Are We Working Ourselves to Death?

If you are an executive, manager, emergency medicine physician (EMP), Silicon Valley employee or struggling law associate, you and many like you are probably working more than 60 hours a week. According to a survey published in the Harvard Business Review a few years ago, you may be working an average of 72 hours a week. Contrast this with the government's desire to limit excessive working hours about 80 years ago when, on June 25, 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLS). This law banned oppressive child labor, set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours. Moreover, more than a hundred years ago, workers were given an entire weekend off from work. (How many EMPs can expect this?) The five-day workweek was started in 1908 by a New England cotton mill owner to allow Jewish workers to observe their sabbath on Saturday. They were expected to make up the work on Sunday but complaints about having the mill operate on a Sunday resulted in closing the factory for the entire weekend. Later, in l926, Henry Ford shut down his automotive factories for the entire weekend. He wanted his employees to have leisure time to buy automobiles. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union demanded a five-day workweek in 1929, and received it; but it wasn't until 1940 that the two-day weekend was adopted countrywide. But now, many people work at least 10 hours daily or longer; some companies even provide dinner to mak...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news