Photo by Alex Goetz
Summary
A more efficient world is simply cleaner, greener, and more sustainable. Or is it? This month, we’re exploring some of the ways we can reset our long-standing paradigms of labour, productivity, and efficiency. Take a break with us.
Show Notes
This episode features Conrad Schmidt, Jimmy Gutierrez, and a special guest episode by the wonderful folks at Outside / In.
Conrad Schmidt is the author of Workers of the World, Relax and Alternatives to Growth: Efficiency Shifting, as well as the founder of the Work Less Party of British Columbia. Jimmy Gutierrez is a radio producer, formerly with New Hampshire Public Radio on Outside / In and Second Greatest Show on Earth, and now as a managing editor at LWC Studios.
Music in this episode was produced by Blue Dot Sessions, and Sunfish Moon Light.
This episode was produced by Mendel Skulski and Adam Huggins.
Special thanks to Outside / In, New Hampshire Public Radio, Third Coast International Audio Festival, and Cassy Allan.
A lot of research goes into each episode of Future Ecologies, and we like to cite our sources:
Jevons, William Stanley. (1865) The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines. Macmillan.
Lebergott, Stanley. (1966) “Labor Force and Employment, 1800–1960.” Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, edited by Dorothy S Brady, National Bureau of Economic Research, pp. 117–204.
Schmidt, Conrad. (2010) Alternatives to Growth: Efficiency Shifting. WLP Publishing.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and iNaturalist.
If you like what we do, and you want to help keep it ad-free, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Pay-what-you-can (as little as $1/month) to get access to bonus monthly mini-episodes, stickers, patches, and more. This season, Mendel guiding a tour of mushrooms and the Kingdom Fungi.
Future Ecologies is recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcript
Introduction Voiceover 00:01
You are listening to Season Two of Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 00:08
Good morning, Adam.
Adam Huggins 00:09
Good morning, Mendel. That last episode was pretty snazzy.
Mendel Skulski 00:13
Thanks. It was a lot of work.
Adam Huggins 00:16
I believe it. Speaking of which, this episode I hear is about working a little less.
Mendel Skulski 00:24
Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you something.
Adam Huggins 00:29
Okay.
Mendel Skulski 00:30
Have you ever heard of somebody named Conrad Schmidt?
Adam Huggins 00:33
Conrad Schmitt? I read a book in my early 20s by a fellow named –
Conrad Schmidt 00:39
Conrad Schmidt. And I wrote a book called "Alternative to growth", and another book called "Workers of the World Relax". Once upon a time, when I was younger and prettier I started a political party called the Work Less Party. Never got elected, but it got a lot of votes.
Adam Huggins 00:57
Yeah, the Work... I totally remember the Work Less Party. It was an actual political party in BC and they mounted candidates in local elections. But it's a double entendre, right? Because they also threw a lot of parties.
Mendel Skulski 01:11
[Laughs] They were good parties. You were talking, of course, about the Work Less Party party.
Adam Huggins 01:16
This just speaks to the differences between you and I. [Laughs] I'm still not that much of a party person. And so I loved the ideas that they were talking about, but I never actually made it to any of the parties.
Conrad Schmidt 01:30
They were pretty wild. But that's, that's a bit besides the point. The point is that I spoke to Conrad and I talked to him about what he thinks is maybe the biggest failure of the environmental movement to date.
Adam Huggins 01:49
Well, tell me more.
Conrad Schmidt 01:51
Sustainability is super, super simple if you understand how efficiency works. Now this is pretty serious because the current environmental eco movement has become mostly about making things more efficient, more efficient toasters, fridges, more efficient cars.
[Music]
If we stick to our misunderstanding of how efficiency works, the sustainability movement could be just as catastrophic as the coal lobby. We have to have a broad understanding of what sustainability is all about, then it becomes simple. But the story I'd like to always start with is the connection between ecological sustainability and efficiency because without understanding the relationship between labor efficiency, and sustainability, we come up with a lot of bad ideas. It wasn't that long ago that the primary fuel source for human beings was wood. We used to chop down words and use it for cooking and we use it for early steam machines. And we started transition into coal. Now coal is twice as efficient as wood. You also don't have to chop down as many forests. From an ecological perspective, and the definitions that we're using these days, coal should have been a sustainable solution (of a?) wood but we know it wasn't. Because basically what happened is the efficiency that coal introduced into the system just rebounds into more growth, more steam engines, the Industrial Revolution.
Mendel Skulski 03:31
So this is known as something called Jevons paradox. William Stanley Jevons was an English economist who was troubled by the parabolic consumption of coal at the end of the 19th century. He wrote, "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of a fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." What Jevons saw was that new coal efficient inventions were perversely leading to a greater and greater use of coal. And this idea isn't just about fuel and energy. It's about efficiency in general.
