All

I have no desire to rain on anyone's parade but the standard 40 hour week was a
comparatively recent invention. Normal working hours were 45 hours plus any
overtime that the factory worker could manage to enable them to survive... usually
worked out at a 6 day week.

The remarked on 70 hour week... as a standard pure phantasy... Most of the claims
to be working these excessive hours may well be phantasy and I would like to see
the evidence and most critically i would like to see where they got the idea that
that my father and his father were working less hours than we are.

regards

sdv

Ian Pitchford wrote:

> NEW STATESMAN
> Book Reviews - Weeping in a Rolls-Royce
>
> Book Reviews
> Christopher Gasson Monday 28th May 2001
>
> Blood, Sweat and Tears: the evolution of work
> Richard Donkin Texere, 400pp, £18.99
> ISBN 1587990768
>
> It is difficult not to feel a sense of betrayal about technological progress.
> We have invented machines to do work for us, but the more ingenious our
> inventions, the harder we find ourselves working. We have exchanged 40 hours of
> slavery in a soot-covered factory for a 70-hour week chained within the
> granite-faced confines of the giants of the new global service economy. The
> average American now works one month a year longer than he or she did in the
> 1960s. Britons, similarly, seem to be increasingly choosing work over leisure.
>
> As Richard Donkin makes clear in his broad history of work, Blood, Sweat and
> Tears, we have only ourselves to blame for so readily giving up our lives to
> our employers. It is a combination of our desires always staying one step ahead
> of our ability to afford them, our psychological need to define ourselves by
> our work, and an immutable work ethic, that continues to drive us long after
> the religion that spawned it ceased to be relevant.
>
> Full text:
> http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200105280050.htm
>
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