Wake Up Americans: It's Time to Get Off the Work Treadmill

A few years ago, after finding-my way through an incredible jumble of bicycles outside her building, I met with a University of Amsterdam professor who studies work-life balance. She recounted a conversation she'd just had with the manager of the Dutch division of an American company who had come to Holland from the United States two years earlier:

Professor: Do you notice a difference between the approach to work time and free time here compared to the United States?

Manager: Yes, it dawned on me my second week on the job. It was a Friday evening, eight o'clock, and we had an important shipment to get out on Monday. I called my assistant at home, and told her to call some of the workers to get some things done on the weekend in preparation.

Professor: What did she say?

Manager: She said she didn't work on weekends, and didn't expect to be called at home when she wasn't working.

Professor: And what did you say?

Manager: I said, "Well, excuse me, but I'm the new manager here, and we're a company that competes in the global economy, and we have an important shipment to get out, and we appreciate employees who are team players." She said, "OK, I can do what you ask of me, but under Dutch law, you have to pay me double time for unscheduled, overtime, weekend work. And if I call these people, they'll just get mad at me for interrupting their family time. Don't worry, we'll come in Monday, work hard, and get the job done."

Professor: What did you say then?

Manager: I said, "Oh, forget it!" I hung up the phone in frustration and stewed all weekend.

Professor: And then what happened?

Manager: They came in Monday and got the job done. They work very hard when they're working so everything was fine. And that's how it's been ever since. I've gotten to like it that way because now even I have a life.

Less work, more life. It's a tradeoff that a lot of American workers might appreciate. Pollsters find time stress a constant complaint among Americans. Until the current recession, Americans were working some of the longest hours in the industrial world.

Conservatives say this is all voluntary: Americans just like to work a lot. But Gallup's daily survey finds them 20 percent happier on weekends than on workdays--what a surprise! And when Americans rank the pleasure their daily activities bring, working ends up second from the bottom (socializing after work is second from the top!), more pleasurable only than that mother of all downers, the morning commute.

By contrast, the Netherlands boasts the world's shortest working hours. Dutch workers put in 400 fewer annual hours on the job than American workers do. And yet, the Dutch economy has been very productive. Unemployment (at 5.8 percent) is much lower than in the United States, while the Netherlands boasts a positive trade balance and strong personal savings. A Gallup survey ranks the Dutch third in the world in life satisfaction, behind only the Danes and Finns, and well ahead of Americans.

The Dutch have been reducing time on the job through work-sharing policies since the 1982 Wassenaar Agreement, when labor unions agreed to modify wage demands in return for more time. Their Working Hours Adjustment Act (2000) requires that employers allow workers to cut their hours to part-time while keeping their jobs, hourly pay, health care, and pro-rated benefits.

Anmarie Widener, a health researcher and part-time instructor at Georgetown University, was impressed by the Dutch devotion to time for family and recreation she witnessed while getting her Ph.D. in the Netherlands. Her dissertation compares life satisfaction among Dutch and American parents. Not surprisingly, she says, "My polling showed that in almost every area of life, Dutch parents are substantially more satisfied than their American counterparts." And so are their children. A 2007 UNICEF study ranked children's welfare in the Netherlands as the highest in the world. By contrast, the United States was twenty of twenty-one wealthy countries studied, barely edging out the United Kingdom.