Conrad Schmidt 04:11
All of these things, if it becomes cheaper, you have increased the primary expense in the production of anything really is the labor cost, because it's all really labor. So it's... if something becomes cheaper and more efficient, it probably means that there's less labor going to it.
Mendel Skulski 04:28
So jumps in efficiency, free up labor and capital to be expended on new production and consumption. Against our best intentions, efficient technologies drive us to use more and more resources overall. And history has a habit of repeating itself.
Conrad Schmidt 04:45
Now we're going to jump to the beginning of the 20th century. And petroleum starts to replace coal as the primary fuel source. Petrol is twice as efficient as coal, twice as efficient. And you also have less sulfur and less mercury. So from a ecological sustainability, we're using the definitions that we're using today for sustainability, petrol should have been a sustained... it should be a green miracle (of a coal?), but no it wasn't because again, the efficiency rebounds into increased consumerism. It puts a mandate on the economy to grow. And the reason why this is so important, is a lot of the ideas and sustainability at the moment are about making things more efficient: more efficient fridges, fuel, aeroplanes, more efficient boats, more efficient cars, more efficient everything. But we've be making things more efficient now for 3000 years. And the exact same thing will keep on happening and our ecological footprint will just keep on getting bigger and bigger, because we do not fully grasp the interaction between efficiency, labor efficiency (and?) ecological footprint.
Mendel Skulski 06:03
This gets pretty scary when you start thinking about the implications of possible breakthrough technologies like fusion. It might be clean power in terms of carbon. But it could also provide extremely cheap and effectively limitless energy. Human projects that were previously completely out of reach could suddenly become affordable. And our overall resource use and environmental impact will just keep climbing. But Conrad has an example of how this pattern has been broken in the past, how we can prevent efficiency itself from ricocheting through our economy, transforming into industrial proliferation.
Conrad Schmidt 06:44
But let me put it into a story, because I love stories, because I believe that economics is, is blind unless you look into the past and see how it relates to the future. We're gonna go back just over 100 years, and Henry Ford comes up with this marvelous, fantastic idea, which is the mass produced tractor.
Mendel Skulski 07:03
Ford released his tractor to American farmers in 1918. At this time, a huge portion of the American labor force was directly employed in agriculture, about a third of all workers.
Conrad Schmidt 07:16
Farming was very labor intensive, yet it had a lot of people (?) To till the grounds, to sow the seeds, to carry things... Tractors come along, one farmer climbs on, throws in his seeds, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom... job done. So a lot of people lost their jobs, a lot of farmers went bankrupt, a lot of people that they employed moved to the cities. There was an advantage to make the farms bigger and bigger and produce more with fewer and fewer people.
Mendel Skulski 07:43
And so, according to Conrad, this is partly what contributes to the Great Depression.
Conrad Schmidt 07:48
And the President at the time, Roosevelt, he had to solve this problem. And now remember, this is the depression, people are starving... and he comes up with an idea: make food more expensive. Radical for a depression. The way it worked is he put restrictions on the size of farms. Because the farms had restrictions, you couldn't mechanize as much, so a farmer couldn't have as much machines doing all the work. So he had to employ more people. Yes, the consequence was food was more expensive. But you have more people employed, who can then afford food. The way we can reduce our ecological footprint is if we can start adding more people employed to where we're not producing any new product. Organic farming is a great way that you can have more people employed, you can reduce your ecological footprint by counter balancing the efficiencies elsewhere in the economy in to farming. This is just one way. Again, there are countless ways that we can figure out how we deal with the efficiency from one sector of the economy, move it so that we got people employed and without the income.
Adam Huggins 09:01
Yeah, this is something I've actually thought a lot about as somebody who grows food on a small scale and thinks a lot about efficiencies. And also you know, the, the weakness and the flimsiness of that term efficiency, right? It's the same, it's got the same sort of feeling as GDP as a measure of goodness, it leaves out so many other values that might be ultimately more important. For example, soil health or working conditions, or, again, like people being involved in the production and consumption of their food in their own places. And if efficiency dictates that will never happen [laughs] if we're just talking strict economic efficiency. So I see that as yeah, a really interesting solution. What, what else is Conrad proposing?
Conrad Schmidt 09:41
The next way, which is also critical, is reduce the workweek. Reducing the workweek has two effects. Now, you probably want to reduce it to a three-day workweek. The idea is instead of taking the efficiencies in the economy, I'm consuming more so that we keep people employed and grow the economy, is how about sharing the work where we all have a, a decent living, and we're not creating this extra consumerism.
Mendel Skulski 10:12
So... part of achieving this greater social goal, that is equity and affordability and health and creative actualization...
Adam Huggins 10:22
And less consumption, right?
Mendel Skulski 10:24
Exactly. That, in addition to making sure that everybody has jobs, that we all work them a little less...
Adam Huggins 10:32
Or a lot less.
