We spend too long at the office and our families suffer. It's time to stop juggling and start negotiating

Polly Toynbee
Guardian

Friday January 14, 2000

Miserable, over-worked and insecure, the British work the longest hours in Europe and express the least job satisfaction. However much richer, they are becoming more discontented with work every year. What is the point of economic success if it is matched by growing unhappiness? Like dumb oxen we work harder than everyone else - a third of men work over 50 hours a week - but we're not smarter. For over a century factory acts and ever shorter working hours marked the onward march of industrial progress. Now social history has gone into reverse.

In an annual study Professor Cary Cooper of the Manchester School of Management revisits the same 5000 managers from CEOs down to juniors and he finds them growing increasingly anxious about their lives. This is hardly surprising since half of them work most evenings and a third work most weekends. Whatever the reality of falling unemployment, people feel their own job or status is under threat because they suffer more turmoil at work than they did five years ago. They describe a life of constant upheaval, where two-thirds of them undergo a major restructuring at work each year. Downsizing continues apace with radical change due to galloping new technology, while the current merger epidemic leads to unpredictable job loss.

It is extraordinary that in the privacy of a survey so many express such deep unhappiness. Nearly all think that their working habits damage their spouse, their children and their own health. What's more, most think these working practices damage their company's productivity. These are the people who set the work patterns for their organisation, yet even they feel they are victims of forces beyond their control - such as pressure from investors and competitors. What can be done?

"This is an issue whose time has come" pronounced employment minister Margaret Hodge with emphatic determination this week, launching a government sponsored Work-Life Manual. It exhorts employers to give workers a better balance between home and working lives. What chance? Publication of this manual is a prelude to a major event when the prime minister will launch a "business-led alliance" of pioneering companies pledging themselves to more humane working. It has been much delayed and kept under wraps, because this issue cuts right down the ambivalent fault line at the heart of New Labour. Tony Blair, new man, arch-promulgator of family and community life, is also the one who forged New Labour's identity by stamping down trade unions and siding loudly with business at every opportunity. His government's hymns of praise to work - a broom or spade in every hand - have drowned out the family-friendly stuff.

When he launches this project his speech writers will have problems. What can he say with conviction after his record so far on Britain's over-work culture? The parental leave directive was brought in reluctantly and then deliberately emasculated to have minimal effect. Introduced years ago across Europe, most other countries offer paid leave but Labour made ours unpaid, so very few are expected to be able to use it. Just as bad was the heel-dragging over the 48-hour working time directive. Britain alone used an opt-out allowing employees to "volunteer" to work longer than 48 hours. As a result Citizens Advice Bureaus are deep in cases where people have been forced to "volunteer" to work longer. (4 m people now work over 48 hours.) The working time directive was a missed opportunity to make real change. Instead, everything the government said proclaimed long hours good, short hours bad.

Half the government's brain is with the feminised DFEE, championed by Margaret Hodge working on family-friendly working policies, busily trying to ease single mothers into work, provide child care and civilise the workplace. The other half is with the macho DTI where Stephen Byers wants nothing to do with this stuff. The DTI works for employers (presumed male) where real men work all hours and fight their way to the top on the shoulders of wimps who go home on time. Now Tony Blair is going to have to make up his mind. Which is it to be? No doubt he will be quite happy with an entirely voluntary exhortation to employers to create better working conditions. But will anything change unless the government takes a firm lead and makes it happen?

Rebranding "family-friendly" working as "work-life" is a smart move, proclaiming this is no longer a special favour for mothers, but for everyone because everyone needs a life. As yet only 5% of employers meet the work-life balance recommendations in this manual, though it brims with good examples of win-win deals where large and small firms have found variable ways of working that suit both, freeing some to work partly at home, wasting less time commuting. It requires managers to abandon meaningless meetings and concentrate on output, not hours worked. In Bristol an angry, demoralised library service where workers were shunted about each week at the whim of managers now has a new schedule where people negotiate their own hours. As a result workers are happier and the service is better, with libraries open on Sundays for the first time. It often saves large sums in absenteeism and recruitment as companies retain a better workforce. Modern trade unionists now negotiating these win-win deals deserve more encouragement from government.

If the politicians fail then the law may step in. The number of high pay-outs for stress-related law suits is rising so sharply that companies are being warned about their working habits by accountants. The Health and Safety Commission is currently consulting on whether stress at work should be regulated under health and safety law. They may opt for an approved code of practice on stress which would have a huge impact, since breaking it would lead a company to lose a case in court.

There may be little governments can do about the turbulence and speed of technological change, but that is all the more reason why they should take action to alleviate the effects on people. Some macho Labour politicians now sound like those who said it was none of the state's business to free women from coalmines or children from chimneys. But this would be a good opportunity for Tony Blair to widen the political agenda for the next election by reminding people what government is really for. A strong economy is only one crude measure of success: money is just another tool in the more important political aim of increasing general contentment.

*The Work-Life Manual is published by the Industrial Society (0870 400 1000 )