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American workers are stressed out, and in an unforgiving economy, they are becoming more so every day.

Sixty-two percent say their workload has increased over the last six months; 53 percent say work leaves them "overtired and overwhelmed."

Even at home, in the soccer bleachers or at the Labor Day picnic, workers are never really off the clock, bound to BlackBerries, cellphones and laptops. Add iffy job security, rising health care costs, ailing pension plans and the fear that a financial setback could put mortgage payments out of reach, and the office has become, for many, an echo chamber of angst.

It is enough to make workers sick - and it does.

Decades of research have linked stress to everything from heart attacks and stroke to diabetes and a weakened immune system. Now, however, researchers are connecting the dots, finding that the growing stress and uncertainty of the office have a measurable impact on workers' health and, by extension, on companies' bottom lines.

Workplace stress costs the nation more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and the stress-reduction industry that has grown up to soothe workers and keep production high, according to estimates by the American Institute of Stress in New York. And workers who report that they are stressed, said Steven L. Sauter, chief of the Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, incur health care costs that are 46 percent higher, or an average of $600 more per person, than other employees.

"The costs are significant," Dr. Sauter said, adding, "Those are just the costs to the organization, and not the burden to individuals and to society."

American workers are not the only ones grappling with escalating stress and ever greater job demands. European companies are changing once-generous vacation policies, and stress-related illnesses cost England 13 million working days each year, one British health official said.

"It's an issue everywhere you go in the world," said Dr. Guy Standing, the lead author of "Economic Security for a Better World," a new report from the International Labor Office, an agency of the United Nations.

White-collar workers are particularly at risk, Dr. Standing said, because "we tend to take our work home."

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Read the rest:

John Schwartz, "Always on the Job, Employees Pay with Health," New York Times, Sept. 5, 2004.

Anahad O'Connor, "Cracking under the pressure? Just the opposite for some," New York Times, Sept. 10, 2004.

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For Michael Jones, an architect at a top-tier firm in New York, juggling multiple projects and running on four hours of sleep is business as usual. Mr. Jones has adjusted, he says, to a rapid pace and the constant pressure that leads his colleagues to "blow up" from time to time.

A design project can drag on for more than a year, often requiring six-day workweeks and painstaking effort. At the moment, he said, he is working on four.

But for Mr. Jones, the stress is worth it, if only because every now and then he can gaze at the Manhattan skyline and spot a product of his labor: the soaring profile of the Chatham apartment building on East 65th Street, one of many structures he has helped design in his 14 years at Robert A. M. Stern Architects.

"If I didn't feel like I was part of something important, I wouldn't be able to do this," he said.

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Neither of us ever has had a whole weekend off in over two months.

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Originally posted by beverly:
I'm not sure employers care about adequate rest time for their workers. Its about getting a job done.

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:

It's a little difficult to get the job done when all your workers are sick. That is why I don't understand the way some of those employers think...

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It's a little difficult to get the job done when all your workers are sick. That is why I don't understand the way some of those employers think...

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There is more demand for the same amount of money that workers do make. Compared to, I'd say 30 years ago, we are living in larger houses with fewer children and take on as many high tech gadgets we can have. We need to get over the child like impulses to have all that new stuff we see in the (toy) stores and need to alleviate the stress ourselves. Employers won't do it for their employees because they don't have to. Health costs are passed onto the government and all workers can be replaced. Workers are to willing to take on more and more to buy more and more and only grumble when accepting less time and money in the form of less pensions and reduced benefits.

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BF works on average 100 hours every seven days with odd days off so its impossible to plan anything. Because of that he's thinking about going back to the rigs o work - three weeks in, one week out sounds a lot less stressful.

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Every rig I ever worked on we'd be in three weeks with a week-end long change out. We'd sometimes get time off during rainouts, when the rig couldn't move, but otherwise your time off was 8am Friday morning until 4pm Monday, once every three weeks.

They are also known for dying young, likely as a direct result of both exhaustion (sinking) and long term health effects.

I had another job where I'd work 20 hour days for 3 months straight, in high stress conditions. I made buckets of money, and it paid my way through school without debt. If I had to do it now I'd likely weep.

What I found, after years of grueling work, was that, for most, work neither equals happiness nor wealth. In fact, I work less now than I ever have, (avg. 35 hours/wk, thank you union), and would never go back.

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Originally posted by DrConway:
The other thing is that not everybody is capable (financially or because of lack of skills/connections) of getting a job tailored to their liking.

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Stress is a lot easier to deal with when you know you're actually getting something out of it. There is absolutely nothing worse than working your fucking ass off every day knowing the whole time that you'll be lucky to scrape by from one paycheck to the next.

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Overwork is a mug's game, plain and simple. Give up the car, tv and most of the technotoys, freedom follows. Not to mention real health etc.
This is not an original idea, but most of us just haven't got it yet.

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Originally posted by steffie:
[QB]

I don't know that we are being encouraged to "get it". The marketers certainly want to keep the toys, cars, and donuts rolling off the assembly lines. They want our money. And they're willing to lie to us in order to get it. And part of us wants to believe what we see in the commercials - that happiness does equal a new car, a new computer, a bigger RRSP. QB]

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Fair enough, but marketers only have as much power over us as we grant them. People are not sheep, no matter what adbusters or Chomsky say.

