Smoko for the baby boomers
08 August, 2005
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Smoko for the baby boomers
Courier Mail
8 August 2005
It’s more than just a barbeque stopper. The issue of work and life balance has become a battleground. Don Edgar calls it the ‘war over work’, while Pru Goward refers to the problem as the ‘the impossible paradox’. We want more money, but we’d prefer not to have to work for it. We want to start downshifting, but the economy is demanding that more of us work harder than ever.
In the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Striking the Balance report, Pru Goward argues for men to take a greater role in domestic life. She is quick to identify that over 40 per cent of workers (mostly men) work more than 50 hours a week.
An economist by training, Goward is well aware of the labour market issues regarding the future retirement of baby boomers. Over the next 20 years we will see a large reduction in the number of workers, hence a decrease in the overall capacity for the Australian workforce to contribute to the GDP.
The paradox is how to support men to do more unpaid work, when quite clearly we need them to keep earning that income. And, women who are currently bearing the load of unpaid work need to be out there and earning more as well.
Striking the Balance further identifies the demands aging baby boomers will make in regards to the quality of aged care and health services. Goward indicates for the benefit of the economy it would be prudent not to fall into the trap of meeting those demands. However, majorities drive politicians and with over 25 per cent of our future population aged 60 years or more baby boomers may vote for an unwise resource distribution, especially if it’s in their interests.
Whatever happens a lot rests on the shoulders of future workers. Whether they are the sons and daughters of Generation X (who have far fewer children than previous generations anyhow), or immigrant labour, or single mums and disability pensioners (the latest government target); every one of them is being asked to start finding paid work and the more the better.
At the same time our media is saturated with the issues of over-consumption, affluenza and the desire to escape the rat race. This month Sydney is hosting the first-ever Australian downshifting conference – Downshifting Downunder. The organisers are a group of people pursuing the simple life and committed to promoting and charting the future of reducing your income and limiting your consumption.
We face a capacity paradox where we are sick of having our lives dominated by work, but we still pursue standards of living beyond our means.
We need to get the job done, but there is a collective labour-market shoulder-shrug. We are suffering a collective burnout.
While economists and politicians fawn over research on skill shortages and workforce population decline, they are ignoring these deep sighs of a workforce sick of the stress. The demands on the Australian labour market have been constant for two decades - and workers want a smoko.
Indeed, there tends to be an air of impossibility about it. But, it is only impossible if we continue to want it all. We can’t, and so we have to make a choice.
In Clive Hamilton’s Wellbeing Manifesto he calls for a 35 hour working week. While in the real world 50-hour weeks persist. Evidence suggests that beyond 40 hours an individuals productivity falls dramatically, still we subscribe to a culture of long hours, competitive job markets and fear of unemployment to maintain our expensive lifestyles.
We can keep on grinding away if we want, but to what end? We may actually be working ourselves towards levels of stress and sickness that are becoming the plague of the modern world.
By neglecting the unpaid work of the home, we are neglecting the fundamental aspects of our health and wellbeing. A clean living environment, healthy home-cooked meals and engagement with family provide the platform from which all other work can exist. The continual denial of the importance of spending time at home will not benefit the building of strong community.
The paradox isn’t impossible, but it does require some substantial change. Not just from government, but from business and us. People need to demand quality part-time work and learn to reduce their cost of living. Business needs to rediscover its ties with community. Government policy needs to lead a change in attitude with changes that allow us to all contribute equally to the all work that needs to be done.
A society that simply engages in paid work will become bland and less engaged. A society that values the variety of work at home, in the community and the office will continue to discover and recreate new things everyday.