10 * 9 * 6 * 52 = $28,080 / year
No, I don't think 54 hours / week is too much to ask. I'm sure most people making over the 26k probably work more than that. Yes, I know this is Canada, but it's just an example.
Also, why do you think it's acceptable for people to only have one day a week away from work? Why is a nine hour workday acceptable? Are you taking into consideration that lower income workers are more likely to have to live further from work, and use public transportation to get to and from their place of employment (or to the grocery store, etc. but that's outside of my argument). So these people should have to work nine hours a day, plus any unpaid breaks they take. IIRC, my girlfriend is paid for breaks but not for lunch, so let's add a half an hour to this example to accommodate that. So we're at 9.5 hours per day, six days per week. Now, the worker has to walk to their bus stop - and to do it early so as not to possibly miss the bus - and maybe take a 15, or even 30, minute bus ride. They do that twice a day, to get to and from work. That's adding possibly an hour, or even more, to their day. So you're advocating that asking someone to spend nearly 11 hours a day, six days a week?
My first job out of college, doing some shitty COBOL programming, was 42.5 hours per week (40 working hours, plus an unpaid half hour a day for lunch). Because I was making enough cash to afford it, I lived within walking distance of work. It added maybe 15 minutes per day to walk to and from my job. I made between 38 and 43k for this, depending on when in my employment you asked me.
So why does it make so much sense for you to ask someone to spend an average of 66 hours a week of their time to make $28k, when I spent about 44 hours a week to make $43k?
I'm not even including the few weeks that I had to put in extra hours - no week ever really exceeding 60 hours from my recollection - at various crunch times, since I was paid out for that time, and the outlier in time was met by an outlier in pay. My hourly wage exceeded minimum wage by more than double, so including that would only skew the calculations further away from your argument.
Why did you include commute time in their payment, and exclude it in yours?
I'm not sure what you're doing, but even in my summer internship I spent a good 10-11 hours a day, excluding commute time working. I wasn't even paid hourly. Most of my friends working proper jobs, in finance and tech spend at least 10 hours a day working - usually more.
I didn't. I used myself as the example, explaining that because I could afford better accommodations, specifically an apartment close to work, that my travel time was minimized. My point there was that lower income workers can't afford to be as selective in where they live as can workers with a higher income, and that they are more reliant on cheaper, yet less time-efficient, modes of travel.
Having said that, I will admit that by using my situation as the example, I may have biased the analogy a bit. I overestimated the average travel time for lower income workers, and underestimated the average travel time for higher income workers. While I think it's important to note the variable of travel time, it was possibly unfair to include it in the summation.
I can't speak to your example, because I don't think I'd stay in a job where 50-55 hour weeks were the norm. Overtime is fine when it's used properly, but there's a reason they call it a "9-5" job. If you go beyond that, you'll get burned out and be less efficient.
Americans do seem to have a different view on working than do other countries, even compared to Canadians like me, so this could just be a cultural difference. I don't think it is though, even in the States.
I can't think of any of my friends or family - an admittedly small data set - who work more than a 40 hour week on average. In Canada, I believe there are legal protections, at least in some provinces, which prevent you from working too much without adequate compensation (e.g. time and a half for hours over 40, double time for holidays, etc.) I sometimes had to work more than 40 for "straight pay", but that was apparently due to loopholes for salaried and/or on-call employees.
Good employers insist you not work those kinds of hours to begin with, they know it does not increase productivity in the long run, in fact having the opposite effect, and leads to burnout and health problems.
At best, you are accomplishing nothing working those hours regularly. At worst, you are seriously harming your long-term health.
Edit: By the way, Statistics Canada provides some numbers you should look at:
Not even long-term health. This can affect you quicker than you might think.
During one particular crunch time, I was working long hours on a regular basis (crunch time here being "after the project had continued years after it's originally scheduled end date, we were given a hard deadline a few months in the future, so everything was a "crunch" until then). I wasn't sleeping right, and one morning I came in looking like hell. My boss - my nice boss, anyway - diverted us when we went for our morning coffee. He took me to the pharmacy instead, and bought me a bottle of Valerian pills. If that isn't a warning sign, I don't know what is.
Also, I ended up on a stress leave for a couple weeks after a while. Without the constant pressure of work, my body finally relaxed. When it did, I ended up getting strep throat and general body aches. It could be coincidence, but I tend to think that I worked myself so hard that I actually compromised my own immune system.
I don't have a problem working long hours over short periods of time when it's properly needed, but I won't ever let myself work a job where that's the norm for extended periods of time (or, god forbid, all the time) again.
- Minimum wage in Canada != minimum wage in the U.S.
- Economy in Canada != economy in U.S.
- Canada has free health care, blunting the impact of a low wage job without benefits (as opposed to the U.S. where a lack of health insurance can be devastating)
- Not everyone with a minimum wage job is able to work all the hours they would like to work.
And that is without touching on whether or not you think a 54 hour work week is a reasonable thing to ask someone, possibly with children, to be working at some unfulfilling minimum wage job.
Health care isn't free, it's just heavily subsidized. Depending on your province, you can expect to pay about $750 a year to cover your end of basic coverage. Vision, dental, and prescriptions aren't covered, and most people have supplementary coverage for them.
Of course, for low wage earners and students there are various programs in place that can drop the amount you pay to basically nil. There's no deductible for most things (doctors, er, surgery, etc) either, which is handy.
Are you referring to the amount of tax that goes toward support of the healthcare system, or out-of-pocket expenses?
If it's the latter, can you tell me which provinces those are so that I can avoid them? I lived in Ontario from birth until I was 21, and have lived in Nova Scotia since then. Outside of minor costs like the uninsured portions of my dental work and prescriptions (I know there's a word for this, but I don't know it off hand), I've never had to pay for my healthcare.
Supplemental coverage - as you said, vision, dental, and drugs - are typically provided by your employer. I don't really know how many people buy extra on top of that. Maybe when you have kids it becomes more important, but I'm not there yet.
I will definitely agree with your "health care isn't free" statement. It's surprising how many people seem to think it is free in Canada, but it's just a much less noticeable cost. It's rolled in with our taxes, so we just don't think about how much of our tax will go for healthcare. It's just tax. "Out of sight; out of mind" and all that.
That might as well be free.
I pay almost $7,000/year in California for good (by US standards) medical coverage. That includes some prescription coverage, but not vision or dental. I'm in a low-risk age group, I'll let you guess what my premiums would look like if I were, say, 50. :)
8 hours a day is the norm here. A lot of the minimum wage workers (lower than 10$ an hour) work even fewer than the 40 hours that would constitute full time as a way to reduce businesses supposed obligation to cover healthcare / 401k / etc. I've seen in my experience many workers get cut off between 35 and 38 hours in a week to avoid this.
I would anticipate that very few people, less than 5%, of people making over 26k in the US work more than 54 hours a week... It just isn't done that way here.
My father worked three jobs when I was growing up, to support our family. He never complained about wealth inequality; he just did what he had to. Sure, it'd be nice if everyone got paid a lot of money - but since that's never going to happen, people might need to adjust what the norm is.
52? 6 days a week? Not every job allows for it. You want to abolish week-ends? Come on.
The Federal Minimum Wage in the U.S. is $7.25.
I'm lucky when I can do a full 40, and I make a lot more than $26k. A LOT more.
Several of my friends, while great people, unfortunately have a close-to-minimum-wage skill set. I'm just saying that these people who are making so little could make more, if they put in more time.