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Late into the night, a weary worker sits at her desk.
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People are genuinely being worked to death by corporations. Every year, three-quarters of a million individuals die as a result of long working hours around the world. That’s more than the amount of people who have died in the United States from Covid-19 so far. According to a new World Health Organization and International Labor Organization report, this is the case. Stress is a killer. In 2016, 745,000 people died as a result of working more than 55 hours each week. Half of the deaths were caused by stroke, and the other half by heart disease. Overeating, poor sleep, less exercise, smoking, and drinking are all stress-related activities that increase the persistent, harmful bodily responses induced by tension and concern. Anxiety is a constant companion of workers. Cortisol, which is released by their adrenal gland, has long been known to wreak havoc on one’s health. It activates the fight/flight response in situations where it isn’t needed. Your body doesn’t know the difference between filling shelves and defending a battleground. The body’s reaction to this hormone, as well as the exhaustion of working long hours, is complicated and dangerous. Autonomous nervous system activity, immune system dysfunction, atrial fibrillation, and high blood pressure are the leading causes of death.
The researchers looked at worker health in three years: 2000, 2010 and 2016. More workers died from stress-related causes in all three studies than from any other cause, including exposure to carcinogens and failure to use seatbelts. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of persons dying from stress-related heart disease nearly doubled.
At first glance, this appears to be a more widespread problem in places where the length of a work week is not regulated, such as Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. (Those are the places where American companies outsource jobs.) Many people in the United States, however, are overworked. The New York Times published an article last year about Goldman Sachs employees who needed to work 100 hours per week.
“It’s time for us all, governments, companies, and employees, to wake up to the truth that extended working hours can contribute to premature death,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of the World Health Organization.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR YOU
This isn’t a brand-new tale. For many years, various organizations have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of overwork. Henry Ford developed the 40-hour work week as a safeguard early in the industrial age, knowing instinctively that workers would suffer if forced to work longer hours. He truly cared about them as individuals, unlike many industrial titans in the past and hundreds of simple CEOs today.
The New York Times raised awareness of overwork last year with a well-reported piece that demonstrated how damaging it can be. It quoted a comprehensive white paper based on 200 studies on overwork. The New York Times looks back to a day when Goldman Sachs had a eureka moment. Some of the bank’s employees worked 100-hour weeks. As a result, it forbade its staff from working from 9 p.m. on Friday until 9 a.m. on Sunday. It’s almost comical how this could be construed as sympathetic and generous. Those investment bankers may work till the wee hours of the morning on Friday and then all day on Saturday, our typical day off. This was thought to be a good method to construct a regular work week.
It’s not uncommon for gig workers and other part-timers to take on two or three gigs at a time. They don’t add up to enough hours to make an employer obligated to pay health benefits. When you sum it all together, Uber drivers, nannies, cooks, landscapers, and other independent contractors are frequently working 70 to 80 hours a week. The statistics regarding these people’s lives go unnoticed by most people. Despite this, the gig economy is on its way to becoming the largest component of the American labor. In the gig economy, there is no such thing as overtime. Many firms now juggle temp workers, keeping them under thirty hours per week in order to avoid paying benefits and overtime. The system now functions as though employers are impregnable. They can mistreat someone to death without taking responsibility for it, and sometimes without even realizing it.
Long hours degrade a worker’s problem-solving abilities. In general, sleep deprivation reduces cognitive performance. The New York Times highlighted a study of munitions plant workers during WWI who worked up to 90 hours per week in their piece on overwork at Goldman Sachs. If they worked for 49 hours or less each week, they were more productive. Above that, the quality and quantity of their work continued to deteriorate. Work quality deteriorated after 64 hours. On-the-job injuries skyrocketed. The production of persons who worked seven days a week versus those who worked five days a week was guided by the same destructive curve.
Companies with foresight see that this cannot continue. When Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon tried to restore rationality to his firm’s work schedule, he said it perfectly: “We want them to be challenged, but we also want them to be able to work at a speed that allows them to stay here and gain vital skills. This isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon.” Not an order prohibiting labor on a specific day of the week, but the gladiator culture of investment banking is the only way to keep his people from pushing themselves to death.
Alexandra Michel, an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and a five-year Goldman Sachs employee, was interviewed by the New York Times. For the past two decades, she has been following four groups of workers, compiling a comprehensive study of work-life balance in our economy. According to her, the society there has a clear path to burnout: “Most professionals put in long hours, and by their fourth year on the job, many analysts’ bodies are showing signs of wear and tear.” She told the New York Times: “They become ill after four years. Their hair starts to fall off. They put on pounds. However, there is no negative impact on performance. Around year seven, something happens to performance that the banks care about, namely a fall in originality. Bankers leave at that point because their bodies are depleted.”
Banks, on the other hand, can afford to treat their employees as disposable commodities since there is an unending supply of elite new talent emerging from business schools. The ruthless and aggressive culture of investment banking in New York City might be the subject of a whole book, but it isn’t unique. Top legal firms all share the same extended fraternity hazing culture: work a new hire almost to death before making them a partner or sending them on their way, exhausted. If you make it through the years of boot camp, you’ve earned the right to advance and put other new workers to the test.
Working 40 or 50 hours per week with extra pay is the best strategy to keep workers from killing themselves via heavy work. Every company in the United States can follow that because it complies with rules designed to protect workers’ well-being—and because, in the end, it produces a trained, talented workforce that is happy and relaxed, and hence at its most creatively productive. Companies that use gig workers should scrutinize their own regulations with a keen eye. Are they allowing their employees to keep a sufficient portion of the revenue from each transaction—the car fare, the grocery store fee, the payment for restaurant meals delivered? If not, they are exploiting them and reducing their ability to provide great service. They’ll have to take on a second or third job, or work considerably longer hours, and they won’t be able to focus on the quality of their work for their clients. A competitor app or other company with more compassionate human resource policies will gain an advantage merely by being dependable at that time.
None of this is complicated. It’s a matter of common sense. It’s part of stakeholder capitalism’s wisdom: look after the people who make and buy your service or product, and you’ll be rewarded with larger profits than you ever imagined./nRead More

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