The Culture of Overwork, Essay Example

The author’s purpose is to demonstrate how the average worker tends to work more than it is healthy for him or her to do so. She shows that this is an important concept because the need to work is deeply ingrained in our culture. The main idea of the passage is that it is not healthy to overwork and it is important for people to find ways to help them recover from the stresses of the labor force. Overall, the essay appears to be mainly an opinion article, although it is grounded in some fact and some excellent examples are provided. Several examples are shown to demonstrate that the workplace culture in the United States is negative compared to other countries, “France adopted a legal 35-hour workweek last February. Norway just added a fifth week of paid vacation, Denmark a sixth” (paragraph 7). It is evident that the rights of the worker are not protected as significantly in the United States as they are in other nations. Here, we are expected to work more than 40 hours a week for no additional pay. The author also explains the case of Tara Cleveland to provide a specific example of a case in which an employee did not know her rights and was forced to work overtime as a result, “They expected us to stay late every night and on weekends, too. They were never prepared to pay overtime.” (paragraph 3). Overall, the ideas presented in the essay are somewhat developed, but would benefit from more evidence and examples to further develop the ideas stated.

An excellent quote that helps reveal the author’s research or use of sources is, “Money is the obvious answer but, according to StatsCan, most of the one-fifth of Canadians who worked overtime during the first quarter of 1997 did so for free” (paragraph 4). In this example, it is evident that the author referenced an organization known as StatsCan to research worker data in a foreign country. Although the specific name of the source is provided, it does not appear that it has been documented properly. It is necessary to consider that proper citations have not been inserted into the article so it is challenging to find the exact information that the author used while drafting this paper. As a consequence, I am unable to properly judge the accuracy and reasonableness of the quotation as used by the author. This is detrimental to the argument because even though she may have used a reliable source, its nature cannot be verified, instantly making the use of this data unreliable. It is beneficial for a reader to understand whether the information used in an article has derived from a blog or a peer-reviewed journal, as a peer-reviewed journal would count as a qualified source while this would not be the case for a blog.

When examining the essay for statement of fact and opinion, it is evident that a majority of the statements are opinions. Overall, the author uses these opinions in an attempt to persuade the audience of her point of view. However, it is important to consider that this point of view is not reliable because it is not backed up by fact. To make an argument more reliable, it would have been advantageous for her to have provided facts from reliable sources and then interpret this quote in a manner that supports the thesis or purpose of the argument. An example of a fact is, “A statistics Canada report from November 1999 says that one third of those aged 25 to 44 describe themselves as workaholics.” (paragraph 1). However, it is important to consider that this fact may not be reliable because there is no accommodating source, and the sentence itself is somewhat grammatically incorrect. Assuming the sentence is true despite these errors, it would serve as a fact. An example of an opinion is, “Overwork is becoming a cultural norm and it’s bad for us” (paragraph 1). When the author uses this statement, she makes no attempt to demonstrate how overworking is becoming a cultural normality. Furthermore, she does not show how it is bad for us. Therefore, this sentence is purely the opinion of the author. The argument would have been stronger if the author decided to use facts to back up these opinions; when many opinions are clustered together in a paragraph, they detract from the overall credibility of the article. While many of the author’s points are concise and seem that they could be true, the reality of the situation is that it is challenging to believe her because of the way they are phrased in addition to the lack of references used.

An additional aspect of this essay that detracts from its credibility is the significant amount of evidence for underlying assumptions and for bias and prejudice. When the story opens up, the author offers a personal account for why the work week should be less strict. She claims “The other day I sat down at the computer in my home office and found that I just couldn’t do any work. I was exhausted. At first I thought I was getting sick. Then I realized that I hadn’t taken a day off in more than six weeks.” (paragraph 1). In this argument, she is assuming that there is a link between the fact that she has not taken a vacation in six weeks and the fact that she is sick. However, this is clearly a fallacy because while the two are correlated, they are not necessarily connected. There are many things that could make the author sick, and it is very unlikely that a lack of vacation has the potential to cause disease. She is therefore using the slippery slope fallacy to try to imply the importance of vacation, showing that is could somehow prevent sickness. Unfortunately, this is an example of why the essay is not effective; we cannot assume that these two ideas are related, and the author spends a lot of time trying to make us believe that this is the case.

An example of bias in the story is, “Given these time stresses, you’d think that the length of a workweek would be a major issue in Canada, but it wasn’t even mentioned in the recent federal election.” (paragraph 6). It is apparent that the author is unfairly calling out Canada for their inability to understand the importance of vacation time, when she has discussed the vacation patterns of other countries. Furthermore, based on the content of the essay, it appears that the author is from Canada herself, so she appears to be more concerned with the vacation time of Canadians. If these vacation laws were to change, the author herself would benefit. This is why she tends to use mostly statistics about Canada, even though it is likely that workers in the United States are suffering from a similar injustice. Furthermore, stating that overworking is a “cultural norm” assumes that all of Canada is overly concerned with work, which is an example of prejudice because this is not likely to be true for all individuals living in the country.

As stated above, the author is guilty of fallacious reasoning. In particular, the slippery slope fallacy is used because the author attempts to prove her point to the audience by showing two ideas link in situations in which there is no clear evidence for this relationship. This fallacy is used constantly throughout the essay. In one situation, the author begins this argument by claiming, “irregular and long hours are stressful to families, too” (paragraph 1). She attempts to back up this claim by explaining “A U.S. study shows that family breakup is three to eight times more likely in couples with children if one parent works nights or does shift work. In Quebec, one parent works nights and weekends in more than half of families” (paragraph 1). This is a slippery slope fallacy in two ways. First, she implies that long hours are breaking up families, which is not completely supported by the example given. Just because families work at night, doesn’t mean that they are stressed; it is possible that this is the hours that their position requires and they are not completing this work due to financial strain. Furthermore, it is not reasonable to connect a statistic that is true in the United States to a statistic that is true in Quebec; since these are different cultures, we cannot assume that this data can be used to support the claim. We cannot conclude that families are more likely to break up due to work stress as a consequence.

One of the inferences I drew from this essay is that it is important to fight for workers’ rights if this is an important value to you. While the evidence used in this story was challenging to follow, it is evident that the author is extremely passionate about minimizing work time to spend more time with the family. At the end, she urges the reader to take action to promote these rights. Despite this, this new knowledge is not particular important, nor does it add to my understanding of this issue. Prior to reading this article, I was already aware of some of the statistics discussed and do not trust the ones that I have not heard of. Therefore, this essay could be seen as more of a call to activism that one that accurately proves a point. This insight does relate to my personal life because I feel that my many working friends and family members feel stressed about their long hours and it would be healthy for them to have longer breaks. However, I do not agree that this is an ideal principle to enforce across the board because it is important for workers to be productive in order to keep pushing society forward. Thus, even though I understand why the author is frustrated with workplace laws and standards, I do not agree with her argument.