CNN’s Crossfire
Hosts: Robert Novak, Bill Press

Guests: Fred L. Smith, Jr., Jeremy Rifkin

July 7, 2000

Show title: Are Americans Working Too Hard?

(Rushed, unedited transcript, may contain errors)
 

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Tonight, feeling overworked, stressed out? Maybe you need more vacation time. But should it be mandated by law?

ANNOUNCER: From Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press. On the right, Robert Novak. In the CROSSFIRE, Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of The Age of Access, and Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

PRESS: Good evening. Welcome to CROSSFIRE.

The good news is it's summer vacation time. The bad news is, according to some experts, we don't get enough of it. Indeed compared to citizens of other industrialized nations, Americans get the least vacation of all. Sweden averages 32 days a year, workers in Ireland 28, Japan, Portugal and the Netherlands, 25, Switzerland, 20, and us poor Americans, only 16 days a year. Aren't you feeling gypped? One man, Travel magazine editor Joe Robinson of Santa Monica, California -- where else? -- is feeling so left out he's pushing a bill mandating three weeks vacation to anybody who's been at least one year on the job, and four weeks after three years on the job.

But is this really if governments business, or should it be left up to employers and employees or the unions to negotiate? Our vacations in the CROSSFIRE tonight. Do we get too much or too little, and who decides?

Bob.

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Jeremy Rifkin, I've always thought of you as an intelligent person, so I'm having a little trouble understanding where you're coming from.

JEREMY RIFKIN, FOUNDATION ON ECONOMIC TRENDS: I'm always worried when you start with that.

NOVAK: I'm real worried, I don't really understand where you're coming from. Are you suggesting that if you go into bars -- I'm sure you do occasionally -- you see all these people around bars, wasting their time, people going -- if you've walk into some of these office buildings, they're not doing any work, they're quitting early. Are you suggesting that these lazy workers need more free time?

RIFKIN: Let's look at the facts. During the entire industrial revolution, we've been reducing work time and increasing leisure. We started this industrial revolution 125 years ago with a 70-hour work week. We reduced it to 60 to 50 to 40. We increased the pay and benefits, and we increased the vacation time at every stage of the industrial revolution.

So my question back to you, here we are in the midst of this third great technology revolution -- software wet wear, high tech. If we believe this productivity gains of this new revolution are at least comparable to the first and second industrial revolution, why aren't we talking about a six-hour day, a 30-hour work week? Why aren't we talking about a month vacation in the summer and two weeks in the winter? Why should it be different than it was in the past.

NOVAK: What I'm interested in is why are you talking about a six-hour workday? Why not a three-hour workday? Why not a six-month vacation? Where does it end?

RIFKIN: Well, I'll tell you where it ends. The whole history of industrial revolution is to free us. Why are we developing all these labor and time-saving technologies.

(CROSSTALK)

I'll tell you that I think by mid-decade of the 21st century, we're going to be able to produce goods and services for this entire world community with a fraction of the work force we have now. We're going to have intelligent technology providing most of our basic production and service functions. What we had need to do is focus on a new vision of what we do to liberate people from work so that we can take advantage of this technology rather than being enslaved by it.

NOVAK: Mr. Rifkin, most of the time, my most enjoyable hours are when I'm working. I get tremendous fulfillment out of it -- except when I'm with Press, that is; he's the exception. But what is it you want these people to do? What do you think they're going to that's more productive than working? Isn't working better than just goofing off, being lazy?

RIFKIN: We all need to work and we need to play. The fact is, we're fortunate we have work we enjoy, but 75 percent of the tasks in this industrial economy are simple, repetitive tax. Most people work simply because they have to make the money. They'd much rather have more time with their family and the community. You know I'm surprised at you, because for years you've talked about the loss of family values, we're not spending enough time raising children, there's a way of to have this technology work for us, free parents up, so they're working six hours a day, and then let them come home to be with their children after school.

NOVAK: You think they go home and see their children instead of going into the corner bar.

RIFKIN: Well, I'm hoping they might.

