ping pong table: What are we laboring for, anyway?

By TOM TURNIPSEED
Guest columnist

Since the mid-1970s, American workers have put in longer hours and have seen real wages stagnate despite a near-doubling of our gross domestic product. Compared to other wealthy countries, Americans are working longer, and the gap between rich and poor in the United States has become the widest in the modern industrial world.

If minimum- and low-wage workers in America were not human beings, they’d be included on the endangered species list. And now it’s getting even harder for those workers and their families to carve out a subsistence in our economy.

The New York Times recently reported that wages and salaries make up the lowest share of our GDP since such data was first recorded in 1947. Corporate profits command the largest share of GDP since the 1960s, causing the investment bankers at UBS to describe the present period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Citing a 2 percent decline in the medium hourly wage since 2003 with inflation factored in, the Times article noted that the amount an average worker produces in an hour has risen steadily over the same period.

John de Graaf, national coordinator of the Take Back Your Time campaign, www.timeday.org, also noted that 40 percent of America’s workers got no vacation this year and said politicians should be asked, “What’s the economy for, anyway?”

De Graaf said: “Sure, we’ve got the grossest Domestic Product in the world, but there’s no time to enjoy all that stuff and we’re sacrificing so much. Americans can hardly find time to sit down to eat together anymore. Is our economy just for raising the Dow Jones average, or is it to provide healthy and happy kids, families and communities?”

Take Back Your Time program director Gretchen Burger said that nearly half of all Americans will reach Labor Day without even a week off this summer. “We’re the only industrial country without mandated paid time off for vacation, and even workers who get paid leave are giving a lot of it back because of excessive job demands or a fear their job could be in jeopardy if they take it. That’s not healthy — for our bodies, our families or our communities — and the situation is getting worse, not better.”

A National Institutes of Health study revealed that Americans were much less healthy than residents of the United Kingdom and twice as likely to suffer from chronic diseases. Several analysts pointed out that job stress and long working hours seem to be the prime culprits, leaving Americans with less time for exercise and relationships with family and friends, two of the most significant predictors of good health.

Take Back Your Time urges that issues such as paid family leave, sick leave and vacations be made priority subjects in this year’s congressional elections, to begin improving our health and the quality of American workers’ lives.

Take Back Your Time also suggests that personal and cultural change is needed as well.

“Let’s get back to the table,” says author Cecile Andrews, in echoing the theme for this year’s Take Back Your Time Day, which will be celebrated in many communities on Oct. 24. “We need to get back to the dinner table as families, to the card table as friends, to the pool table and ping-pong table for recreation. We’re putting all our time into either work or electronic media and our health and relationships are suffering as a result.”

Since the 1970s, family life has also suffered, points out Take Back Your Time board member William Doherty, professor of family studies at the University of Minnesota. Besides overwork, we’ve over-scheduled ourselves and our children. Doherty points out that shared family meals do more than help us bond; they’re also the leading predictor of how well students do in school.

So what, exactly, are we laboring for?

Mr. Turnipseed is a board member of Take Back Your Time and a Columbia attorney.