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To find out more about Creative Commons licences go to www.creativecommons.org Demos Quarterly Issue 5/1995 Demos Quarterly is published by Demos 9 Bridewell Place London EC4V 6AP Tel: 0171 353 4479 Fax: 0171 353 4481 email: [email protected] © Demos 1995 All rights reserved Editorial Team: Geoff Mulgan Helen Wilkinson Martin Bartle Ivan Briscoe Joanna Wade Zina Saro-Wiwa Printed in Great Britain by EG Bond Ltd Design and art direction: Esterson Lackersteen Special thanks to: Simon Esterson Andrzej Krause This special issue of the Quarterly forms part of the work of Demos’ 7 Million Project Contents FEATURES Well-being and Time 1 Geoff Mulgan and Helen Wilkinson Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure 35 Robert Lane Finding time to live 45 Ray Pahl The end of work as we know it 53 Jeremy Rifkin The all-consuming work ethic 65 Gary Cross TRENDS Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s 71 Bob Tyrrell Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work 81 Nick Winkfield Demos 5/1995 The New American Dream? 95 Juliet Schor The post-modern work ethic 99 David Cannon Time in the global village 107 Carol Samms POLICIES An intimate future of time 113 Theodore Zeldin Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey 121 Ivan Briscoe Lean time and global competition 135 Oliver Sparrow Time Keynesianism 139 Jonathan Gershuny Signs of the Times 147 Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times 149 Patricia Hewitt The 24-hour city 157 Franco Bianchini Time Facts 163 Books on Time 177 REGULARS Project Working Papers 181 Media Watch 185 vi Demos The time squeeze Time is our most precious – and most wasted – resource.After decades when politics focused primarily on income, attention is turning to how we spend our time. In part this reflects prosperity. Richer societies tend to be more concerned about how to live, as well as having enough to live. But this renewed concern also reflects the tensions that are accom- panying a profound transition in the ways in which time is organised. This shift, from an industrial to a post-industrial order of time, is affecting almost every area of life: offices and supermarkets, schools and television, parenting and pensions. Its promise is to increase indi- vidual autonomy, cut waste, and foster more fulfilling time uses. But few are yet reaping these benefits. Right across society there is a sense of time being squeezed. And policy has lagged behind, as it always does, with a lengthening series of failures: the growing imbalance between overwork for some and zero work for others; poor manage- ment of public spaces and transport which has forced up the times taken to get to work, to care for (and transport) children, even to shop; and severe stress for millions – particularly women – trying to juggle competing responsibilities. In this special issue we aim to move the argument forward. Drawing on history, economics, psychology and culture we set out a new approach to time, and propose three areas of change: Autonomy: we recommend a series of policies to support greater autonomy and flexibility around work, leisure Demos vii Demos 5/1995 and leave, together with policies for the re-engineering of public institutions and time patterns. Reliability: alongside a more fluid and flexible environment we argue that people need things to rely on.We make the case for policies to sustain sabbaticals, parental leave, and stronger commitments both from employers and what we call deployers. Quality: finally we argue that it is no longer enough simply to increase free time.We need policies to encourage better use of time, in work and in leisure, through the rethinking of schooling and adolescence, the auditing of work environments and the cultivation of fulfilling leisure. For millennia people have used their time simply to survive. Today, with productivity 25 times what it was 150 years ago, and with lifetime working hours 42 per cent less than a century ago, we can enjoy a far richer range of opportunities for living. What is at issue is whether government and politics will help or hinder. viii Demos Well-being and time Geoff Mulgan* and Helen Wilkinson† Without work, all life goes rottesn. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. (A. Camus) Introduction Time isn’t what it used to be. The old ways of managing time are fast disappearing. Fixed jobs, shared rhythms of shopping and leisure, marriage, work and retirement; all are on the way out. Three interrelated drivers of change have made them redundant. The first is technology which is transforming the nature of economic life with vastly greater flows of information and much tighter control over time. The second is the continuing rise of a culture of choice and freedom which, among other things, has encouraged women to take control over their own lives and reject the old domestic division of labour. The third is economics: the simple fact that an hour’s work is now worth 25 times what it was in 1830 brings with it the sense of time as a much more valuable resource to be managed, planned, and used more intensively. *Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos. †Helen Wilkinson is Project Director of the Seven Million Project. Demos 1 Demos 5/1995 The effects of these forces for change can be discerned in the charac- teristic language of the 1990s: just-in-time production and multitasking computers, 24 hour shopping and video-on-demand, time-share holi- days and annualized working hours, late-night shopping and on-line learning, channel surfing and asynchronous e-mail. Together they offer an extraordinary promise of much greater per- sonal control over time. But, as always in history, things are not so clear-cut. While one foot steps forward another steps back. So, although lifetime working hours have fallen by 42 per cent over the last century1, a large majority are suffering from stress because of the rising intensity of work and leisure (44 per cent of the workforce now report coming home exhausted). Ironically, both the overworked and the unemployed share the sense that their position is involuntary. Most adults have a sense of time being squeezed as they spend longer driving children to school, getting to the shops, even filling out tax returns, and as the world around them changes with bewildering speed (90 per cent of new goods are no longer on the market two years after their launch). But even though many people are desperate to find more balance between work and other parts of life, their families and their enthusi- asms, when people do get more ‘free’ time, few know how to cope.