Mendel Skulski 10:33
Or a lot less. So there are all these big kinds of macro economic things, these policy solutions that are maybe possible and maybe advisable. But on the flip side, there are all these things that we can do as individuals to improve our lives. And so I was thinking that, in that spirit, we should work a little less.
Adam Huggins 10:56
What do you mean?
Mendel Skulski 10:57
Well, there's another podcast that I really like. It's called "Outside/in" from New Hampshire Public Radio. And they've already talked about working less. So I thought, let's just plug them in right here. And we could take a little break. Sounds good?
Adam Huggins 11:12
Awesome. Do you want to go outside?
Mendel Skulski 11:13
Yeah, of course.
11:18
[Sound of chairs pushing back, steps out of the room]
Adam Huggins 11:19
Such a good idea.
Mendel Skulski 11:27
[By phone] Hey, this is Mendel literally phoning it in from the great outdoors. Stick around after the episode because I will be catching up with producer Jimmy Gutierrez. For now... This is "32 Is the New 40" from Outside/In.
[11:43 – 39:09 transcription by OUTSIDE / IN]
[Sound of Morning Edition playing over a car stereo]
Jimmy Gutierrez: Hey, there I am. I forgot to plug in my headphones….
Jimmy Gutierrez: Hey World, this is producer Jimmy Gutierrez. And I recorded myself one early, early morning a few weeks ago on a hunch.
Jimmy Gutierrez: So I’m here early in the morning, and I want to check out 2 Pillsbury Street, and I wanna see how much energy were wasting... and I want to see how Sam Evans-Brown feels about it.
Jimmy Gutierrez: How would you describe the office building at 2 Pillsbury Street?
Sam Evans-Brown: It is a new, nondescript rectangle. It’s just a chunk of brick. I mean it’s not like Soviet Russia, but it’s not interesting.
Jimmy Gutierrez: So what do you think goes on in there when nobody’s around?
Sam Evans-Brown: I can only imagine. Parties. Dance Parties?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Dance parties!
Jimmy Gutierrez: Standing in the parking lot, from the 6th floor it looks like the entire newsroom, all the lights are still on…which is cool because that means they’ve just been chilling like that for the entire night.
Jimmy Gutierrez: So I went inside our nondescript building and headed up
Jimmy Gutierrez: Sam isn’t gonna like this either but I’m taking the elevator up. Sorry Sam, no stairs this morning.
Jimmy Gutierrez: And right as I stepped off the elevator into the lobby…I was blinded
Jimmy Gutierrez: The entire lobby is like extremely well-lit, like burning my retinas.
Sam Evans-Brown: I don’t even think you can turn those off…they just don’t have a switch…just on forever.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Another thing that really stood out… was how GD warm it was. Gosh Dern!
Sam Evans-Brown: Gull dern warm.
Jimmy Gutierrez: It’s warmer than my apartment. I could lay down on the floor without a blanket and knock out.
Sam Evans-Brown: Like a building this size, you could probably turn the heat off and it would probably only drop a couple degrees.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Is that right?
Sam Evans-Brown: Yeah! There’s like a ton of stored, thermal energy in a building this big.
Jimmy Gutierrez: So, I’m guessing that’ you’ve thought about this stuff before.
Sam Evans-Brown: I think about this stuff constantly.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Ok, perfect. So you’re a positive, solutions-based guy, so what can we do?
Sam Evans-Brown: Just get a [expletive deleted] digital thermostat! Jesus Christ, it’s not that hard! This ain’t rocket science people!
[Music swells]
Jimmy Gutierrez: So it’s fair to say that our office wastes like a lot of energy, even when we’re not there.
Sam Evans-Brown: Oh totally,
Jimmy Gutierrez: We could do things differently, right. Like people do at home. Turning off the lights when you leave a room or turning the heat way down. Things that save money and emissions...
Sam Evans-Brown: Yeah, that’s definitely true… energy use is lower on weekends because of all the offices and factories and stuff that are closed, and that’s even with building managers like the ones at NHPR making expensive, wasteful energy decisions, like you observed. So that’s totally something we could do.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Ok. Ok. Ok. I want to take you like one step further than that. So what if — now follow me Sam — what if, we just didn’t come to work on Fridays?
Sam Evans-Brown: Oh. Yeah, that would save some energy.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Right.
Sam Evans-Brown: But this just feels like it’s about you wanting three day weekends?
Jimmy Gutierrez: What? That’s a part of it. But I’m here to make a pitch. After some really basic-ass Google searches, I’m prepared to say that the 32-hour work week can save the world.
Sam Evans-Brown: You are going to have to do some work to convince me of this one, Jimmy Gutierrez.
[O/I theme]
Sam Evans-Brown: Today on Outside/In Jimmy has a proposal — probably one that’s not going anywhere —
Jimmy Gutierrez: Don’t you undermine me before we even get this thing started.
Sam Evans-Brown: … about what to do with all of the wealth and productivity modern technology has brought to us. Maybe instead of buying more stuff, maybe what we should be buying for ourselves is some time off.
