Before, technology companies [in Silicon Valley] were almost proud of being described as burnout shops. That was synonymous with efficiency and productivity, which are positive values in American culture.
Christina Maslach (1), researcher ae Berkeley University (California)

The phenomenon of work-related suicide is not new, but it has become more prominent in recent years.
Christian Larose, president of the work section of the Conseil économique et social (2).

In this article the word "worker" does not have the traditional left-wing connotation of the industrial worker belonging to the "working class". It means anyone who works for his or her living.

We impose painful stresses on ourselves by pushing ourselves to produce more and more, though our existing global levels of production are already becoming excessive.

The pressures that lead to breakdown

The Paris Opera has successfully launched a new production of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, first performed in Berlin in 1925. The music, in my opinion, is hardly beautiful, but there is no denying its dramatic power. Wozzeck is a poor bloody infantryman, overworked and harassed by his commanding officer, cuckolded by his girl-friend Marie. He is no hero. Under the pressures of his miserable circumstances, he cracks up; in the end he kills Marie and himself.

Such pathetic events are not so rare in real life today. We hear of more and more cases of suicide apparently caused by intolerable stresses at work. Far more common are the less extreme, but nonetheless serious, cases of overstressed workers who encounter major health problems. The British magazine Hazards carries well-documented articles about the spread of disabling or fatal illness linked to excessive stresses in workplaces around the world.

We can accept that moderate stress from time to time is unavoidable, perhaps indeed stimulating and thus helpful, for any worker who is anxious to succeed and realize his ambitions. But excessive, chronic, pathogenic stresses are clearly counterproductive and ought to be avoided.

In 2007 the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work published a report in which we find the following observations:

* Over recent decades, significant changes in the world of work have led…to new and increasing psycho-social risks.

* The major problems appear to be: precarious and insecure employment, the ageing workforce, work intensification, violence and bullying at the workplace, and poor work-life balance.

* Among the main symptoms observed are: exhaustion or "burnout", depression, muscular pains, hypertension, insomnia, loss of appetite, loss of memory, even paranoid disorders and suicide.

Workers suffering from stress-related illness are apt to blame insensitive or overdemanding management. But managers who demand too much from their workers are acting under the orders of higher authorities; the managers themselves are often under excessive pressure and risk suffering the same symptoms.

The problems are very real, but hard to pin down

The feeling of being overstressed is clearly subjective, and this condition is easily confused with other illnesses. The Canadian endocrinologist Hans Selye, one of the first doctors to carry out major research on the subject, wrote (3) that it is impossible to define stress. The English researchers David Wainwright and Michael Calnan (4) ask: why do problems and antagonisms which previously led to the picket line and the political demonstration now so often lead to the general practitioner or the counsellor?

This is an example of the disappearance of traditional solidarities. Once upon a time, workers tackled the aches and pains of the workplace through their unions; today they go alone to the doctor to ask for a tranquilliser. In the past, they felt that such problems could be dealt with by pressing management to change its ways; now that approach no longer seems realistic. We have taken on board the economists' platitude: these tensions are imposed by the global market, with which none can argue.

The somewhat vague phenomenon of stress defies rigorous statistical analysis. We cannot cite clear-cut comparative figures to measure its recent growth. However, not only does everyone complain that work-related stress has become more widespread; specialists even write (4) of a modern epidemic. According to Hélène Sultan of INRS (5) , psycho-social risk factors affecting employees are massively increasing. According to Philippe Davezies (6), employees from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy affirm that levels of stress at work have increased over the past two decades.

Why do we overstress ourelves?

I am not going to trot out the various little recipes, so often suggested, for avoiding or reducing stresses or learning to live with them. What seems to me far more interesting is the question: why are we forcing ourselves to live in an ever more stressful working world?

After all, we live today in the age of productivity, that "holy grail" of the economists, said to be the source of all the so-called benefits of the modern free, competitive, efficient, dynamic economy. In theory, productivity growth means the capacity to produce more of the same thing with less work, less effort. Yet, in practice, rising productivity goes along with working lives that are more pressurized, more feverish, more exhausting!

