[A-List] Work Time and Global Warming

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Preservation Institute White Paper


If Americans could choose to work less and consume less, it could make a
dramatic difference in greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet most Americans do not have the choice of working shorter hours.
Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue that no one is
talking about.


Work Time and the Environment

Americans work longer hours than the people in any other developed
country. The average American works 1817 hours a year, and the average
west European (in the EU-15 nations) works 1562 hours a year.

A recent study by Harvard economics professor Mark Weisbrot found that:

* If Americans worked as few hours as western Europeans, it would lower
our energy consumption by twenty percent. With this change alone, the
United States would have produced three percent less greenhouse gas
emissions in 2002 than in 1990, almost bringing us to the Kyoto goal for
cutting emissions.

* If Europeans worked as many hours as Americans, it would raise their
energy consumption by 25%, making it impossible for them to reach their
Kyoto goals.

* If the developing nations imitate the American model (all else being
equal), world emissions of carbon dioxide in 2050 would be fourteen
billion tons, raising world temperatures by 4.5 degrees. But if the
developing nations imitate the European model, world emissions of carbon
dioxide in 2050 would be 10 billion tons, raising world temperatures by
2.5 degrees - a very substantial difference caused by work-time alone,
apart from other policies to reduce emissions. {1}

Choice of working shorter hours could have a significant effect on
global warming in the short term, as this study shows.

Choice of work hours could have a immense effect on global warming in
the long term by slowing the rate of economic growth.

Currently, the economy must grow in tandem with increased productivity,
regardless of how much people actually want to consume. Because of
improved technology, the average American worker can produce about 2.3%
more each year, which adds up to an eight-fold increase in a century. As
long as the work week remains the same, per capita production and
consumption must increase eight-fold in a century just to avoid
unemployment. {2}

Any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through conservation and
cleaner fuels is likely to be overwhelmed by this increased output. To
stabilize world climate, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by
eighty percent during this century, and there is little or no chance of
doing this if per capita output grows eight-fold during this century.

Rather than increasing output at this rate, we must slow growth by
giving people the option of using increased productivity to reduce their
work hours - an alternative to using increased productivity to produce
and consume more.


We Should Have A Choice

A survey by the Center for the New American Dream found that half of all
Americans with full-time jobs would prefer to work a four-day week at
eighty percent of their current pay. {3}

These people want to downshift economically, to consume less in order to
have more time for their families and their own interests. If they could
make this choice, they would be happier, and America's total impact on
the environment would be reduced by about ten percent.

Yet most Americans today have no choice of work hours. Almost all good
jobs are full time, while most part-time jobs have low pay and no benefits.

The economist Juliet Schor has found that, if the average American male
worker reduced his hours by twenty percent, he would reduce his earnings
by fifty percent, because part-time workers have lower wages and fewer
benefits. (The average female worker would reduce her earnings by a bit
less, because women are more likely to have worked part-time during part
of their lives, and so they are already discriminated against.)

To give workers the opportunity to choose their hours, we need to:

* End Discrimination Against Part-Time Workers: By law, part-time
workers should have the same hourly earnings as full-time workers and
should have equivalent benefits, seniority, and chance of promotion. For
example, many businesses give part-time workers no seniority to protect
them from layoffs; by law, a half-time worker who has been at a company
for ten years should have the same seniority as a full-time worker who
has been at the company for five years. The European Union already has
this sort of law protecting part-time workers against discrimination.

* Create More High-Quality Part-Time Jobs: The Netherlands and Germany
have laws saying that, if a full-time employee asks to work shorter
hours, the employer must accommodate the request unless it will be a
hardship to the business; only four percent of these requests are
rejected because of hardship. If this policy is too strong for us to
adopt immediately, we can begin by giving private employers tax
incentives or other incentives to offer their workers the option of
working part-time.

* Let Government Take the Lead: Government should offer employees the
option of working part-time, except in cases where it gets in the way of
performing the job properly.


Will People Work Less?

The most common argument against choice of work hours is that people
will always want to consume more and more and will never choose to work
less. But there is no evidence for such a totally pessimistic view. {4}

In the United States and Europe, work hours declined steadily from the
beginning of the industrial revolution until World War II, because labor
unions fought for shorter hours. After World War II, there ware laws
establishing a standard forty-hour work week, and governments promoted
economic growth to provide everyone with a forty-hour job. Since the
1970s, most European governments have dealt with unemployment by
shortening work hours, while the American government has dealt with
unemployment by allowing wages to fall.

Before the depression, hours became shorter because of labor union
demands. Since World War II, hours have declined in Europe and remained
constant in the United States because of government policy. This policy
does not give Americans what they want: we have seen that half of
Americans with full-time jobs would prefer to work shorter hours.


New Environmental Policy

To deal with the threat of global warming, environmental groups must:

* Recognize that shorter work hours and simpler living would make it
much easier to stabilize world climate and to cope with other global
environmental problems.

* Support legislation to allow work-time choice, as outlined above.

* Advocate for simpler living, while emphasizing that we want do not
want to force anyone to work shorter hours and consume less. We just
want to give people this option, which they do not now have.

At least, we could move closer toward European work hours, and this
alone would be an important contribution to stopping global warming.

At best, there could be a strong movement toward simpler living, which
could transform our society as the civil rights movement and the
feminist movement did.

During the coming century, as global warming becomes worse, people are
bound to see that we would be better of if we consumed less. But a
simple living movement cannot have much influence as long as almost all
the good jobs do not give you the option of working less and consuming less.


Notes

1. David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot, "Are Shorter Work Hours Good for the
Environment?" (CEPR, 2006)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=728&Itemid=77

2. Sources: 1900-1957: Susan B Carter et al., editors, Historical
Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present
(Cambridge University Press, 2006) pages 3-463; 1958-2000: George Thomas
Kurian, ed, Datapedia of the United States: American History in Numbers,
third edition (Bernan Press, 2004) page 134.

3. Center for the New American Dream,
www.newdream.org/live/time/timepoll.php.

4. Sources: 1840-1890: Historical Statistics, pages 2-301; 1890-1925:
Historical Statistics, pages 2-303; 1930-1995: Historical Statistics,
pages 2-306 to 2-307; 2000: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of the United States: 2006 (Washington, DC, 2006) page 414.


The Natural Environment: The Social Environment

http://www.preservenet.com/studies/WorkTimeGlobalWarming.html


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