[O/I theme out]
Andrew Barnes: Just give me two ticks I’ll find the right ones
Jimmy Gutierrez: This is Andrew Barnes...looking for his headphones. He’s the founder and managing director of Perpetual Guardian – New Zealand’s largest corporate trust company. They handle wills, estate planning, rich folk stuff.
Sam Evans-Brown: I have a will.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Do you really?
Sam Evans-Brown: Yeah.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Damn, I ain’t got nothing.
Jimmy Gutierrez: He said he first started rethinking the traditional workweek after reading an article in The Economist...
Andrew Barnes: … which was talking about two surveys. One had been done one had been done in Britain and one had been done in Canada. And the British one said that people were productive 2.5 hours a day, and the Canadian one said 1.5 hours a day.
Jimmy Gutierrez: That’s within a full 8 hour day, and an-hour-and-a-half of it spent getting work done. During World War one, British munitions factories were supplying shells for the Western Front. Workers worked seven days a week, sometimes in excess of 80 hours. Researchers found out that not only were workers more productive overall with a day off, but their quality of work improved.
Andrew Barnes: We have a 19th century work construct and because it’s there we automatically assume it’s the solution.
Jimmy Gutierrez: And so, Barnes thought, “Hey, this has gotta be the case with my workers here too right.” He emailed HR saying he wanted to test run a 32-hour workweek. Thinking he went mad, his HR she deleted the email. The thinking was that there’s no way workers would just give up a day of work and pay.
Andrew Barnes: Actually it’s paid for five, work for four. So she was a bit stunned.
Jimmy Gutierrez: The firm ran an incentive-based, test run with the shot that if productivity stayed the same or improved, pay-for-five-days work-for-four might become permanent. And you know this is part of my pitch for a reason. Workers became more productive, marginally overall, producing just as much in four days as they had in five. And with that extra time off, they spent more time with family and friends. They gardened. They exercised. And that’s not all.
Andrew Barnes: The really interesting thing about this starts to become about the broader social impact…
Jimmy Gutierrez: …specifically environmental impacts. What happens when you take 20% of cars off the road during rush hour? Or if those big, non-discrete office buildings – like ours at 2 Pillsbury Street – can power off for an extra day?
Andrew Barnes: It’s thinking about a different solution to how we deal with things like environmental problems. Stop just doing what we’re doing and try something radically different and if you do that there is going to be a material beneficial impact.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Welcome to your three day weekend.
Sam Evans-Brown: Alright...
[Music swells]
Jimmy Gutierrez: So, so what do you think of some of those findings?
Sam Evans-Brown: I’m intrigued. I will confess I’m intrigued. I like the idea — because sometimes not our best work selves — and I like the idea of working less time and that would just force me to be a better work self. But I do have to say it feels like there are only certain fields that this, sort of, win-win can apply to.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I mean, for now, that feels true. But it is easiest to start with project-based work — like creative work — anything where getting momentarily distracted or off-track translates into getting less done.
Sam Evans-Brown: Which is like… that 100 percent describes us.
Jimmy Gutierrez: We are definitely prime candidates for this.
Sam Evans-Brown: Slack. Never check Slack.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Oh, my goodness. Which is what makes this a pitch. I think this should do here at NHPR and specifically us at Outside/In.
Sam Evans-Brown: Oh.
Jimmy Gutierrez: And Sam, I want that extra day, I want to know if I would be less stressed by the overall state of the world, if I’d have more energy, and I want to prove we’d get just as much done.
Sam Evans-Brown: So what’s your next step here?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Well… I gotta convince the boss.
Sam Evans-Brown: She is… she is a tyrant. She is known for her tyranny.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Don’t mess with Erika.
[Dramatic Western Music]
Jimmy Gutierrez: Could we just start with you introing youself and what you do here?
Erika Janik: I’m Erika Janik and I’m the Executive Producer aka the boss.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Yes. You are my boss.
Erika Janik: I am your boss, and Sam’s boss.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Could you fire both of us?
Erika Janik: I think so.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Wow that’s pretty tight.
Erika Janik: Be careful.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Okay, as you know, I’m working on this story about the possible benefits, environmental and otherwise of working a 32-hour work week.
Erika Janik: This is a thing I’m aware of.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Now, we’re going to make this real. I want to make this a personal experiment. So, can I convince *YOU* that *I* should be working four days a week
Erika Janik: Jimmy, I’m still not even sure what makes this is an Outside/In Episode.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Can you believe that I was hoping you’d ask that?
Jimmy Gutierrez: If you had to guess, how many hours do you think you work a week?
Juliet Schor: I’m not gonna say in public…not because it’s too high. Let’s just put it this way, I practice what I preach
Jimmy Gutierrez: This is my personal hero, Juliet Schor – she’s an economist and sociologist at Boston College. Back in 1992 she wrote a book called the Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, and she thinks that it’s time to rethink the way we work.