PRESS: Fred Smith, first of all, I just want to make it clear, I mean, where I stand, I'm for going off. More time the better, and I do it well. But I do have a theory that no man or no woman's job is so important that they can't take at least six weeks off without the world coming to an end, don't you agree that?

FRED SMITH, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Well, I don't know, I haven't taken my six weeks. I think I've gotten nine weeks stored up now, because I think as Bob said, and I don't think Jeremy agrees with, work and play aren't different. The modern society is giving us work as play. Many of us enjoy our work. We find ourselves excited by it. We find it worthwhile.

The repetitive jobs that Jeremy has been raving about earlier are there, but those are the jobs that technology is eliminating. It's giving us a workplace that is so much more enjoyable. Increasingly, people aren't turning to those Italian vacations. They're staying at work or they're enriching their lives at home.

The big problem we fact right now is, young people have more free time than they did in 1965. Older people have more free time than they did in '65. The working class, the people in the Baby Boomers, are working about the same, and they're whining, everybody else is having fun except for little me. My parents are happy, my children seem happy, and I have to work for a living. Stop whining.

PRESS: Fred, I think you're kidding yourself and I think you're trying to kid the American people. I mean, let me go back to this -- you've got nine weeks stored up. Do you think you are so important that you can't take that time off?

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: No, exactly, it's your sense of yourself, exaggerated sense of your self-importance.

SMITH: No, let's get this straight. When Jeremy was talking about "we should" and "we should," I always worry about that, because I think really America is a society where we do what we want to do, but I do want to do my time what I want. If I want to work, if I want to play, or if I can mix work and play in my own job, which is what Americans are increasingly doing. They're not working long hours because they're changed to a desk. They're wealthier than they've ever been before. They can all work less if they wish to. They've decided not to.

PRESS: Let's agree none of the four of us here at this table are average Americans, OK, we all do enjoy our jobs. But look at the average American, working 2,000 hours a year. The Dutch average 1,370 hours. We're working two weeks locker than the Japanese, the average American. Are you saying that we're not much more productive than they are? They're outracing us in a lot of areas.

SMITH: Look, giving a three-week or a six-week vacation by mandate can all too easily lead to some people having the 52-week vacations, the unemployment problem, and that's exactly what we see in Europe and societies where government has rushed in with good ideas -- benefit plans, insurance plans, mandatory extended breaks -- for everybody, killing off the possibility of new job creation by the little guy -- the little guy. A big industry can handle a lot of mandated benefits, but the infant industries, the small industries that are the future hope, can't carry the burden, and we're killing them off with these mandates.

RIFKIN: We must be living two different worlds. Everyone I know from professionals on down are saying they're time-starved, they're time-pressed they're absolutely stressed out. The average American is getting up at 6:45 every morning, longer hours, they're getting less than seven hours sleep a night, which is not good for them, because we were biologically designed for 9-10 hours of sleep.

But the bottom line is this: When you talk to people as I do around the country, they say the one thing they really need is more time, because their relationships are deteriorating.

NOVAK: My mother told me not to sleep my life away, and I won't do that.

RIFKIN: Well, here's litmus test. Do you know anybody that would regret -- and my wife always says this. Do you know anybody that would regret on their death bed not spending one more hour at the workplace or on the job.

NOVAK: Yes, absolutely.

RIFKIN: You would? You would regret?

NOVAK: I'm going to ask you this, Mr. Rifkin. If I'm libeling you, don't sue, but just correct me. You were instrumental in getting the French down to 35 hours a week?

RIFKIN: I did -- I played some role in France and Italy, and yes. What I suggested -- yes, France and Italy, and I worked over there and we moved aggressively to champion a 35 hour work week for 39 hour pay with this caveat: providing the appropriate tax credits to the companies so they didn't lose anything in the proposition, and guess what, French companies like it, Italian companies like it. It works.

PRESS: American companies will, too.

(CROSSTALK)

NOVAK: The Employers Group in France was very opposed to it.

But I want to give you two sets of numbers. First is gross domestic product in billions: U.S., 8 billion, France, 1.3 billion. Well, we don't have Italy, but Italy is below one billion. Just a minute, I'm sorry -- U.S. 8 trillion, France is 1.3 trillion.

