Naughty but nice!

This Easter most of the big supermarkets are open everyday bar Sunday.  The nearest Tesco is even open 24hrs a day most days.

Good news for Supermarket shoppers but less good news for staff, judging by the comments I’ve heard them utter when perusing the aisles. So much for family values and the work life balance, things that the PR departments of the major supermarkets would have us believe are important to them. As we know profits trump all.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a debate in in the House of Commons. It was a discussion about whether it is feasible for people to work fewer hours a week, and how that could be achieved. It was hosted by a London MP and organised by the ‘Think and do tank’ the New Economics Foundation.  The debate was based around a new report from NEF called ‘21 hours Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st Century’. Read it here.

I think the following extract succinctly defines what’s broken in our current economic model:

Highly competitive, rich consumer economies promise satisfaction for all but actually tend to deliver the opposite. Those who can afford to participate are never truly satisfied, however much they consume. That’s because the system is designed to promote dissatisfaction precisely to keep us all spending to boost and justify continuing growth. Meanwhile, those who cannot afford to take part are excluded socially and economically. Overall the model drives environmentally destructive materialism. Continuing growth in high-income countries cannot be ‘decoupled’ from carbon emissions sufficiently and in time to avoid catastrophic damage to the environment.

The utopian dream of doing little work and a lot of socialising, as depicted in many science fiction works of the 20th Century shows no sign of ever coming true, more like the opposite. We now work longer hours than in the past, particularly in the UK were employee rights have been eroded to favour employers. For example many shop workers earn little more than minimum wage, and while they can’t be forced to work Sundays, they can be asked at their job interview whether they will do so. If they say no,  I’m  sure we can guess the consequences.

Going back the quote above, our economy depends on perpetual growth. Staying the same is not an option. Business needs to produce more to thrive, which means they spend fortunes on convincing us all we need to buy more. We are tricked into believing that buying more and more stuff is the path to a lifetime of happiness. The evidence is mounting that the opposite is true, but if you’re a millionaire  director of a Supermarket you’ll not want to hear that. I once read a book with the tag line “Much of what we cherish is dross”, how true that is. But it’s only dross because we are told what to cherish by a powerful media that has an immense impact on our cultural values. Our own free will plays less and less of a part in our decision making process. What’s more valued by society,  a £40 bottle of aftershave endorsed by a footballer, or a craggy sprawling 3oo year old Oak Tree?

Anyway, I digress! If I have to go to the shops this Easter I’ll spare a thought for those that don’t want to be there. No, not most of the shoppers, but the workers.

According to the NEF report, we could work less hours by doing more job sharing, this could reduce unemployment to near zero in fact. We could assign a bigger chunk of our week to doing the things we love, and a smaller chunk to buying the things we think we need and working in order to pay for them. What also needs to happen though is that minimum wage needs to be increased to a proper living wage which it clearly isn’t today. If it was, there would be no need for tax credits and other benefits that those in work are able to claim. The government effectively subsidises a low wage economy.

What really stops us working less and enjoying more? Inequality. The increasing chasm between rich in poor means that the poorer in society have to work harder to stand still, while the rich turn millions into billions, by convincing the poorer they need to buy more ’stuff’ in order to mimic them, and gain status and fulfilment.  The yardstick of aspiration  only seems to be cash, cars and things ‘designer’.

I’m not a Marxist or a Communist or anything like that, but this doesn’t seem the fairest and most sustainable way for humanity to carry on. Three hundred years on from the start of the industrial revolution, where machines were invented to make life easier, we may not be working harder, but we are working just as long it seems.

I’m off to contemplate this more over Easter, whilst devouring a Cadbuy’s Creme Egg – my own version of excess!