n his last two and a half days of life, Brent
Churchill slept a total of five hours. The rest of the time he
was working.
Mr. Churchill, a lineman on call one stormy weekend for
Central Maine Power, worked two back-to- back shifts on Friday,
went to bed at 10:30 p.m., was called back at 1 a.m. Saturday,
caught a quick nap around dawn and went back to his job
clambering up and down poles for almost 24 hours straight.
Taking a break for breakfast on Sunday morning, he got yet
another call.
At about noon, he climbed a 30-foot pole, hooked on his
safety straps and reached for a 7,200-volt cable without first
putting on his insulating gloves. There was a flash, and Mr.
Churchill was hanging motionless by his straps. His father,
arriving before the ladder-truck did and thinking his son might
still be alive, stood at the foot of the pole for more than an
hour begging for somebody to bring his boy down.
The death of a 30-year-old lineman from remote Industry, Me.,
might have gone unnoticed beyond family, friends and the woman
he had planned to marry in June, but for a coincidence: Mr.
Churchill happened to die at a time of heightened public concern
about the expanding workweek — a time, in fact, when the Maine
legislature had been debating whether to cap the amount of
mandatory overtime allowed in the state.
The bill was not exactly a clarion call for worker ease,
placing the overtime limit at 96 hours within any three-week
period. The governor had already vetoed two versions, and there
had not been enough votes in the Senate to override him. But the
outcry over Mr. Churchill's death lent new momentum to efforts
to cap overtime. The lawmakers compromised on a cap of 80 hours
in any two-week period, and in May, Maine became the first state
in the nation to limit the number of hours an employee can be
required to work.
But it is not the first to recognize the problem of physical
exhaustion on the job in the tightest labor market in almost
half a century. Although Maine faced an especially stark
catalyst in Mr. Churchill's case, elsewhere around the nation,
in courthouses and state legislatures, on picket lines and at
negotiating tables, a backlash is building against the new
economy's voracious appetite for Americans' time.
West Virginia and Pennsylvania recently debated but deferred
action on bills that would allow workers to refuse overtime
without being punished. Washington State lawmakers considered a
Maine-style overtime cap earlier this year but it died in
committee.
New Jersey legislators had greater success with a narrower
bill, voting in June to ban mandatory overtime in hospitals; the
bill now awaits Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's signature.
California started counting overtime after an eight-hour day,
rather than a 40-hour week, though lawmakers there are now being
bombarded with calls to exempt ski lodges, hospitals,
construction sites and many other workplaces.
The expanding workweek has become a flashpoint for some
unions, though not all. Studies show that most employees who
qualify for overtime premiums still want the extra hours. This
lack of consensus on whether the workweek is too long or too
short is one reason most state efforts to cap overtime have
faltered.
The labor groups now taking a stand on the workweek tend to
be those representing either workers with safety issues, like
pilots and firefighters, or large numbers of women, who often
feel the work-time pinch more acutely.
A strike by telephone workers against Verizon this summer was
motivated in large part by overtime issues; women in the
company's calling centers complained that they could not break
free from work early enough to pick up their children or make
dinner for their families. Firefighters in Connecticut recently
challenged the constitutionality of mandatory overtime, arguing
unsuccessfully that it violated the 13th Amendment ban on
slavery. Nurses in several New York hospitals now sign protest
statements when they start their shifts, creating a paper trail
of their mandatory workloads.
Congress has also been grappling with the issue of the
expanding workweek, though much of its effort is aimed not at
workers but at helping employers who seek to reduce the
associated labor costs. Several attachments to the pending
minimum- wage legislation would disqualify technology workers,
sales personnel and others from receiving overtime pay. Another
provision would allow businesses to reduce overtime payments to
virtually all qualifying employees.
Labor's fight for relief from onerous working hours dates
back more than a century — and its victories have been hard won.
From 1886, when a potent eight-hour movement exploded in street
violence in the Chicago Haymarket, it took 52 years for American
society to agree on a 40-hour workweek with the passage of the
Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. But now, the strains that the
booming economy is putting on workers, especially women, are
reopening the debate.
"Overwork has been an issue for quite a while," said Peter
Rachleff, a history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul.
"But whether workers have felt it was an issue they could
address or not has changed in the last year."
For all the rumblings of discontent, it is difficult to
quantify Americans' workload. Federal statistics show that
Americans are working record levels of overtime, but the data
tracks only hourly manufacturing workers, who make up a
shrinking share of today's work force.
The average American employee works just two more hours a
week than in 1982, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But Randy E. Ilg, a senior economist at the bureau, said that
figure probably understated the problem because women have been
surging into the work force, and their generally shorter hours
appear to have pulled down the average.
Only in the workweek statistics for households does the
increase jump off the page, Mr. Ilg said.
