Employers see certain advantages in the 4-40 plans over other schemes. They see it as improving their competitive position, especially against foreign firms, because it eliminates costly overtime payments and permits management to hire more workers on a staggered basis. The longer work day gives 25 per cent more use of equipment. There is less turnover and less absenteeism, and there are more unsolicited job applications. Many employees like the plan because it gives them longer periods of leisure, lets them avoid the hours of peak traffic, and cuts out one commuting journey per week. Women like it because it reduces the cost of child care and gives them more time to spend on family and housework.
But workers also have strong objections to the plan. Some feel that the longer day disrupts family life because it conflicts with school hours, community activities, and ordinary socializing. Others think the longer day increases fatigue and damages health, providing longer continuous exposure to harmful industrial pollutants, and create additional work hazards. Still others complain that while manufacturers increase production, cut costs, and increase profits, workers do not share in these benefits and lose overtime pay. Finally, some feel that off-hours make it harder to arrange car pools and get the best public transportation. In sum, while the work week will probably continue to grow shorter, there are arguments against the workday growing longer.
The Bugs in Pension Plans Social Security alone usually provides the aged with less than a poverty level of living. For many retired workers the same is true of company pensions. In many cases, both government and company payments combined are not enough.
The company pension is supposed to provide the retired worker with a flow of income accrued during his active years. Some include survivors’ benefits and allow for early retirement due to illness or physical disability. Private plans and the Federal Old Age Survivors, Disability, and Health Insurance (OASDHI) retirement payments combined provide some dignity for the aged, but still fall short of meeting the cost of living without other income or resources.
Some private pension funds are supplied solely by the employer; others require matching amounts from the employee. In some, no fund is established, and payments are made out of current operating funds. In smaller firms, the pension may be paid by an insurance policy. Many unions have pension plans, financed by a tax on wages paid by the employer. Since pension funds sometimes grow very large, they may become a prey for the unscrupulous. Both business and union executives have been known to steal such funds outright, “borrow” them for personal investment, or invest them in such ways that the principal was frozen and not available for pension payments. Stronger controls over the administration and investment of pension funds are a high priority for the near future.
One aspect of pension fund control is the employee’s vested interest in a com pany-funded plan. When a firm supplies the money for a fund, an employee’s interest or rights in it may come into being at a certain age or after a certain period of employment. Thus full benefits may be available at age 65 and after 30 years’ service and reduced benefits at age 62 and after 25 years’ service. Usually a worker who leaves the company after a shorter period of time loses all rights in such a plan. The existence of vested rights itself raises problems. It reduces mobility and freezes people in their jobs. Thus many a worker is reluctant to leave a job after fifteen years when five more will give him a pension. And many problems arise in disposing of pension funds when a company is sold, merges with another, or goes out of business. In such circumstances employees of years’ standing may find the pension fund too small to give them security, or they may have lost their interest due to the terms of sale, merger, or dissolution.
With increasing prospects for long life, early retirement, and more leisure, security in retirement becomes more and more important. There is no doubt that unions will continue to seek gains in this area, and that government will provide stronger controls over private pension plans much like the controls that now exist for banking and insurance.
To Work or Not to Work One growing problem for both government and business is that the gap between the economic position of those who work and those who do not is growing steadily smaller. Many people have already discovered the ironic fact that they are better off financially when idle than busy. Those at the lower end of the wage scale are sometimes ahead drawing unemployment insurance and/or welfare than they are working for the legal minimum wage. All wages are subject to income tax withholding while unemployment payments are not. The unemployed do not have to pay for transportation, lunches or presentable clothing. And for increasing numbers in our society the old idea that work has a positive value in itself no longer has meaning.
At the other end of the income scale, private pension plans often provide for early retirement of executives. Even on less than full pension, early retirement can offer exceptional opportunities. A man of fifty-five with a monthly retirement check and twenty years’ experience can take a position with another firm at a salary as good as or better than he had before. His pension is not subject to income tax, nor is other deductions made from it. In ten years he may retire with a pension from his second employer. Conversely, had he not taken another job but enjoyed his leisure, he may not have lost much income, since he would have had to pay no taxes and he would have eliminated the costs of being employed.
A large question for the future is whether social protection of the work force may someday reach the point where it becomes economical for dangerously large numbers of people to be unemployed.
Work and Well-Being Many philosophers and writers see grave dangers in the changing nature of work and popular attitudes about it in terms of well-being, mental health, and even sanity. Camus felt that “Without work all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless life stifles and dies.” The psychologist Erich Fromm sees the danger that man will “continue spending most of his energy on meaningless work,” and that “completely automated work” may lead to a “completely automated life.” Abraham Maslow believed that work can be psychotherapeutic, and that the proper management of the work-lives of human beings, and of the work environment, can improve the world as to the point of becoming the technique of a Utopian revolution.
If all this is true, then it may be that a first step toward solving the psychological problems of the working world is a massive educational program. From elementary school on, children should be given information about the different jobs required to operate society and how to prepare for these jobs. Such education could help to avoid structural unemployment, the oversupply of trained people in some areas and shortages in others. It could also help break down stereotypes associated with some vocations: for instance, that nursing is a field for women and truck-driving for men, that college graduates are “better” than technical school graduates because it is somehow more respectable to work with your head than with your head and hands together. It will be necessary not only to redefine particular jobs and attitudes toward them, but the nature and function of work in relation to life as a whole. In this process, leisure and recreation will have to be incorporated with work and the work situation, and work will have to be made a satisfying and health-giving activity to the individual and to society.