Now let me give you unemployment rates. This is what I really like. Unemployment in your favorite country, Italy, 12.3 percent, in France, 11.8 percent. Do you know what it is the United States? 4.5 percent.

RIFKIN: Yes, do you know why? You know why it's 4.5 percent? The American miracle, President Clinton's miracle, and you may want to use this in future debates. We were able to take unemployment down to 4 percent by extending consumer credit between 1993 and the year 2000.

(CROSSTALK)

But here's how it works. If people are buying on consumer credit, it means other people go back to make the goods and services they're purchasing. We're in zero savings right now. If Europe went down from an 8.8 percent savings rate to zero, they'd have much more production and they'd bring unemployment down.

NOVAK: Why is -- why is your unemployment in your two low-work countries at 12 percent and 11 percent?

RIFKIN: Well, because, for beginnings, they're dealing with an 8.8 savings rate. We're dealing with a zero savings rate.

NOVAK: We don't have a zero savings rate.

RIFKIN: Do you know what they're doing? They...

NOVAK: We don't have -- there's more money in the stock market now.

RIFKIN: You do. No, no, no. You have a zero savings rate.

NOVAK: You don't count stocks?

RIFKIN: That's Federal Reserve.

Yes, but that's the upper class. You keep talking about the top 20 percent of the population.

NOVAK: It's not the upper-class people who are buying stocks.

PRESS: Fred, I want to ask you about this -- this experience in France. I lived in France for a couple of years. I mean, this was 20 years ago. I was jealous then that they have a whole month of August off. Now they've got a mandated four, five, six weeks vacation.

(CROSSTALK)

Wait a minute. My question, please. You always want to spurt out the answer before you hear the question. It's working in France. It's working in Australia, mandated paid time.

NOVAK: How about (UNINTELLIGIBLE) unemployment?

PRESS: Their economies are booming. Why not do it here?

NOVAK: It's not booming. They're not booming.

RIFKIN: The French economy is booming.

PRESS: Bob, just a second. I didn't interrupt you. SMITH: The French economy is doing better for the last five years than it has done in a long time. The unemployment rate has just edged below 10 percent. We're at half that.

PRESS: Right, it's on its way down.

SMITH: It's going way down, but it's twice as high as in the United States, because, in effect, the French economy has put so many burdens on its industry that, yes, if you've got a job, if you've got a business, you do very well, but if you're the underclass in these countries you're denied the first step from the ladder out of poverty.

What we have is a great lifestyle for the middle and upper class, and a destructive lifestyle for the poor.

American is an egalitarian nation. We give small businesses a chance to start and not being able to offer...

RIFKIN: But look. But wait. Let's back up. Let's back up.

SMITH: No vacation at all. But Bill Gates...

RIFKIN: Let's back up for a minute. Let me ask you a question.

SMITH: Look at Bill Gates. Do you think he took vacations when he started his company? Do you think Wozniak took vacations? Those guys didn't have college degrees, they didn't have anything except a hope and a dream. They worked and they created the future.

PRESS: And you look -- and you look at a lot of those high-tech people now that started those companies, they're retiring, they're quitting at 33 and they're taking vacations for the rest of their lives.

SMITH: Well, wait a minute. I thought they were working...

RIFKIN: Can I ask a question here? Can I ask a question?

SMITH: ... working the rest of their lives.

PRESS: Go ahead, Jeremy.

SMITH: Sure, let's get into this.

RIFKIN: Why -- why are we developing all these labor, time- saving, convenience-saving technologies? Why are we increasing productivity if it means longer hours of work and shorter hours of leisure?

(CROSSTALK)

I think a lot -- but Bill, I've got to tell you a lot of Americans and most Americans are going to disagree with you that their life is not solely defined by what they do at work.

(CROSSTALK) NOVAK: This program...

(CROSSTALK)

RIFKIN: ... civic obligation...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: Amen.

NOVAK: This program is solely defined by time, and we've got to take a break. And when we come back, I will offer a novel, ingenious supply-side method of calculating individual vacations for individual workers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

Americans are getting more time off than ever before. Lazy is as lazy does. But is there enough loafing? Is this a time for the United States to introduce the siesta to its lifestyle?

