TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY

It’s coming…the first initiative of the Simplicity Forum…

Help us plan TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY---October 24, 2003.

Are you, or your friends or relatives, working more now but enjoying it less? If so, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans are overworked, over-scheduled and just plain stressed out. We’re putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000. In fact, we’re working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country! Mandatory overtime is at its highest levels ever, in spite of a recession. On average, we work 350 hours—nearly nine full weeks—longer than our peers in Western Europe do. Twenty six percent of us got no vacations at all last year while the Europeans AVERAGED six weeks!

Overwork threatens our health, reducing time for exercise and encouraging consumption of calorie-laden fast foods. Job stress costs our economy $200 billion a year.

Overwork threatens families and relationships as we find less time for each other.

It weakens communities as we have less time to volunteer.

It reduces employment as fewer people are hired, then required to work longer hours.

It leaves many of us with little time to vote, much less be informed, active citizens.

It reduces our security, contributing to accidents large and small.

It even leads to growing neglect and abuse of pets.

And finally, it contributes to the destruction of our environment—encouraging use of convenience and throw-away items and leaving us without time even to recycle. Every environmentalist knows that on a finite planet, unlimited economic growth is unsustainable—already we’d need four planets if the whole world duplicated our lifestyle. We need to offer free time rather than more money and stuff as the reward for increasing productivity.

We’re not against work; in fact, we understand that useful and creative work is essential to happiness. But American life has gotten way out of balance. Producing and consuming more has become the single-minded obsession of the American economy, while other values—strong families and communities, good health and a clean environment, active citizenship and social justice, time for nature and the soul—are increasingly neglected. By contrast, the Europeans demand a balanced life. Wouldn’t you like one too?

If your answer is YES, then TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is for you. On Friday, October 24, 2003, thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans will just say NO to the overwork, over-scheduling and overstress that threaten to overwhelm our lives. They’ll take the day or part of it off work, and join in hundreds of activities to initiate a much-needed national conversation about work/life balance and how we can reclaim it.

The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, making the point that we Americans now work nine weeks more than Western Europeans do.

In major American cities and many smaller communities, colleges and universities will sponsor teach-ins about overwork and work/life balance. We’ll talk about more than worktime—fear of leisure, frenetic schedules, hurried children, simplifying our lives, reducing the “hidden work” (like junk mail and telemarketing calls) we’re subjected to, for example. Similar events will occur in places of worship, union halls, businesses and non-profits. Where weather permits, outdoor TAKE BACK YOUR TIME fairs will feature speakers, entertainment and ways to get involved in reclaiming your life.

Our model is the first Earth Day, which brought a new environmental awareness to America, leading within two years to the passage of the most significant ecological legislation in our history—the EPA, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air and Water Acts, etc.

The movement for a more balanced American life will begin on TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY, but it won’t stop there. In every community, Take Back Your Time organizations will develop campaigns to win personal, workplace and political solutions to time famine. Already some creative legislation is being developed in Congress (REALLY--we’re not making this up!). By TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY, 2OO4, we intend to ask every candidate what they intend to do to bring work/life balance to America, offering us what Europeans already take for granted.

Countries like Norway, the Netherlands, France and Germany have shown that shorter work time and a balanced life is possible, and they know that it can even be good for business. In fact, all of them are more productive per worker hour than we are!

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY will produce a broad and bi-partisan coalition for change. This issue can unite groups who seldom talk to each other—family values conservatives and the women’s movement, labor unions and environmentalists, clergy and doctors, advocates for social justice, enlightened business leaders and the “slow food” and “simple living” movements, for example. This is an issue that affects people across class, gender, race and ideological lines. As novelist Barbara Neely puts it, “Nobody has any time out there.”

We are building a national TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY working group and looking for volunteers to build events in every community and on every campus. We’ll be producing humorous and provocative posters, clever bumper stickers, kits for reaching your local media and community organizations, a TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY HANDBOOK, and a Web site (timeday.org—which should be up and running by November 1) with links to organizations, resources, speakers and other valuable information.

We need your help, your enthusiasm, your ideas, and even your financial support. Be the first to start a TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY committee in your town, and join us now, because there’s no present like the time.

For more information and to be put on our emailing list, contact:

John de Graaf: (jdegraaf@kcts.org or 206.443.6747)