首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees wh
For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees wh
admin
2013-02-03
30
问题
For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees who had been putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, found their time on the job shrinking to 10 hours daily, then, finally, to eight hours, five days a week. Only a generation ago social planners worried about what people would do with all this new-found free time. In the U. S. , at least, it seems they need not have bothered.
Although the output per hour of work has more than doubled since 1945, leisure seems reserved largely for the unemployed and underemployed. Those who work full-time spend as much time on the job as they did at the end of World War II. In fact, working hours have increased noticeably since 1970--perhaps because real wages have stagnated since that year. Bookstores now abound with manuals describing how to manage time and cope with stress.
There are several reasons for lost leisure. Since 1979, companies have responded to improvements in the business climate by having employees work overtime rather than by hiring extra personnel, says economist Juliet B. Schor of Harvard University. Indeed, the current economic recovery has gained a certain amount of notoriety for its "jobless" nature: increased production has been almost entirely decoupled from employment. Some firms are even downsizing as their profits climb. "All things being equal, we’d be better off spreading around the work, " observes labour economist Ronald G. Ehrenberg of Cornell University.
Yet a host of factors pushes employers to hire fewer workers for more hours and, at the same time, compels workers to spend more time on the job. Most of those incentives involve what Ehrenberg calls the structure of compensation: quirks in the way salaries and benefits are organised that make it more profitable to ask 40 employees to labour an extra hour each than to hire one more worker to do the same 40-hour job.
Professional and managerial employees supply the most obvious lesson along these lines. Once people are on salary, their cost to a firm is the same whether they spend 35 hours a week in the office or 70. Diminishing returns may eventually set in as overworked employees lose efficiency or leave for more arable pastures. But in the short run, the employer’s incentive is clear.
Even hourly employees receive benefits--such as pension contributions and medical insurance-that are not tied to the number of hours they work. Therefore, it is more profitable for employers to work their existing employees harder.
For all that employees complain about long hours, they, too, have reasons not to trade money for leisure. "People who work reduced hours pay a huge penalty in career terms," Schor maintains. "It’s taken as a negative signal about their commitment to the firm. " [Lotte] Bailyn [of Massachusetts Institute of Technology] adds that many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their underlings to a firm’s wellbeing, so they use the number of hours worked as a proxy for output. "Employees know this," she says, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
"Although the image of the good worker is the one whose life belongs to the company," Bailyn says, "it doesn’t fit the facts. " She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies that show increased productivity for part-time workers: they make better use of the time they have, and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs. Companies that employ more workers for less time also gain from the resulting redundancy, she asserts. "The extra people can cover the contingencies that you know are going to happen, such as when crises take people away from the workplace. " Positive experiences with reduced hours have begun to change the more-is-better culture at some companies, Schor reports.
Larger firms, in particular, appear to be more willing to experiment with flexible working arrangements...
It may take even more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers successfully to trade increased productivity and money for leisure time, Schor contends. She says the U. S. market for goods has become skewed by the assumption of full-time, two-career households. Automobile makers no longer manufacture cheap models, and developers do not build the tiny bungalows that served the first postwar generation of home buyers. Not even the humblest household object is made without a microprocessor. As Schor notes, the situation is a curious inversion of the "appropriate technology" vision that designers have had for developing countries: U. S. goods are appropriate only for high incomes and long hours.
Increased leisure time would benefit two-career households.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
C
解析
该陈述文中并没有提到。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/iLyK777K
本试题收录于:
A类竞赛(研究生)题库大学生英语竞赛(NECCS)分类
0
A类竞赛(研究生)
大学生英语竞赛(NECCS)
相关试题推荐
Accordingtorecentsurveys,72%ofallAmericansbelievethattheUnitedStatesgovernmentis【C1】hi______informationaboutUFOs
Accordingtorecentsurveys,72%ofallAmericansbelievethattheUnitedStatesgovernmentis【C1】hi______informationaboutUFOs
Accordingtorecentsurveys,72%ofallAmericansbelievethattheUnitedStatesgovernmentis【C1】hi______informationaboutUFOs
HallwardLibrarysupportsthelearning,teachingandresearchneedsoftheFacultyofArtsandtheFacultyofSocialSciences.T
Whatisitthatattractssomanypeopletodiving?Thereasonsareasdiverseastheavailableexperiences.Driftdiversro
Oneoftheinterestingthingsaboutlanguagesisthewaytheychangeovertime.InEnglish,everythingfromspellingtovocabula
TherearetworeasonswhyIwantedtocometosouthernGermanytostudy.IwantedtobeatthecentreofEurope,withineasyrea
Alaskaisdisappearingslowlybutsurely.Sincethe1950s,itisestimatedthatasmuchas15percentofAlaska’sareahasdisap
FromAugustnextyear,______theEuropeanWorkingTimeDirective,juniordoctorsmustspendnomorethan58hoursaweekworkin
随机试题
A.皮丘隆起,并出现红晕硬块,直径大于1cm,或红晕周围有伪足、痒感B.试验处皮肤明显突起的风团或大丘疹,周围充血或不充血C.皮丘红肿,硬结大于1.5cm,红晕可超过4cm,有时出现伪足,主诉痒感D.局部发红,直径大于1cm,有丘疹E.局部有红肿、
根据补充耕地数量质量按等级折算的技术指导意见,当补充耕地高于被占用耕地等级时,省级耕地占补平衡等级折算系数取值为()的数。
仅承受自重并将其传给基础的墙体,称为()。
招标人代理机构泄露应当保密的与招标投标活动有关情况和资料的,或与招标人、投标人串通损害国家利益、社会公共利益或者他人合法权益的,处()罚款。
针对建筑消防给水系统,室内消火栓给水系统采用的是()消防给水系统。
绝对真理和相对真理是()。
在我国,有权修改宪法的机关是()。
由于社会历史是由有意识有目的活动着的人创造的,因此
A、It’seasytoprepare.B、It’stastyandhealthful.C、It’sexoticinappearance.D、It’ssafetoeat.B根据“据爱吃昆虫的人所说,昆虫不仅高蛋白低脂肪,而且
A、Shehasnotimetostudy.B、Sheisshortofmoney.C、Shehaslosthermoney.D、Shehastolendmoneytoherfriend.B
最新回复
(
0
)