Work? Life? Balance....?

ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

A curse upon my feeble memory.  Last year there was giant billboard, looking down upon the people of Edinburgh, which truly irritated me every time I saw it.  Which is where my feeble powers of recall fail me, for I have no idea which company was being advertised, and the exact wording escapes me too.  So this is my poor effort to recreate that sight.

There was a head and shoulders shot of a smiling, white, middle aged man, the owner of the business being plugged.  The wording was supposedly a quote from this guy, which I paraphrase thus : "I ask my employees to give 100%.  And if they want to give more then that's fine by me."  This was the sales pitch, because there's nothing makes me want to give a company some of my money more than knowing that they treat their staff like enslaved chattels.  It's what we look for in a business, isn't it?  A total lack of morality or humanity.

Progressive employment practices have brought us the concepts of work-life balance and flexible working hours.  The notion that you shouldn't live to work, but only work to live.  It's the living bit that should get our priority, not the work.  This guy appeared to fly in the face of such modernity, no doubt seeking a return to those good old Victorian values of exploitation and monotony.  Or maybe he just hadn't thought it through?

Either way I felt, each time I saw the words, that this was sending out the wrong message to any and every person who read it.  And it was a reminder that the UK already has the longest working hours in Western Europe and some of the most restiveness and unnecessary anti-trades union legislation.

I recalled that reaction when I read this excellent article advising a reduction in working hours.  An idea that goes so much against conventional 'wisdom', as dictated by The Establishment whose interests must be gratified at all costs, that it demands a giant shift in our culture.  One that might take a long time to bring about, but would, eventually, greatly benefit most people.  The idea that sharing the available work around is the best use of  human beings.  Those already in work get more time to actually get something out of life, and the unemployed have more opportunities to work.  We no longer pay taxes to support people who have no job to go to, and spread the wealth of our society more evenly.

The arguments put up against this will say that it damages our economy, restricts financial growth and makes us uncompetitive in the world.  To which I'd say - So what?  And for us all to do that requires the biggest culture shift of all.  Because we would need to stop seeing ourselves as consumers, the label that big business want us all to identify with, and start to think more as members of a community.  To recognise that simply accumulating more and more 'stuff' is not as self fulfilling as we're being told.  To, maybe, remember that there's a lot more to being human than work and possessions.

Thirty hour week anyone?

PS  Yes, in case you're wondering, I am engaged in a huge downsizing project at home right now.  And it feels so good....