Who moved my leisure society?
Filed in archive CSR on November 26, 2006
Some 'off day' (is it ever an off day around here?) thoughts from Notes from Sweden ...
Back when I was a kid in the early 60's I remember very well a debate in society over what was called "automation". The issue was what would happen to jobs if factories continued to automate, to add machines to take over from physical labor. These were, in fact, the first factory robots.
What I also remember very well is the promise made by those in power, the politicians, the business leaders, the pundits in the media, in other words the people selling the concept of Automation, that it meant more leisure for working people. The machines would do more of the work, and we (my parents' generation and those of us on the way) would work less.
It was a pledge by the power-brokers, the Leisure Society was coming.
Forty years later, and where is it? Almost all of us still work 8 hour days. Almost all of us still retire at 65. Here in Europe we have 4 or 5 weeks of vacation a year, which is probably a bit more than people had 40 years ago. Americans still have much less vacation than we do.
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