Slashdot Mirror
Stress Costs U.S. $300 Billion a Year
jburroug writes "A new study, as reported in the New York Times claims that the stress of the modern always-on work environment is taking a far greater toll on the health of workers than previously believed, to the tune of $300 billion in lost productivity and increased health care costs in the U.S. alone."
Just today there was an article about hypertasking.
Folks, shut off the cellphone, log out of the internet and leave work at work because you're slowly killing yourself with stress.
Seriously.
However, I have to wonder what a high GDP growth and near-full employment are worth if you are dead.
Obviously there is a problem with ANY form of social engineering - it's untested, and has unpredictable results on society. We conservatives say this in response to welfare programs and affirmative action. Modern capitalism and the downsizing trend have social effects. That's not subject to argument. Instead of a knee-jerk conservative 'but it could damage productivity' response, how about taking a look at the problems instead?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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....with their 4-6 weeks of vacations and holidays each year. We work about 25% more per year than do most Europeans.
I really do not understand why we Americans have let ourselves be brainwashed into SweatShopAmerica.
See my sig for links on how the social democracies of Europe fought and are still fighting for a better , less stressful workplace, for universal healthcare, and for a social welfare state/safety net that lets them less afraid of losing their jobs.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The problem about anything that surveys the economic losses caused by productivity losses is that they're all vague measurements of approxiamate things that are then multiplied by a huge group of people. Really, what this means is that while there might be truth in the idea these statistics try to show, the numbers are almost completely bullshit. For example, let's suppose 100 million workers in the united states have air blowing hand dryers instead of paper towels in their restrooms. These dryers take longer than paper towels, let's say maybe a minute instead of 10 seconds. I would think it's fair to say that on average a worker makes 1.5 trips to the bathroom per day. So if the average hourly wage of these employees is something like 15 bucks, 10 seconds of paper towels is worth $0.0417, one minute of air drying is worth $0.25. That means that we're wasting ~$31 Million per day! That's billions per year! My God! Something has to be done!
How can I do all that, I'm too busy working.
The Buddists have one thing right - there is a Yin and a Yang to everything. Call it a dual edged sword, whetever - in our world, there is an upside and a downside to everything.
There will enevitably be many +5 (Insightful) comments about how we're being mowed down by "the Man, squeezing more blood out of us to make more money", but when you think about it, the reason for that is we all, in reality, want to be "the Man". We want the things they dangle in front of us, that require disposable income to acquire. "Ooooh, Shiny iPod/Beemer/Opteron" crosses our lips and we've bought into this system. Work more to get more things for our "leisure time", which ends up being non-existant. "If work hard, I'll get promoted and get that raise - then I'll get a life" used to be my mantra. Now, after my good paying job was killed and in essence just moved out of province in the name of profits, I'm fed up enough to say "Fuck you - as long as my family is warm, healthy, clothed and fed I'm happy".
Capitalism is good, it's the best system we've got, but like all things it can go too far. Don't forget why your toiling away - it's to make a life, not make money. Remember, there is a downside to everything - no exceptions.
Meh. Just Crown Royal influenced ramblings from a slightly bitter old man. On to our regularily scheduled bashing of "the man"...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
France and most other European countries will give you far more unemployment benefits than American workers gets. In many EU countries, one could drawa years of unemployment if laid off. Try that here.
Plus, welfare is far more generous there.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Outsource our stress to India! They'd be glad to stress out at 1/3 the cost.
- Primary numbers are out to kill me
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
Out of touch executives are running the country (US) into the ground from within. They percieve a need to squeeze every penny into their quarterly EPS reports. CxOs will stop at nothing to look good on paper. Their shortsighted strategies combined with an out-of-touch lifestyle make life a living hell for a vast majority of their collective underlings. Their only concerns in life are:
1. Where do I park my boat? What? No valet service?!?
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!!!
If executives were more entrenched and had more at stake there would be more coherent operations at work. CxOs need to have their livelyhood at stake in the same way the rest of us do in order to make the right decision. Nothing trickles down to the underlings. You might survive in this corporate culture by sucking up. 1 minute of "face time" has become much more important than fixing a problem or making an improvement. God help us all.
That's me, the reporter who wrote the story. What fascinated me about this is that everybody knows that workplace stress is a problem, but you rarely see the dots connected. There's a lot of fascinating research out there -- especially the Scandinavian studies showing links between change in the workplace and illness. Anyway, I didn't mean to stress y'all out. But I have to say that I did think of slashdotters often while I was writing it...
"speaking only for myself since 1957"
In another example, let's say I spill a tanker of oil off the New England coast. Damage to the economy and value of lost oil will be arbitrarily set at $50 billion dollars. If, however, the cleanup costs are $60 billion dollars paid out to various workers to clean up the mess, then the GDP will actually increase by $10 billion dollars, despite the fact that nothing actually got produced - some idiot just made a big mess and then someone cleaned it up.
GDP is big fat lie.
But what about Europe: they are less stressed, but the Industrial Revolution started there!
The reason they are less stressed is because their governments have restrained the amount of leverage that employers may apply to the employee.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
In Sweden, and I think this also applies to several other European countries, we have laws that prevents a company from firing its staff without a valid reason. I.e., they can't fire you for arguing with your boss, or not working overtime, etc. Also, when they need to cut back on the staff, its a first-in-last-out rule that is applied to decide who will stay and who will get fired. And you're not allowed to work more than 200 hours overtime per year (exceptions can be made though). Everyone have at least 5 weeks vacation each year, and you always have the right to use at least four of these during the summer. If you get a kid, you have 1 years paid parental leave. Would you like to take a year of to study something? Sure thing, every employee can take one years off as long as they will be studying full time, and you get your job back when your done. Is your kid sick, don't worry, you can stay home and take care off him/her without risk loosing your job.
Working in Sweden is quite sweet...