Pat Stuart

Almost every day media tells us the sad tale of empty office blocks and of industries trying to force or persuade their workers back into traditional employment patterns. The root problem?  Post-Covid Americans, having figured out new and effective ways to do their jobs, are proving generally resistant to being stuffed back into an eight-hour, five-day week and an office.  

Building owners, tax collectors, government entities, and service businesses that built their profit margins on the old pattern have been experimenting with ways to force or cajole their employees back into that old mold.  

Their proposals to lure workers back tend to be unimaginative variations of the traditional workweek — one designed by Henry Ford and the automotive union over a century ago and meant to govern blue-collar work on the factory floor. All peg salary to punching a clock.  

Few seem responsive to any of this. Having tasted independence, over half of American workers have resisted going back to the 8-5 model in any form. They prefer working singly and at home and on their own time schedules. Results, not hours, have become their employment standard, and they like it.

More, people have become incredibly innovative in the process, finding new ways to make a living, some turning to the “gig” economy, others becoming entrepreneurs, more using personal strengths to set up new businesses, employing the internet as a marketing tool and a multiplying force. The very factors that have changed the world so profoundly since Henry Ford — technological revolution, social change, and globalization — make it possible for them to earn a living in new and unique ways.

They’re not the same people they were pre-Covid.

Another generation said it well: “How you going to keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.”

What we might term a worker revolt has had repercussions. Downtowns have emptied. Streets are silent. Cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C. (to name only two) are making desperate efforts to fill empty office buildings from 8-5 even as major retailers accept the worker verdict and are closing their downtown locations.  

We hear about employers raising wages and still not finding employees.  

We read stories of Starbucks shops and Amazon centers trying to unionize. It’s an interesting side note that the demands of those new unions almost never focus on hours worked but, instead, deal with benefits.  

As for the employers, many of them are also experimenting and trying out new business models. For the most part, these focus on eliminating employment-linked benefits and circumventing labor laws by replacing full-time workers with part-timers and contractors.

It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out, but I’m guessing that over the next decade the once universal “full time” 8-hour/5-day week will die a slow death except, possibly, in the service sectors. That’s on a national level.

Here? We are and have been an independent lot. The vast majority of us work on our own schedules, starting with our commissioners and city councils and moving on through contractors, musicians, artists, electricians, farmers, ranchers, shop owners, cleaners, farriers, firemen and on and on. The Henry Ford model just doesn’t work for us except in the service industries (mostly seasonally), plus in some government offices, school classrooms, and the medical community.

Even in the latter areas, though, a local form of “flex time” plays an important role. Consider all the occasions when work either takes over leisure time or when life’s more pressing demands replace any thought of work. Like: when was the last time you heard someone say, “I’ve punched out, find someone else.” Like:  what happens when hunting season rolls around and there’s a sheep license in your pocket?

I’d say we have this work thing figured out and can sit back and watch the rest of the country play catch-up.