Workers are being pushed beyond limits – and not just at JetBlue

JetBlue Airways flight attendant Steven Slater's meltdown turned him into a media sensation.

JetBlue Airways flight attendant Steven Slater’s expletives-not-deleted, beers-in-hand slide into hero worship went viral on the Web this week. Far less noticed, that same morning, was an announcement by the U.S. Labor Department that worker productivity declined in the U.S. during the second quarter for the first time in a year and a half, as the length of the average work week grew by the most in four years.

As Bloomberg News observed, “A lengthening workweek signals employers have reached efficiency limits after productivity climbed by the most in five decades in the 12 months to March.”

Coincidence, of course, but it spurs a serious question to pursue once the chat boards and Facebook fan clubs pipe down: Is Steven Slater the face of an economy that has pushed workers to the point they cannot be made to do any more?

Just this week, the workplace supplier Regus reported that 40 percent of U.S. professionals it surveyed are giving serious thought to quitting their jobs after summer vacation. A study published in the January/February edition of the American Journal of Health Promotion found a direct connection between stress/depression and the ability to handle longer hours and the increased pace of work. “There is a large economic cost and a human cost,” said study lead author Debra Lerner of Tufts Medical Center.

Of 282 U.S. companies surveyed last November by the employee-benefits firm Watson Wyatt, nearly half reported that employees’ use of the company Employee Assistance Plan was increasing. Similarly, the Tenth Annual Attitudes in the American Workplace Poll by Harris Interactive found that 52 percent of workers believe that co-workers need help in managing anger and stress.

So the anecdotal evidence is there. But how to get beyond that?

Careers and workplace writer Vickie Elmer, a regular contributor to The Washington Post and other publications, suggests starting with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website. The BLS’s last major piece of research on occupational stress was published in 1999, but the agency keeps exhaustive statistics on which jobs have the most occupational stress, how much work time is lost to stress-related absences, and other data.

Flight attendant Steven Slater was arrested after he argued with a passenger, cursed those on board and slid down an emergency chute with beer in hand.

She also suggests developing stories on stress in individual occupations using the BLS’s Occupational Outlook Handbook as an initial source. (Look up flight attendants and you’ll find this: “According to BLS data, full-time flight attendants experienced a much higher than average work-relat­ed injury and illness rate. Various physical injuries can occur when opening overhead compartments or while pushing heavy service carts. In addition, medical problems can arise from ir­regular sleeping and eating patterns, dealing with stressful pas­sengers, working in a pressurized environment, and breathing recycled air.”)

On a more localized level, consider analyzing the productivity of individual public companies in your market. Sales per employee is a common way of measuring productivity for service companies. For manufacturing companies, the number of units made per employee is easily calculable. Chart these numbers over a number of quarters. Did they plateau or decline in the second quarter as the overall economy did? If productivity measures have continued to increase, how? Is it new machinery? Better processes? Or are people covering for unfilled openings and putting in overtime on nights, weekends and holidays just to keep up?