"Twenty years ago, you had one person in the household
working," he said. "Today you've got two. And who goes to the
grocery store now? Who takes the check to the bank on the
weekend? Who does the dishes after dinner?"
Other features of the new economy compound the sense of
pressure. Samuel Bacharach, a professor at Cornell University's
School of Industrial and Labor Relations, found that workers who
are most worried about downsizing are the ones most likely to
load up on overtime. Central Maine Power had, in fact, laid off
37 linemen several years before Brent Churchill was killed, his
mother said, and was timing the performances of those remaining.
"He took that job seriously," his mother, Donna Churchill,
said.
The increased use of cellular phones, laptops and beepers
also makes Americans feel like they are working more, Mr. Ilg
said. So do today's longer commutes.
David Kavanagh, who recently held a job maintaining cooling
systems for the Grand Union supermarket chain, knows this better
than most.
Each evening, Grand Union would call Mr. Kavanagh at his home
in Patchogue, N.Y., and tell him which supermarket he should
appear at by 8 a.m. the next day. Most of his trips required him
to drive the length of traffic-clogged Long Island and through
New York City during morning rush hour. Some days, his commute
took nine hours.
"There was no fast way he could get where he was going," said
his wife, Tara Kavanagh, a lawyer. "He would sometimes leave at
4:30 in the morning and not be home until 10 o'clock at
night."
Represented by his wife, Mr. Kavanagh sued Grand Union,
demanding compensation for his travel time. In June, the court
ruled, in a split decision, that while his situation was
"inequitable," the law held no relief because a 1947 provision
specifies that employers do not have to pay for "normal"
commutes. (The dissenting judge said Mr. Kavanagh's commute was
not normal.)
Mr. Kavanagh was eventually fired. "I smiled all the way
home," he said. Today, he works as a machinist — a 10-minute
drive from home.
For all the travails of blue-collar workers like him, the
people putting in the longest hours these days are white-collar
workers on salary, Mr. Ilg said. Their ranks have been swelled
by the information economy: 60 percent of the jobs created in
the last 10 years are managerial and professional positions.
Many of these people toil in a legal twilight zone, often
performing duties that did not exist in 1938, when Congress drew
clear-cut distinctions between workers and managers. The law is
silent on how such workers should be compensated for their long
hours, if at all.
Many businesses classify them as managers and executives,
paying them a fixed salary with no premium for overtime. But
many of them say their hours make them feel more like production
workers on an assembly line. Some are demanding to be paid
accordingly.
Alan Truex, a sportswriter for The Houston Chronicle, had a
job doing something most people would hardly consider to be
work: He watched hours and hours of baseball. Following the
Houston Astros on the road, he racked up enough frequent-flier
miles to take his wife on the occasional foreign trip. Team
owners invited the couple to lavish celebrity parties.
But for all the glitz, the long hours began to wear on Mr.
Truex, recalled Phyllis Truex, his former wife. From spring
training in February until the end of the World Series in
October, he devoted an average 51 hours a week to watching
baseball and writing stories, and that was not counting the
constant travel. His marriage began to unravel. His elderly
parents fell ill and died, and he was not able to spend as much
time with them as he wanted, Ms. Truex said.
Mr. Truex asked his employer for overtime pay. His boss
replied that he was a salaried professional and not entitled to
the premium. The next time Mr. Truex asked, he had a copy of the
federal overtime law in his hand and a tape recorder hidden in
his jacket. Again, his boss said no.
Mr. Truex sued Hearst Communications Inc., the Chronicle's
parent company, entering his timelogs and a transcript of his
conversations as evidence. The Chronicle settled with him out of
court. Mr. Truex is barred by the agreement from discussing any
aspect of the case, but other Houston media have reported that
he received $300,000 to $500,000. He also remains an employee of
the paper, reviewing restaurants out of his home.
Bob Carlquist, The Chronicle's vice president for
administration and human resources, declined to comment, saying
the paper never discusses disputes with employees.
It is precisely that sort of dispute that the current
Congressional bills are meant to preclude. Measures now under
consideration identify several types of information-economy
workers — including computer network analysts and database
administrators and even funeral directors — and specifically
define them as management, barred from receiving overtime
pay.
Yet another provision being considered would go further,
allowing employers to reduce workers' regular pay and make up
the difference in bonuses. Employees' total pay for every hour
worked would be unchanged, but overtime compensation would fall
since it would be calculated on a lower wage.
Advocates of these provisions say they would enhance American
competitiveness. Opponents worry, though, that the changes are
poorly understood by the public and are going largely
unchallenged by organized labor. The provisions are under
discussion as part of coalition-building for the proposed $1
increase in the minimum wage, which is expected to be passed
this fall.
Should the measures be enacted, two things would happen, said
Edward Montgomery, deputy secretary of labor. Many workers would
see their income shrink, he said, "and second, who knows how
many hours they would be compelled to work to make it up?"
