June 20, 2011

The Great Speedup

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Americans — those who still have jobs, anyway — are working harder than ever these days. More hours, more weekend email check-ins, and less vacation than just about anyone else in the world. Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein write about all of this, including the vacation part, in “All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup”:

European companies face the same pressures that ours do—yet in Germany’s vigorous economy, for example, six weeks of vacation are de rigueur, weekend work is a last resort, and companies’ response to a downturn is not to fire everyone, but to institute Kurzarbeit — temporarily reducing hours and snapping back when things start looking up. Sure, they lag ever so slightly behind us in productivity. But ask yourself: Who does our No. 1 spot benefit?

A big part of this is cultural. Mother Jones, no capitalist taskmasters they, have a pretty generous vacation policy. And yet, I almost never take vacation anyway. I’ve been brainwashed! (Until Wednesday, that is, when I’m taking a week off.) The map below shows this starkly: the United States is virtually alone in not mandating any annual time off for employees, right along with such economic luminaries as Burma, Guyana, and Nepal. More charts on American overwork here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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