Juliet Schor: If you look historically, we’ve had massive automation and mechanization first in agriculture and then industry, manufacturing and through most of the 20th century, or a good part in most places, that was met with shorter hours of work. In the U.S. in the last 40-50 years not so much.
Jimmy Gutierrez: So the length of the work week has declined steadily for decades in most of the developed world, but the U.S. is the clear outlier, here. So we’re still working the same number of hours per year as we were in 1980, even though in Japan, Australia, the UK, France and Germany have all seen shorter work weeks. And Erika, I’m here to tell you it’s not just because of our bosses.
Juliet Schor: Yeah, but it’s also due to the pressures from the spending side. And so if we ask what are the challenges to this the idea that we have to keep raising our standard of living higher and higher and higher
Erika Janik: I see… this is how we sneak this onto the environmental show, right?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Exactly. So far, despite our best efforts to get renewables out there, carbon emissions still rose in the US last year, and the big driver was manufacturing… economic growth.
Juliet Schor: Absolutely. Technology alone is not gonna do it and unless we decelerate the economy, and there’s more to it than that, one really important thing about climate emissions is there very skewed towards the top so the people at the top have much bigger carbon footprints.
Jimmy Gutierrez: That’s a rock-solid correlation: as incomes increase, so does consumption, and because we haven’t decarbonized the economy, emissions increase.
Erika Janik: So her argument is that one way to reduce emissions is rather than buying more stuff, bigger houses, we should buy some leisure time instead.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Yeah, and this isn’t just about buying less stuff, it’s also about the kinds of stuff people buy when they have more time, too.
Juliet Schor: Individual households respond to changes in what we might call their time budget. So how much time do you have available and how does that affect the way you live?
Jimmy Gutierrez: So let’s say I work a 60-hour week, that means that instead of walking or taking public transit to work, I’m gonna drive to work. And instead of… when I go home instead of having energy to cook for myself, I’m just gonna hit fast food.
Juliet Schor: One of the things that happens is we reduce the less productive time in our day when we work fewer days. So there’s the higher per hour productivity, there’s the other thing that people in the four-day workweek value their jobs more, they’re happier, they’re less likely to quit.
Erika Janik: You know the thing that it makes me think about is… you know, Jimmy that my husband quit his job so that I could take this job. He works in a really high stress environment, so he’d be working…
Jimmy Gutierrez: He’s a doctor, right?
Erika Janik: He’s a doctor. So he’d been working like 70 — 80 hour weeks.
Jimmy Gutierrez: No
Erika Janik: And that was just our life. And he was getting really burned out. And so, he quit his job and we moved here and I took this job and just listening to her talk, something that it made me realized is you know my husband hasn’t been working in the last few months and when people ask me what he does I feel embarassed to tell them that he’s not working. Even though his value is obviously a lot more than just working a million hours a week and yet I still feel this reflexive need to justify it to people. But actually having him have so much time has made our life so much better. It’s not like thing were really bad or anything at all, but I didn’t even realize what a toll it was taking on us until he wasn’t working 80 hours a week.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Well so it seems like I don’t even really have to hard sell you on this becoming a story about the personal benefits of this — of the 32-hour life-style.
Erika Janik: I am concerned about meeting deadlines. A shortened work week is hard. We’ve got a lot of projects within our unit. But I think you’ve got a pretty compelling case. Alright Jimmy, I think I’m sold.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Hey! Okay okay, now what if. What if, I was thinking bigger. What if we were able to get the whole team down to 32-hours, and we still managed to put out Outside/In and all our other shows?
Erika Janik: That sounds amazing… but also feels… I can’t actually — I don’t have that power. I can’t actually make that decision.
Jimmy Gutierrez: You can! You’re the boss, you can make this —
Erika Janik: I am the boss, but...
Jimmy Gutierrez: You can make this happen right now!
Erika Janik: My boss powers have a ceiling! I think you’ve got to convince our CEO.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I’ve got to go to the corner office?
Erika Janik: And what if he actually wants you to take a pay cut? Have you talked to your wife about this?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Allie? I have not talked to her no.
Erika Janik: Maybe you should talk to Allie
Jimmy Gutierrez: Before giving a lot of money back.
Erika Janik: Yeah just to double-check.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Yeah that seems responsible. I don’t want her to hear this and be mad at me. She’s already got enough reasons.
[Music Swells]
Jimmy Gutierrez: I guess we’ll hear from Allie after a break.
[Break]
JG: So I got good news, our pizza’s cooked. How are you feeling??
AG: Exhausted.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Ok, we’re back, and this is my lovely wife Allie
Jimmy Gutierrez: I just want to fantasize for a little bit. What do you think I would do if I were working a four day work week and what effects do you think it would have on me?
