what's the time? Depends on who you ask

The ongoing and many ups and downs dispute over the length of the work week emphasizes that time is a social order, no less than a fact of nature

  
 
 
The liquid clock. Salvador Dali

By: James Rayson
The week is a unit of time known for suffering, worthy of pity. Unlike the day and year sanctified by the cycle and orbit of the earth, the week has no protection from heaven. He appears in the Bible and in fact was always a candidate for reforms. The French revolutionary calendar of 1793, for example, experimented with a new time unit with ten days. In 1929, the Soviet Union instituted a time unit of five working days, in which every fifth of the workforce had its own day of rest and there was no day off common to all. But none of these experiments lasted. Thus, in retrospect, the words that Bishop Gregoire said to the French revolutionaries were adapted: "Sunday existed before you and will exist after you".

But did Sunday actually survive? In the United States, in the last 40 years, it was possible to see a widespread cancellation of the "Blue Laws", laws that prohibited work and commerce on Sundays. Not only was the sale of alcohol prohibited, but also the opening of barbershops and the holding of public entertainment were outlawed. Following the repeal of those laws, Sunday became the day of all days.

The work week also lost its uniqueness at a time when time at home and at the office were mixed together. Cell phones, the Internet and other technologies are responsible for this. The 40-hour work week, enshrined in law since 1938, has eroded in recent decades; Many Americans have moved into professions that are exempt from this law. And the very rule, which limited the work week to 40 hours, recently came up for renewed discussion. Not long ago, the Republican Party supported the "Family Time Flexibility Act" which was supposed to allow employees to receive their wages for overtime as vacation days. But this bill failed in the House of Representatives due to strong opposition from trade unions.

According to Todd D. Rakoff, Harvard law professor, time is as much a social order as a fact of nature. Our experience of time is created by a series of decisions that we can adapt to our changing needs. To what extent should we adapt our activities to the light of day? How important are vacations and breaks in shaping life? What is the maximum number of hours a person should be allowed to work each week?

See for example the operation that seems so simple - to check what time it is. In 1883 the railway services created a system of time zones to facilitate the coordination of arrivals of trains traveling long distances. However, the use of time zones contradicted the convention of local time, according to which the clocks were set for noon when the sun was directly overhead.

The gap between the two methods reached a crisis point in cases such as "Jones v. The German Insurance Company" from 1899. A building in Creston, Iowa caught fire five minutes before the expiration of the insurance policy according to local time, but two and a half minutes after the policy expired according to " The main time". In 1918, the US Congress solved these types of problems by passing the Standard Time Act. The law established five time zones, the use of which was mandatory in matters of federal law and trade between the states of the United States.

Another controversial matter was a measure introduced across the United States in World Wars I and II. The working day was then changed to include more daylight hours, to save energy. After each war, Congress abolished daylight saving time, but many areas chose to keep it. This is how pockets of a clock were created that is separate from the one in force in the rest of the country. Major league baseball, manufacturers in the home gardening industry, and the urban middle class all wanted more hours of daylight for after-hours activity. Cinemas and farmers, on the other hand, preferred less light in the evening and more light in the morning. Only in 1966 did the "uniform time law" enforce relative uniformity in the field.

The most divisive question was the length of the work week. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which required a work week no longer than 40 hours; The overtime pay was 1.5 times higher than the regular pay in a variety of jobs. Managers and freelancers were not included in the law. Today about 70 million of the 150 million American workers are not included in this law.
Decades after the law was passed, not everyone is happy with the status quo. Some call for a shorter work week. In France, the Parliament voted in 2000 to shorten the working week from 39 to 35 hours. It was then claimed that this would reduce unemployment, because employers would be obliged to hire more people.

The "Flexibility of Family Time" law, proposed a few months ago by Judy Bigert, a Republican representative in the House of Representatives, failed. There was another legislative attempt to respond to the labor crisis - this time on the problem of overtime and overtime. At a time when many families have two breadwinners, leisure time is a particularly precious commodity. Bigert argued that workers should be allowed to decide for themselves when they want to be paid more for overtime and when they want more free time.

Opponents of this idea say that it will deprive employees of the high overtime pay, which they need, and force them to adapt their schedule to the needs of employers. "The language of the law says that the employer must give the employee free time if this time 'does not excessively disrupt the employer's operations,'" Rakoff said. In other words, employees will not be able to take time off as they wish. Companies will ask their employees to work overtime when there is a load and then pressure them to take time off for overtime during periods of little work. This way, the employer will be able to balance the workload without having to pay for overtime.

But the work week law of 1938 can be improved. Rakoff suggests giving workers more control over determining when at all they have to work overtime: perhaps by increasing the pay for overtime by 2 times rather than 1.5 times as now. Rakoff says the overtime clause should be applied to broader groups in the labor market; For example, working in law firms whose employers employ them above and beyond.

The purpose of the Fair Work Act, he said, is also to help society maintain a healthy balance between work and the other elements of life. In the eyes of the economist or the libertarian (extreme right-wing people who want to limit as much as possible the role of the state in the name of "market forces"), Rakuf's desire to impose regulations and restrictions stands in opposition to the hidden supreme wisdom of the market. Apart from the market, they will argue, what institution can take personal ambitions into account and balance the various interests, ambitions and obligations operating in society? After all, Sunday is not the day of rest for all religions and not all people prefer to work a limited number of hours.

But when it comes to time, there may not actually be a true individual choice. "Our shared social time depends on people having time that is not work time," Rakoff said. "An individual can go on vacation, but a company is needed to create holidays and vacations."

It seems that his words can be applied to time as a whole. Humans are allowed to ignore summer or winter clocks or set their clocks according to the sun at noon. But then, how will they be on time for meetings or get their children to school before the bell rings?