Think of the worker in his office, shop or factory, under pressure to show better performance by completing more tasks in each hour of work, and perhaps working longer hours. Let us follow the trail from this man to the underlying causes of the deterioration in his working life.

His boss demands more of him, because the boss herself has to face up to two pressing requirements: to increase the profits of the business, and to promote rising sales and improved market share. She is torn between two often conflicting objectives, since sales growth is often best achieved by cutting prices, but this squeezes profit margins. The usual way to square this circle is to take the axe to operating costs, particularly employment costs. That is why it is necessary to enhance productivity, to find ways of producing more while employing less.

Businesses have, of course, had to live with such pressures ever since the beginnings of commerce, except in the somewhat rare case of absolute monopoly. The consequent stresses, so long as they are moderate, are not necessarily damaging. But when they are too severe, they become a real health risk, and this is clearly a widespread problem today.

The harms of excessive competition

How have we got into this situation of chronically excessive stress? Two answers are needed, because there are two questions. Firstly, why has the pursuit of profit become more frantic? It is because present-day investment conditions encourage investors to be more demanding. Investors today are served by fund managers who, encouraged by financial deregulation, pursue intense competition between themselves to achieve the highest possible returns.

Secondly, why are businesses selling in more and more competitive markets? It is because, thanks to globalisation and the prevailing climate of generally freer trade, most businesses have to contend with many more competitors, including those whose costs are Asiatic rather than Western.

So it appears that the principal source of increasing stress is sharper competition, of which two main varieties concern us here: financial competition between investors and industrial competition between businesses. Both are strongly favoured by free-market theory, and by today's decision-makers, most of whom have grown up with that theory and accepted it. Since the 1980s, governments have used their best endeavours to dismantle all barriers to competition, from national agreements between businesses to international restrictions on free trade. At the same time they have imposed financial deregulation and industrial privatisation; in both cases with the aim of maximizing competition. They have even come to treat as a crime any attempt to limit competitive pressures.

The vogue for free-market theory

Why is this libertarian theory so prized? Because it aims to satisfy both the rapacity of investors, who demand ever-fatter profits, and the greed of consumers, who expect to able to consume ever more and more. The theory panders to the consuming masses and to the capitalist élite. It takes no account of the interests of workers; and this glaring flaw seems to pass unnoticed, doubtless because we workers are, clearly, also we consumers. Hear Adam Smith (7): the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumers.

Yet we consumers normally have to spend much of our lives working to earn the wherewithal to consume. Our work forms a major part of our lives, often one of the most important parts. Is it not, therefore, rather stupid to embrace an economic theory that deliberately neglects the interests of ourselves as workers?

A menace to the environment

But there is here another, even graver, stupidity. The libertarian glorification of consumption logically leads to its growth. It is fair to say that modern economic policy not only allows us to consume more and more, it obliges us to do so. For productivity gains make it possible to achieve any given level of production with fewer workers; but the initial result is that many people become unemployed. To get them back to work, we have to create and sell additional products and services. Thus we, as a society, have to consume ever more and more, in order to escape unemployment.

Yet we know that global consumption of natural resources is already at or above levels that are tolerable and sustainable on a long-term basis. We are doing worsening damage to our environment by the excesses of our economic activities. Yet we persist with economic policies that encourage, indeed require, further overall growth. We impose painful stresses on ourselves by pushing ourselves to produce more and more, though our existing global levels of production may well be already too high. How can this make sense?

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References

1 See interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 13-19 March 2008, p 28

2 The Conseil économique et social is a consultative body set up under the French constitution to advise the government on economic and social matters. Its members represent industries, trade unions, professions etc.

3 See Le Stress Professionnel, ed. Emmanuel Abord de Chatillon et al. (Editions Préventique, Bordeaux, 2006)

4 David Wainwright and Michael Calnan, Work Stress, the making of a modern epidemic (Open University Press, Buckingham (England) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), 2002)

5 See Le Stress Professionnel, op. cit. supra. INRS (Institut National de Recherche et de Sécurité) is a French research institute which specialises in health and safety at work.

6 Philippe Davezies is a lecturer and researcher, at Université de Lyon 1, in medicine and health at work. He has written much on this subject; see list of his publications.

7 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), book iv, chap. 8