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Well, advertising works on 95% of the population. Does that make people sheep? Not exactly but most people can be manipulated.

I wrote a grad thesis on the use of mass media and advertising to set the political agenda, the parallels to personal agendas are striking.

However, in recent years I have come to think that few people fail to recognize that they are being manipulated by advertising, on some level at least.

We believe and desire what we want to desire, and advertising will either support it, or we will ignore it and go to the kitchen to grab a sandwich. One thing advertising can do is tell us about things we didn't know about, but it can't make us want them, we do that ourselves.

Not to say that media, PR and advertising aren't effective, just that I'm tired of the easy answer, that people are easily manipulated and tricked by the media. Most are not, and if they are, they usually know it. So that means they aren't, but choose to be in some way.

If we assume advertising and media have that effect, we deny individual agency and the ability of people to see through nonsense. Usually people make the advertising-as-brainwash argument, and everyone in the room nods in agreement. That implies a more complex process, where people individually choose to accept what advertising tells them they want, rather than take the more difficult route of defining their own needs and wants.

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Is this not blatant tax discrimination which favours married couples over single parents?

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I feel for you but I see room for imprvement in what you say. You likely didn't actually OWE $11,000.

If you don't file, CRA will file for you if they know that you will owe. They won't give you the eligible dependent credit to reduce your taxes or any other credit you may be entitled to as a single parent, that other people who aren't in your single motherhood position cannot qualify for because they cannot make assumptions on credits and marital status and so forth.

When CRA files for you, it basically means they want you to come back with an ammended tax return. It's a way to force you to file.

What I think SUCKS is that CPP survivor's benefit is taxable. I agree wholeheartely on that with you.

What I think you are missing is that single mothers do get tax credits that married and common law don't.

My point is that this is a form of workplace stress (abuse) that nobody should have to go through, single parent or otherwise. I was, in fact, being penalized for making too much money. I thought I was being a strong, independent, single parent. I bought a house, paid my own way, and was very proud of that (and still am), so the tax bill was a complete slap in the face.

By the way, "too much money" was about $50,000 per year all told -- on paper. My take-home pay was about $2400 per month together with CPP of $331=$2700 per month for 4 people. Oh yes, plus CTB of about $60. My mortgage alone was over $1000 and food (with two teenage boys in the house) about $800. And then there were taxes, car, house, life and accident insurance, car payments, utilities, other small bills, plus money for school fees, birthdays, Christmas, repairs on the vehicle plus gas and oil; and when my toilet leaks I have to fix it myself because there's never enough left over to pay a plumber.

The sad part is that if it wasn't for my son's disability and the ensuing tax credits (the Child Disability Benefit was introduced about the time I got laid off) I would still owe them money.

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Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:

By the way, I don't think Chomsky ever said people are sheep, and I never got that from his writing.

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I'm owed thousands upon thousands of dollars in child support, but can't afford a lawyer and am not eligible for legal aid. Now, if I started getting that child support, my child care subsidy would be proportionally reduced. I get a raise in pay, and then my rent and utility costs go up.

We're doing much better, living in a house now instead of a basement apartment, buying groceries at the end of the month instead of visiting a food bank, my eldest is earning her own way now, the youngest is almost out of diapers, so there's a bit left over for nicer clothes and new shoes, instead of wearing everything until it disintegrates.

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:

To the contrary, I think Chomsky's formulation often gives people more credit than maybe they deserve--it contains the implicit assumption that if people knew different, they'd probably be acting on their information. Not sheep at all. I believe it was Rick Salutin's article a little while ago that argued that many people wouldn't act if they knew different, and in fact don't want to know different.

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Yeah, I read that article as well. I just don't think that information is all that hard to find, or question. People cling to their schema in the face of contradictory evidence for a long time. The motivation doesn't exist (learned helplessness) to ensure the information you receive is accurate, so you drink the Koolaid - therefore sheep.

Don't get me wrong, I think Chomsky has a high opinion of people as well, but, as Salutin said, it is based on the assumption that they are getting bad information and would act if they got the good stuff. Implicit in that is the elitism of assuming that most people aren't amart enough to recognize when they are being fooled or misled. This form of elitism invariably applies to the people 'not in the room' (ie everyone present in such a discussion is an insider who gets it, but somehow the masses don't). With that elite assumption of better knowledge comes the projection of the idea that people are sheep.

I don't think people are sheep, but I don't think they are buying everything they are told to buy without actually, consciously deciding not to buck the trend. Meaning that people buy things in full or partial knowledge that they are responding to marketing. Current self-referential ads are a good example of that.

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People cling to their schema in the face of contradictory evidence for a long time. The motivation doesn't exist (learned helplessness) to ensure the information you receive is accurate, so you drink the Koolaid - therefore sheep.

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This is why there are so many everyday examples of fascinating contradictions in the way people behave. Who has not been astonished--and made hopeful--to discover some compassionate, typically progressive attitude within a person reputed to be a redneck? People do what they can, and are not all of a kind. (Chomsky also refers to the different results polls get when they're worded differently, but are esssentially about the same subject.)

[ 16 September 2004: Message edited by: bittersweet ]

[ 16 September 2004: Message edited by: bittersweet ]