The Sandwichman's 2 minute election spot for Shaw TV. Point Grey candidates' spots will air on Shaw Cable 4, Saturday May 7 at 1:00 p.m. and again Saturday May 14 at 8:30 a.m.:
The Work Less Party advocates a 32-hour, 4-day work week. Some of you may wonder if that’s practical. Can I afford to work fewer hours? What will happen to the economy?
Thousands already work fewer hours. In addition to 160,000 unemployed in BC, a similar number are either underemployed or have given up looking for work. Others juggle two or more part-time jobs or rely on unsteady contract work to make ends meet
The customary full-time job is becoming the exception. People who have one feel pressured to work extra hours -- an average of nearly two and and a half million hours a week in 2004, more than half of them with no overtime pay.
Those dysfunctional working hours take their toll in lower wages, higher work-related expenses and non-stop blandishments to escape the stress through the compulsive consumption of “stuff.”
Meanwhile, “stuff” is destroying the environment. We squander resources and spew out tons of greenhouse gas to make and ship those trinkets we have to be cajoled to buy, half way around the world.
Our economy is intoxicated with overwork, hurtling down the highway of stress in the Hummer of overconsumption.
More than eighty years ago, Stephen Leacock offered his answer to what he called the “unsolved riddle of social justice.” Leacock’s advice remains as timely today as ever:
“The shortening of the general hours of work, then, should be among the primary aims of social reform. Hitherto we have been caught in the running of our own machine: it is time that we altered the gearing of it.”
Posted by sandwichman at April 23, 2005 07:38 AM