The 40 Hour Work Week Is A Thing Of The Past For Many

Unions fought long and hard for the 40 hour work week, but with the decline of unions (thanks to Republican policies that make it harder to unionize and easier for companies to bust unions), that 40 hour work week is disappearing (see top chart for average hours). The average work week for a full-time worker in the United States is now 47 hours long (44 hours for workers paid on an hourly basis, and 49 hours for workers on a fixed salary).

The bottom chart shows the percentage of workers who must now work overtime. Note that half (50%) of full-time workers now work more than 40 hours a week (with 11% working 40 to 49 hours, 21% working 50 to 59 hours, and 18% working 60 hours or more a week).

With the many millions of unemployed people in this country, one would think employers would hire some more workers since they current employees aren't able to get the required work done in a 40 hour week. But they aren't doing that. Evidently they have decided it is cheaper to just work the workers they have more hours than to hire more workers.

Those who bear the brunt of this new extended work week are the salaried workers -- probably because hourly workers must be paid overtime, while in many companies salaried workers are not paid overtime for the extra hours. Note that only 38% of hourly workers work more than 40 hours, while a whopping 59% of salaried workers do so (with 9% working 41 to 49 hours, 25% working 50 to 59 hours, and 25% working 60 or more hours a week).

The only thing most workers have to sell is their labor --  the time they spend working for pay. It looks to me like employers have just found another way to steal the labor of their employees, especially the salaried employees. Republicans don't see anything wrong with this, because for them a company or corporation can do no wrong. In fact, many of them would be happy to abolish the minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor laws to please their corporate masters. I disagree. I think all workers should be paid a wage that keeps them out of poverty, and should be paid overtime for any work over 40 hours -- even salaried workers. Anything less than that is just theft -- and should be punished as severely as any other kind of theft.

These charts were made from information contained in a recent Gallup Poll. The survey was done between August 7th and 10th of a random national sample of 1,032 adults, with a margin of error of about 4 points.