Drawing these elements together, the article presents a new "green life course approach" for working time policy design.
Whenever there is talk about new policies regarding new work time policies, there is often the argument for longer work hours in exchange for a shorter work week.
In the words of L. Randall Wray and Eric Tymoigne in "It isn't Working: Time for More Radical Policies", When a commercial bank makes a loan, the loan officer wonders "how will I get repaid".
Not on trying to get an opt-out from the working time directive or fisheries policy or other parts of a "new deal".
I fear that this latest plan will drain the energies of the left in social policy and will divert attention from so many other worthwhile policy alternatives: the living wage, boosting trade unionism, free childcare, radical changes in housing policy, policies to reduce working time to limit turbo-consumption, green investment and so on.
Two policy domains are exceptions to this trend: early withdrawal and working time reforms.
"Doctors say workplace stress is the new tobacco in our society," points out John de Graaf, co-author of Affluenza and executive director of Take Back Your Time, a group advocating healthier work-time policies.
"Not only Democrats would be better off but the institution and the country would be better off if we spent more of our time working on policies that help create jobs," said Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who is among those on the ballot in 2012, and whose state just elected a Republican senator and governor.
It also indicates that policies like the Working Time Directive are missing a bigger point: Factors already in play before the first hour of work for example, prior health are far better predictors of illness, injury, and impaired on-the-job performance than workweek length.
