{"id":146,"date":"2009-09-01T16:37:07","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-09-10T14:12:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T13:12:30","slug":"long-work-hours-threaten-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/2009\/09\/01\/long-work-hours-threaten-our-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Global: Long work hours threaten our future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long hours are bad for workers and should be curtailed for the sake of the workforce and the environment, an investigation by The Ecologist<\/a> has concluded.<\/p>\n

The environmental magazine notes: \u201cThere’s something wonky with the way we work. Those of us with jobs are stressed when we work, and fatigued when we’re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The feature in the 1 September issue continues: \u201cMany of us don\u2019t feel we have time to interact with our communities. Forty-six per cent of Brits have described themselves as being ‘exhausted’ at the end of a day\u2019s work. A similar survey by the Families and Work Institute found one third of Americans were ‘chronically overworked\u2019.<\/p>\n

“Less than a quarter of Brits are ‘satisfied’ with their work hours. But while some of us are shackled to a long-hours culture, unemployment has been rising.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reflects the findings of the UK’s national trade union federation\u00a0TUC<\/a>. The union body\u2019s research found the UK workforce has too many over-worked at the same time it has lots of people struggling to survive because they are unemployed or under-employed.
\n
\nLike the TUC, The Ecologist argues there is a strong business case for tackling long hours. It says \u201csigns indicate that businesses too would benefit from decreasing working hours \u2013 the harmful impact of fatigue in manufacturing has long been established.\u201d It adds that \u201cthe US Department of Labor has found that employees are generally more productive in the first five hours of their workday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The magazine says the environmental benefits of reducing working hours \u201ccould be considerable\u201d, noting that if Europe mirrored the excessive working hours of the USA \u201ccarbon dioxide emissions would rise by 30 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

It concludes: “It takes time and energy to grow your own food, to gain confidence to cycle to work, to become an engaged and informed citizen. We don’t like to change our habits and when we are time pressured and exhausted, we are even less likely to do so.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long hours are bad for workers and should be curtailed for the sake of the workforce and the environment, an investigation by The Ecologist has concluded. The environmental magazine notes: \u201cThere’s something wonky with the way we work. Those of us with jobs are stressed when we work, and fatigued when we’re not.\u201d The feature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}