Are Americans Too Lazy?

[fasttense]

Is this article akin to blaming the poor for not being born into wealth? How can you work harder when there is no work to be had?

Ahh, remember the good old days when employers could work you 24/6 (half days on Sunday). I think Fortune Magazine misses those days.

Are Americans Too Lazy?
U.S. workers can't compete globally unless they work harder, writes Fortune's Geoff Colvin.
By GEOFF COLVIN, FORTUNE SENIOR EDITOR-AT-LARGE

We Americans pride ourselves on being a hard-working bunch, so here's a thought to spoil your Labor Day rest: By global standards, we're lazy. We've been getting lazier. And the days of the American dolce vita may be numbered.

The surprising report of our relative sloth arrives in new research from the U.N.'s International Labor Organization, which looks at working hours around the world. When it comes to what we might call hard work, meaning the proportion of workers who put in more than 48 hours a week, America is near the bottom of the heap. About 18 percent of our employed people work that much.

That's a higher proportion than in a few other developed countries like Norway, the Netherlands and even Japan. But it's actually lower than in Switzerland and Britain, and way lower than in developing countries like Mexico and Thailand. It's drastically lower than in what may be the world's two hardest-working countries, South Korea and Peru, where the proportions are about 50 percent. It's bad enough to be told we're slackers in the world economy. What many Americans really won't want to believe is separate research showing that we're working much less than we used to.
- more at link below:
http://jobs.aol.com/article/_a/are-americans-too-lazy/20070828135809990002

[Totally Committed]

1. Yes. n/t

TC

[soothsayer]

2. no, we're still the most productive people in the world.

[panader0]

3. "Every time I get the feeling that I am too lazy,

I lay down until the feeling goes away" Mark Twain (approx)

[krispos42]

4. And I'm looking for a part-time jobs...

just because my regular 40-hour-a-week factory job with benefits doesn't fill my day enough.

I have few hobbies and not enough money to pursue them, so it looks like I'll be trying out for a job at a local fast-food place.

Otherwise, I spend 8.5 hours a day at work, 5 minutes a day commuting (30 if I walk), 6 hours sleeping, and the rest on DU!

[Warpy]

5. And yet, we're told the US worker is the most productive

in the world. He just costs too much to hire. So companies use less productive workers elsewhere because they can hire two of them in Mumbai for what they have to pay one American and get maybe 10% more work out of the two in India. Complaining that we lack a work ethic because we don't want to kill ourselves with overwork like they do in Japan is beside the point if we can't get hired, period.

This sounds like more blame the victim to me.

It will be interesting to see all those chickens come home to roost, if intensely uncomfortable.

[fasttense]

7. Yes, that is what I don't understand.

Americas productivity has grown by leaps and bounds, with the profits going to the CEO class, and yet we are lazy?

But many workers today in the service industry are kept at below 40 hour a week so employers don't get stuck paying benefits or overtime.

[Demeter]

8. You Can't Believe The Corporate Line

The corporation will say ANYTHING to get what it wants. And that policy has been adopted by too many political figures.

Ask a person who comes from abroad, and they will tell you nobody works as hard as Americans, but then, they don't get paid so little that they have too work themselves to death, either (Japan is one exception--but that's a cultural problem, and it's destroying Japan just as much as it's destroying the US).

[Demeter]

6. Americans Are Too Gullible

as has been pointed out by Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, PT Barnum, Mark Twain, and any number of other social commentators from the 1800's (about the time Evangelicalism started in America--not a coincidence, I suspect, more a cause and effect!) up to the present day.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. I frankly think his stats are bullshit.

Not just me, but everyone I know, other than retirees, is working well over 48 hrs/wk. Everyone where I work puts in a full 40, minimum, on the job, and ALSO have PT jobs to make ends meet. Everyone except my manager who averages 50 hrs/wk on his only job. Of course, my manager at my PT job only has a single job as well, but he puts in @65 hrs/wk.

And we are to believe we are failing to compete with Europe, where there are mandated 35 hr wks because we don't work enough?

The reason we are failing to compete is that we have a predatory capitalist system that is failing the American workers. For lack of a national healthcare system our employers and employees alike must patch together health plans from a crazyquilt of insurance companies, each of which siphons off 30% of the payments right off the top. Companies are rewarded for undercompensating workers and structuring their workplaces to thrive with part time and contract labor in place of full time employees. Very literally, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the diminishing middle class is covering the cost of both.

If we are uncompetative, it is NOT because of too much leisure time.

[lligrd]

12. Same Here. And People Are Working Even When They Are

home on their off hours or on theose rare vacations. Cell phones and laptops have made us slaves to work at any hour. For the last two years my co-workers and I have put in way over 48 hours a week.

[NC_Nurse]

10. How can this be?

I just read recently that American workers take FAR LESS vacation time than other
industrialized nations' workers.
Makes no sense.

[stillcool]

11. The entire...

American population is lazy and ignorant. Got it. Now what?

[pop goes the weasel]

13. Ridiculous

Even my 73 year old dad works 40 hours a week, and my mom keeps their apartment spotless. I don't trust his statistics at all. Maybe Congress is bringing down the average?

[bluerum]

14. Americans don't know how good they have it. The air of entitlement is

a peculiarly American trait.

I am convinced fully 50% of Americans would not make it in countries where you have to scratch at the soil and cooperate with your community to feed yourself and your family.

[Briar]

15. Since when were industry and

laziness the only two poles of human behaviour that mattered? Time to move on beyond the Protestant work ethic.

[sandnsea]

16. oh christ - that's slave labor, not hard work

Jesus people. You shouldn't WANT to compete with people being worked to death. Literally to DEATH in China.

“Now they’re taking workers into their early 30s,” said Jonathan Unger, director of the Contemporary China Center at Australian National University in Canberra, “but anything older than that and they think they can’t take the conditions, the 11-hour days,” as well as work on weekends, and a tedious life in factory-owned dormitories."

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20070829/ZNYT01/708290352/1042/NEWS/ZNYT01/Wages_Rise_in_China_as_Businesses_Court_the_Young

Now they're going to use a pittance of an increase in labor costs as an excuse to double the price of the products, which will really go to the shareholders instead.

[Birthmark]

17. < Yawn! >

I'll post an answer tomorrow or something. I need a nap.