Allie Gutierrez: You would sleep in longer, because I get you up super-early. And you would take quiet time in the morning to make tea, possibly read, catch up on the news… and then you’d just coast into creative time. A little bit of exercise… I am dreaming right now.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I mean you’ve been working. You went into work at 8 and it’s now, past 8 at night and you’re still working, and Juanito is biting my leg. Juanito is our cat. Hi buddy, do you want to come up here? So I’m going to talk with Mark… And we’re gonna really talk about making this 32 happen. When I talk with him… Ideally it would just be… I wouldn’t have to sacrifice any salary. I wouldn’t make any concessions in that way… but you know I’m a public radio producer… I’m doing well, but I’m not making bank… so if I had to give up anywhere from 5, 10… possibly up to 20 percent of my salary is that still something that you think would be a good idea.
Allie Gutierrez: Obviously with loans and saving up for a house… like it’d be nice to not let go of that. But for the sake of how I know that you work… and your mind and your health… I see that being worth it, to me. Because you like transform when you have space and I would much rather find ways to make up what we’d be losing in that, financially, if it meant that you were able to have that space than to say no.
[Music Swells]
Allie Gutierrez: I know you’d be so much more balanced, you’d be so much more happy. So I have to say that I would give up that 20 percent…
Jimmy Gutierrez: Well I just have to go and convince Mark now. So I guess wish me luck.
Allie Gutierrez: Good luck.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Ok, let’s get you another glass of wine. Are you cool with that can we get you another glass
Allie Gutierrez: Yeah, i’d really like that.
[Music Swells]
Jimmy Gutierrez: OK it’s 1:30 on a Wednesday this is kind of like the culmination of this episode is me going and talking to our CEO and pitching him about how he would feel if he would buy into this idea… you know save the climate.
[Sound of a knock on the Door and walking into Mark Kaplan’s office]
[Music Swells]
Jimmy Gutierrez: check check check… okay we’re back.
Sam Evans-Brown: Ok so, did you talk to Mark yet… are we all going to work a 32-hour week?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Yeah, so… I did get him into a studio
Mark Kaplan: Hi Jimmy, I’m Mark Kaplan the interim-Executive Director at New Hampshire Public Radio.
Jimmy Gutierrez: And I gave him the hard sell… broke out my strongest arguments.
Jimmy Gutierrez: [fades up] ...it’s called the Productivity Week Policy, have you heard of this?
Mark Kaplan: I have not.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Ok, this is similar to what you’ve probably heard of in other countries with reduced working hours , which I’m sure you’re familiar with, this is like that except you get paid for five days while working four.
Mark Kaplan: I love it! Can you get me down from 7 down to 5?
Jimmy Gutierrez: We can work on that. [fades down]
Jimmy Gutierrez: I laid out everything — the potential to save money and emissions on energy use in the building, lower emission lifestyles, the fact that productivity went up and all the work still got done — and I had a couple more cards to play too, things that the CEO of Perpetual Guardian, Andrew Barnes told me. Like the fact we would solve a lot of our recruiting issues...
Andrew Barnes: I mean let me tell you that trust companies are the dullest business you’ve ever come across but we have people queuing to join us because we are seen to be innovative. Now all of these things add to the bottom line.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Barnes also said this policy had a huge positive impact of the folks that had been around for a long time as far as their engagement and overall morale.
Andrew Barnes: One of my guys, head of IT, he was able to pick up his daughter after school for the first time ever. Now, you’re not gonna get rid of that guy in a hurry because for him he’s got something that money can’t buy.
Mark Kaplan: I think those are very good points. I think there’s a lot of possibility to create environments that people feel more comfortable working in that can provide a better work-life balance. I don’t think accomplishing these things is easy, necessarily. ? So there are hurdles that end up being there that are beyond the internal operation of the organization itself.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Especially if you’re a media organization.
Mark Kaplan: Right.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I think it is organizations… it is professions like ours that need to re-think work and then maybe take a step back and look at the kind of work we are producing and seeing if maybe we are producing better work.
Mark Kaplan: By the way, I have three kids, my son who lives out in California works for a company that’s on a 4-day workweek.
Jimmy Gutierrez: And how’s he feel about that?
Mark Kaplan: It works well for him. He and his wife have a three and a half year old and it gives him a little time for family during the week and there are a lot of good reasons to do it.
Sam Evans-Brown: wooooooah so he’s seen this up close… So what did he say?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Well, his son actually works four ten-hour days. So it’s a little different. But at the same time, he does know about having that third day off. But, I mean if we’re being real, I think we all know what would happen, talking with this guy.
Sam Evans-Brown: He didn’t want to go there.
Jimmy Gutierrez: He didn’t want to go there.
Mark Kaplan: I think it’s well worth considering further...I’m not ready to commit to it right now...
Sam Evans-Brown: yeah. Well, I have to say… I understand part of the pushback here.
Jimmy Gutierrez: The CEO pushback? Where’s the class solidarity? What is this?
