The lengthening of the workweek in the United States has even been featured in recent reports in the big-business press, which point out that overtime has risen to unprecedented levels.

"Overtime rises, making fatigue a labor issue" was the headline in the September 17 New York Times. The August 10 Christian Science Monitor carried an article entitled, "Among workforce, a backlash to overtime."

The Times story highlighted a recent debate in the Maine legislature on a bill to cap the amount of forced overtime legally allowed in the state. The debate drew particular attention after the electrocution death of Brent Churchill, a lineman in Industry, Maine. He had been forced by his employer, Central Maine Power, to work two back-to-back shifts and then, after sleeping less than three hours, called back out to work almost 24 hours straight. Churchill died instantly on the job when he grabbed a 7,200-volt cable without his insulating gloves.

The Christian Science Monitor article reports, "Americans clock more hours at work--45 a week--than any other people on the globe. They surpassed the Japanese in 1998."

A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey shows that in early 1997 average weekly overtime reached close to five hours--the highest level since 1956, when the BLS began compiling such figures.

The report actually understates the reality because it includes only overtime paid at premium rates. Extra hours with no overtime pay--what millions of workers face, especially in nonunion jobs--are not counted. Other government figures average out all jobs, including the large and increasing number of part-time jobs.

Among manufacturing workers, according to the BLS report, overtime is highest in the primary metal industries (including steelworkers), transportation equipment (auto and aircraft assembly), petroleum and coal products, paper and pulp, industrial machinery, chemicals, fabricated metals, and textile.

In an article in the February Monthly Labor Review, BLS economist Ronald Hetrick noted that overtime hours started to grow after the end of the 1990-91 recession. In the early years, known as the "jobless recovery," employment continued to decline. Beginning in 1993, employment slowly rose again, while overtime hours continued to surge. Hetrick points out, "Employers appeared to rely more heavily on overtime in the current expansion than on hiring new employees." In the period from March 1991 to January 1998, he adds, "If employers had hired new workers instead of increasing overtime, nearly twice as many production workers would have been hired."  
 
Bills on overtime benefit bosses
Capitalist politicians, especially in this election year, have pretended to be concerned about the lengthening of the workweek. In "regulating" overtime, however, they have usually codified a brutal level of working hours.

In Maine, amid the outcry over Brent Churchill's untimely death, legislation was passed in May limiting the amount of forced overtime legally allowed in the state to 80 hours in any two-week period. The original bill would have limited overtime to 96 hours over three consecutive weeks--which the big-business politicians evidently concluded was too generous to workers and too onerous for bosses.

When the California state legislature passed legislation counting overtime after an eight-hour day, rather than a 40-hour week, employers bombarded the politicians with demands for exemptions in construction sites, hospitals, and other workplaces. Bills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia that would allow workers to refuse overtime without being penalized by bosses have been deferred.

In the U.S. Congress, Democratic and Republican politicians have focused on limiting overtime pay, not hours. As the Times put it, the congressional debates on the lengthening workweek have been aimed "not at workers but at helping employers who seek to reduce the associated labor costs."

Several attachments to currently pending minimum wage legislation, which would raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15 over the next two years, "would disqualify technology workers, sales personnel, and others from receiving overtime pay. Another provision would allow businesses to reduce overtime payments to virtually all qualifying employees."