(this is still a work in progress)
It's a cliche that ideas come with a lightbulb over your head. That actually happened to me on Wednesday. My office has under-cabinet lights which are called "puck lights" (no, it's not a hydrogen filled hockey game). These particular puck lights use something called a halogen JC bulb with a G4 base.
Turns out that my local hardware store does not carry 12v 20w JC G4 bulbs. Radio Shack does, but they're expensive ($4 each). I visited several other retail locations and found them costing as much as $6 each. So I bit the bullet, bought a couple at Radio Shack, and went home to install them.
Is this too much background?
Anyway, I noticed when I searched on the Internet for cheaper sources (and yes, you can get them in reasonable quantities for abour $1.75 online) that the "standard" expected lifespan of one of the JC 12v 20w G4 bulbs is 2000 hours.
Hmmm. I've heard that duration before. I know, it's the "standard work year": 50 weeks of 40 hours each = 2000 hours. Want to know what you get paid an hour? Take your total earnings and divide by 2000. Useful to know in a salary negotiation or when figuring out if buying something is worthwhile (would I pay 12 hours of my time for this thing?).
2000 hours. So on average, if you turned on the puck lights when you were working, and turned them off when you weren't, you should have to replace the bulbs once a work year. More to the point, when your puck light goes out, it's time for you to stop working this year and return to your job in January.
In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act formally established the 40 hour work week in America, with overtime to be paid for hours worked past 40. Before the FLSA, there were individual union contracts which specified work weeks (Ford agreed to a 5 day, 40 hour work week in 1926, for example).
I don't know about the rest of you, but in my part of the computer business, the odds that people who have regular jobs only work 2000 hours in a year are not good. In fact, I'd say they're downright lousy.
Today, while Bureau of Labor Statistics information generally shows that service employees work no more than about 42 hours a week, there are many claims that professionals, in particular, are working more....
- According to the National Sleep Foundation's 2001 Sleep In America Poll 38% of respondents work more than 50 hours / week (ending that light bulb at 40 weeks, or somewhere around the first week of October).
- The Public Relations Sociey of America membership claims that over 60% work more than 40 hours per week and 89% claim they have worked on vacation.
- An employee survey from Steelcase found "over half" worked more than 40 hours and one-third took work home at least one night per week.
- The same (probably) Steelcase Study says that 73% of workers surveyed work on the weekend.
- a position paper of the ILWU discusses not only longer hours but less pay for the work.
So what's the answer?
Geez, I wish I knew. The history of the labor movement is largely the history of a decreasing work week, and some modern labor theorists now believe that the work week should be further shortened in order to increase the number of available jobs (for every three full-time jobs that require a 40 hour work week, there are four full-time jobs that require a 30 hour work week -- but that assumes that 30 hours can pay a living wage).
As an independent contractor (entrepeneur, if you prefer), I figure on working 1000 hours a year or so. I charge accordingly, and because I'm good at what I do (and have 20 years of experience), I'm worth it. But I don't think there is a market for independent contractor auto assemblers or dock workers or miners. Nor do I think there's a chance in hell of getting competitive professionals like computer programmers to unionize.
But I do know that there's something deeply wrong with a system that takes us from one-earner households in 1950 to 2+ earner households in 2000.
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