Sam Evans-Brown: So should I just — we’re gonna have it out here?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Yeah, let’s have it out, let’s have it out.
Sam Evans-Brown: Ok well the first is: I will say that you know there have been… historically there have been a lot of environmentalists who have argued that countries that don’t have a lot of wealth can’t have more wealth because that would worsen climate change, and I’m really… hesitant…
Jimmy Gutierrez: … to go there.. Because who is saying that?
Sam Evans-Brown: Right, the rich countries might be able to solve that. Because maybe we can do both: solve poverty and climate change.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Or maybe we can do neither
Which is maybe more likely, but but then ok, yeah this might be a win-win for us because we stop checking twitter too much, but what about jobs where it’s already all hustle. Servers at restaurants TSA agents…jobs like that.
Jimmy Gutierrez: I do think that for us this would be a win-win. But you’re right that for some folks, this isn’t viable… yet. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn't be. And this all brings me to Charlotte Graham McLay. She’s a journalist who profiled Perpetual Guardian when they were still in their trial-run. And here she is really breaking down work culture.
Charlotte Graham McLay: I think that the productivity thing can only go so far in the same way that you can say that it’s better economically in our society to not be racist and that might slightly win some people over but at the end of the day you have to honestly believe that being racist is bad to end racism, you know what I mean. So you can say that your workers will be much more productive even if you’re a mean old capitalist that might appeal to you a little bit, but surely an employer has to believe that the culture of work is fundamentally broken and something has to be cracked inside it for us to rethink what work should be.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Which brings us back to what our CEO told me?
Sam Evans-Brown: Oh. Oh so he gave some ground?
Jimmy Gutierrez: He gave some ground. After our meeting, I talked with Mark off mic, basically so I didn’t get fired. But he wasn’t having any of the 32-hour work week stuff. He basically just humored me, but I was — I’m not playing with this so I kept pushing. He ended up saying I could work 32 if I gave up a fifth of my salary, and that the cost of my benefits would go up as well substantially.
Sam Evans-Brown: Wow. Are you gonna do it? I mean, we’ve come a ways from “I’m going to have three day weekends for the same pay and just prove I can do the same amount of work.”
Jimmy Gutierrez: yeah, I mean… I value my life more than — my life away from work more than I value my work life. And I think that even by doing that my work improves. So yeah, Jimmy’s going forward with 4-days-twenty-percent-less-pay.
Sam Evans-Brown: How does Juanito feel about this?
Jimmy Gutierrez: I think he’s gonna love it. That’s a lot more play-time for him.
Sam Evans-Brown: You know… if when I got hired, there’d been two offers on the table and one was the same except twenty percent less pay and four days a week… I’m actually not sure what I would have picked. Yeah… Good luck Jimmy.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Thanks man.
Sam Evans-Brown: Doesn’t this still get to this question though, of where does this stop? Like you know… how much do we actually have to be at our desks to get our jobs done?
Jimmy Gutierrez: Funny you should say that, Samuel. I just read this report from the New Economics Foundation… and they’re making the case that the ideal work week is actually 21 hours!
Sam Evans-Brown: [laughs] THIS IS WHAT I WAS SAYING!!!!
[End of OUTSIDE / IN]
Mendel Skulski 39:09
Ayy... Future Ecologies is back. If you like that piece, you should check out the rest of Outside/In. They do amazing work.
Adam Huggins 39:16
That was great! So I'm curious... I, I understand that at the Third Coast Conference this fall, you actually got to meet up with Jimmy and follow up with him on what happened.
Mendel Skulski 39:29
Hey, Jimmy.
Jimmy Gutierrez 39:30
Hey, how are you doing?
Mendel Skulski 39:31
I'm good.
Jimmy Gutierrez 39:31
This is amazing from like... when you emailed me, and I was like... Oh, Mendel, and it's like, amazing that we're in real life having conversation about this. So yeah.
Mendel Skulski 39:40
Now we're here.
Jimmy Gutierrez 39:41
Yeah
Mendel Skulski 39:41
Yeah.
[Music]
What Jimmy told me was after he started this experiment, it took a number of weeks to organize the processes of handing off some of the things that he was doing or figuring out how the team was going to handle him not being there one day a week, and just getting into the rhythm of what this is new pattern of work and life really looked like. And by the time that he really got into the swing of it, he did see all these amazing improvements in his life. He used this time to just relax, or to be creative and do his own thing. And...
Jimmy Gutierrez 40:12
It allowed me to really step back from my work, and let me really critique my work, let me listen to people that I really enjoyed, and then fall down rabbit holes of new makers, which I drew a lot of inspiration on in my work since then. I really became more healthy, I mean, I was running more, I was breathing better, I had time to cook for myself.
Mendel Skulski 40:34
He just felt overall, physically, mentally, emotionally much better. But then...