We're asking Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, and Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- Bill.

PRESS: Is this siesta your ingenious idea?

NOVAK: No.

PRESS: Oh no. There's something else coming. All right.

Fred Smith, I thought it was very interesting at the top of the show, those numbers that show that Americans are working a lot more, get less time off, working a lot more than people -- workers of other industrialized countries.

Let me show you another set of figures on life expectancy, lo and behold. Japan 75 years, Australia 73, France about the same, Sweden, Spain 72.8. The United States, 70, down, lowest on the totem poll in both areas.

Don't you think there's a correlation between the two, Fred?

SMITH: Statistics can lie about a lot of thing, and this is one of them. If you correct for the kind of income levels, education levels, United States is much different than those kind of statistics.

We're not a -- we're a much less -- we're a much more heterogeneous society compared -- but look (UNINTELLIGIBLE) doing with. We're now living much, much longer because we have allowed technology to allow to us choose our lifestyles.

If we wanted to be Europeans, we could be Europeans with their kind of nice lifestyle for the comfortable. But America is not that kind of a society.

We let -- "we" let people pick what "they" individually wish to do. That's a difference.

PRESS: Well, again, I say to Jeremy I'm not sure we're living in the same country or on the same planet.

If you look at people calling in for absenteeism in the last five hours, triple the number of people calling because of stress while the number calling in for illness has been cut in half.

Fred, people are spurned out, they're stressed out in this country.

SMITH: What's -- wait, look. It's -- what we are dealing with right now is what -- is -- been talking about one of the Heritage backgrounders recently is what you might think of as the baby boomers are now the whiners. They're basically -- they're seeing their kids having much more free time than they did when they were kids. They're seeing their parents seeming to have a wonderful lifestyle. They're in their working productive period. They like their jobs much more -- much more than their parents did. And they are whining. They want free time and work...

PRESS: You know what they may be saying, Fred, is my kids have grown up and I don't even know them because they spent every available hour at the job instead -- family values I thought was a conservative issue.

NOVAK: Jeremy Rifkin, let me -- I don't -- I don't take vacations. I don't like vacations. I don't need vacations. But I know there are a lot of people who do like them. Let me make a suggestion that would meld the idea of incentive with vacations.

Let's have every company keep a work sheet of mistakes, of good points. For example, at CNN, the camera people who do the cameras, when they make a mistake they get one vacation day off. When they...

PRESS: They never make mistakes.

NOVAK: Uh. When they do a good job, they get one vacation day on. So if you really like vacations, you say, boy, I want to do the best job I can, but if I'm -- if I'm a goof-off, I don't get any vacation at all.

Isn't that a good system?

RIFKIN: Let me speak to that. There's a number of companies in the United States, midsized companies, who have actually gone from a 40-hour work week to a 30-hour work week and are still paying for 40 hours. Are they crazy? How did they do it?

You know what they found. If you take a worker and you give him a six-hour shift with no lunch, straight through, their productivity is exactly the same as if you give a worker eight hours with lunch. So the workers can have more time off, productivity gains are as high. And who's the beneficiary? The whole society by better emotional health and better physical health.

NOVAK: Jeremy, that's very interesting, but I'd love for you to answer my question, tell me what you think of my idea.

RIFKIN: Well, listen, the real problem -- and I think you went right to it -- is absenteeism.

NOVAK: You won't answer my question.

RIFKIN: No. Listen, the reason there's -- we have $250 billion in losses on the job because our workers are in poor physical and emotional health, because they're overstressed, they're not sleeping enough at night, they don't have enough time to rejuvenate themselves.

NOVAK: Oh, that's nonsense.

RIFKIN: It's reality.

NOVAK: Let me, let me...

RIFKIN: So it's not good for American business is what I'm telling you.

NOVAK: Let me give you another statistic. In 1954, which I think in many ways was a happier time in this country, only 37 percent of Americans took a summer vacation. Now it's 53 percent, not including me.

