large local grocery chain that still lets all its employees enjoy a Turkey day off.

Perhaps the fatal flaw of US blue laws was their association with stuffy teetotalers. Blue laws restricting beer sales, or the style and color of swimsuit you could wear, were prominent in Seattle and elsewhere. The conservative tone of these laws contributed to their demise. Laws restricting business hours were repealed along with the pious alcohol laws. Now that we have an unbridled free market, we can buy beer at all hours, but we are less likely to enjoy the beer with our buddies.

There is a pious history to restful common time on weekends: the sabbath day, Sunday for some, Saturday for others. Ironically, the US, a country teeming with fundamentalists, has preserved almost nothing of the sacredness of common time. The real religions in the US are apparently production and consumption. True "family values" activists should strive to give family and friends a shared breather from marketplace demands, and forget about the finer points of morality.

Action Alert: On the Republican national agenda for 1996 are bills to scrap the 40-hour workweek and replace it with an 80-hour over two-week schedule. You could work 60 hours one week and 20 the next and be paid no overtime. Call Senators Gorton 553-0350 and Murray 553-5545 and urge them to oppose bill S.1129. Urge your House member to oppose H.R.2391.

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Contents on this page were published in the April/May, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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