Jimmy Gutierrez 40:39
For the first three months, that I was, like, experimenting with that and going through that everything was kind of amazing. I was... as a two-income household, so I was very, like privileged, I didn't have to worry or stress out too much about bills, which can't be said for everyone. There were a lot of like life changes that I, that I went through in that time. Which, coincidentally, or ironically, maybe... I also got divorced during that time.
Mendel Skulski 41:06
Oh!
Jimmy Gutierrez 41:06
And maybe, maybe she thought I had too much time. But no, I think it allowed us also, like, the space to more... honestly examine our relationship, and the ways that it was and wasn't working. So I do credit the, the time that we had to be more honestly reflective (of?) each other. And so since we had parted, and now I was providing for myself, I had to go back up to 40 hours because I couldn't sacrifice that 20%, I needed to, I needed to pay bills.
Mendel Skulski 41:32
So the experiment lasted about three months. And now he's back to work. However...
Jimmy Gutierrez 41:38
Even that three months, just kind of experimental time, I think really helped me, a lot of those principles of like, healthy lifestyle, being more deliberate with my work. All of those things have kind of like translated over, even though it was just that little bit, that I get to like live the good life. I still am feeling the effects I think every day. Everyone should have that, everyone should be able to work 32 hours.
Mendel Skulski 41:59
Or, produce an indie podcast, and, work as much or as little as you choose. After all, as we relentlessly pursue newer, more efficient technologies, finding ways to work less isn't just an obvious benefit to your health. It might be the best way to keep our collective ecological footprint in check, and... break our habit of ever increasing production and consumption. But, of course, the decision to do less work has to be weighed against your own personal circumstances, what you need, what you can afford. A change in his material realities brought Jimmy back into the status quo of a five-day workweek.
Adam Huggins 42:39
Yeah, it's not easy to do this in this society.
Mendel Skulski 42:43
It's true. But Conrad, on the other hand, could cut enough expenses that he could reduce his workweek indefinitely.
[Music]
Conrad Schmidt 42:50
I didn't have the same experiences as Jimmy. I used to be a software developer, and I was looking at my expenses, and I had the car that I used to drive to work. And that car was costing me, once I added up the insurance, the fuel, the fact that it was broken most of the time needed to be fixed.... it was costing me around 25% of my income. I figured, you know what, I'm not working a whole day, every week, just to pay for this friggin car. If I change to a bicycle, I would not need to work as hard. And I went to my boss and I said, "(You know?), I don't really do that much here on a Friday. How about I don't show up and you don't pay me for a Friday." It lasted less than 30 seconds for him to agree, that was quick. "I want to talk about something." "What is it?" "How about I don't show up here on Friday and you don't pay me?"... "Okay." And that's exactly what I did. I stopped arriving on a Friday, and I started riding my bike so that my income stayed the same. But because I had more time, I could get involved in communities, I could get involved in organizing actions, I could come up with ideas, I could write books, I could make films, I could start a political party. And the process of changing to a reduced workweek changed my life.
Adam Huggins 44:17
I just want to note for the record, that I took today off from work to be here.
Mendel Skulski 44:22
Haha, thank you. [Laughs] This doesn't count as work does it? [Laughs continue] This is a lot of work. Hm... Thanks for listening. This episode of Future Ecologies was produced by me, Mendel Skulski.
Adam Huggins 44:37
And me, Adam Huggins.
Mendel Skulski 44:39
Conrad Schmidt is the author of "Alternatives to Growth: Efficiency Shifting", and "Workers of the World Relax". Jimmy Gutierrez is a radio producer with New Hampshire Public Radio. He helps make Outside/In and the Second Greatest Show On Earth.
Thanks to Outside/In for lending us their episode. They are a huge inspiration for what we're up to, so, go subscribe to them right now. Their episode "32 Is the New 40" was produced by Jimmy Gutierrez, Sam Evans-Brown, and Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Ben Henry and Daniela Allee. It features music by Blue Dot Sessions, and a theme song by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Our theme song is by Sunfish Moon Light. And we also use music by Blue Dot Sessions on this one.
Adam Huggins 45:27
Just in case you were wondering why this episode has that warm, cozy public radio feel. You can find all of their music at sessions.blue. As the human being behind the entity known as Sunfish Moon Light, I just like to thank Blue Dot Sessions and all the other musicians like them, who provide music and help audio producers all around the world work a little bit less.
Mendel Skulski 45:50
Special thanks to the Third Coast Conference for being such a magical welcoming gathering of radio people. And to Cassy Allen for putting up with me editing this piece over the holidays, unironically. As always, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and iNaturalist. The handle is always “futureecologies”
Adam Huggins 46:12
This episode was produced on the unseeded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
Mendel Skulski 46:20
If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like it a lot, let us know why. Leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. If you'd like to support the show and get access to bonus, monthly mini episodes and more, join us over patreon.com/futureecologies. We'll be back next month. We're working hard, but, not too much.
Transcription by https://otter.ai and edited by Phanh Nguyen