So actually all this overstress thing, people -- more and more people are taking vacations.

RIFKIN: You know what this conversation suggests?

NOVAK: What?

RIFKIN: You guys need a vacation.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, really, you guys really need a vacation.

SMITH: Recently I was driving -- I read the comic strips, and there was a great "Cathy" this week. Cathy was saying -- checking with her travel agent where would she go. Well, does she want to go to the tennis camp? Does she want to go to the cooking school? Does she want to go the weight loss, et cetera?

Finally, she says the only place I can relax is at work.

PRESS: Oh, yes.

SMITH: A lot of Americans basically are dealing with...

PRESS: It's a cartoon, Fred.

SMITH: It's a cartoon about -- about the style of the baby- boomer generation.

PRESS: Now, I want to give you my own ingenious idea. First of all, if a cameraman loses a day when they goof off, I think anybody who comes on CROSSFIRE with a goofy idea ought to lose a day off, too, Bob. Bob.

NOVAK: They're not employees.

(CROSSTALK)

PRESS: I meant -- I meant being the host.

NOVAK: Host. Absolutely.

PRESS: Here's my idea.

NOVAK: You wouldn't get any vacation in...

PRESS: The colleges and the universities have been doing it for a long time. It's called a sabbatical. It works great. They get a year off, they get six months off. They can do whatever they want. They can travel, they can study. They come back, they've got a job guaranteed.

Why don't corporations adopt that?

SMITH: Actually, some corporations do. And I think...

PRESS: No, no. One-fifth of American corporations only offer that. Why shouldn't everybody offer that?

SMITH: This is what I find most upsetting about the liberal mindset. It wants to do something that's good for some people.

PRESS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) liberal.

SMITH: It wants to do it for every one. Americans are not a bunch of cookies or a bunch of standardized products that we are going to design the standard vacation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sabbatical.

PRESS: Fred, I said...

SMITH: That's what you are saying.

PRESS: I said offer it. Offer it is what I said to every employee.

SMITH: No, no. Not offer it, because for every employee it won't go well, Bill.

RIFKIN: And you know what? For the employees that don't want to it, they can take the pay.

SMITH: Not what...

RIFKIN: But the rest, they can take the time off. SMITH: Not what they -- not (UNINTELLIGIBLE) they don't want to do it. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) don't want to do it.

What you want to do is have the experimental process emerge and give people a chance to evolve the workplace that is good for them. Not good for Jeremy necessarily, not good for me, but good for the people that in that plant.

PRESS: I want...

SMITH: You want the freedom to have experimentation, not coercion.

PRESS: I want to tell you -- I want to tell you both something, both something. You're on vacation as of right. We're out of time.

Fred Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, may you enjoy a long and healthy vacation.

Fred, take that rest of the time off.

Bob Novak and I will take just a couple of minutes off and then we'll be back with our vacation closing comments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: If it isn't beach boy, Bill? Bill...

PRESS: Now which of us is for more vacation? Look at this picture.

NOVAK: Bill, I had four days off on the Fourth of July weekend, and even though I worked on one of them writing, I almost went nuts at the end of four days. That's just too much time off. But since people are different, I make a suggestion that would make us both happier. Why don't we give you a sabbatical starting right now, about six months out of here?

PRESS: I think I may be ready for the sabbatical right about now, Bob. Let me just say, I had four days off on the Fourth of July weekend. And you know what, for me, it wasn't enough, Bob.

More vacation the better for me. CNN knows that I don't think I get enough vacation now and I'm demanding more.

But I think people...

NOVAK: I'm with you. I'm...

PRESS: You ought to try it. You ought to try it. I think people are more productive and more effective, Bob, when they get more time off.

NOVAK: Well, I have a certain even disposition. I don't need time off. My disposition's always the same.

PRESS: Bob, you do need time off. And you know what else? We need time off from you, Bob.

NOVAK: From -- go ahead.

PRESS: All right. I will. From the left, happy vacation. More of the same. I'm Bill Press. Good night for CROSSFIRE.

NOVAK: Beach boy Bill. From the right, I'm Robert Novak. Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE.

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