The Parkland Institute

Blog Entries | January 11, 2012

Are we working too much?

posted by Diana Gibson

As a province that works amongst the highest number of hours in a nation works amongst the highest number of hours in the OECD, Alberta needs to take stock. A new report from the New Economics Foundation lays out a very bold and ambitious vision. The report calls for much shorter hours of paid work as a new route out of the multiple crises we face today. These include widening inequalities, a failing global economy, critically depleted natural resources and accelerating climate change, all of which pose grave threats to the future of human civilization. According to the report's vision, many of us are consuming well beyond our economic means and well beyond the limits of the natural environment, yet in ways that fail to improve our well-being – and meanwhile many others suffer poverty and hunger. Continuing economic growth in high-income countries will make it impossible to achieve urgent carbon reduction targets.

Though a 21 hour work week may be ambitious, a reduced work week has been implemented in France where the average worker not only works a shorter work week but also gets 7.5 weeks more holidays than the average Alberta worker. Reduced work hours could help to address a range of problems from overwork, over-consumption and high carbon emissions, to low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life. Alberta needs to have this debate. Of course it is challenging to launch this debate in the context of labour shortages but the province which speaks to the desperate need to engage in a real debate about the appropriate pacing of growth.

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