4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 28, 2001 OP/ED olbe lairbigun: DaiIl 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors NOTABLE QUOTABLE ( Hundreds of University EECS, CIS, and comp-sci grads-to-be are searching for jobs that the people behind Wolverine-NO-Access still have. I have a big problem with that." - Chris Schulte, a senior in the School of Business Administration. gwWARE!!!Ir TIGERS AD wo VENES.." Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. /1 / 1 owET OF CRM'PY SYORTS - -T M = . cuI Dancing on the grave of the Protestant Work Ethic NICK WOOMER BACK TO THE WOOM is Wednesday, a week after the start of Thanksgiving break, and (thankfully) politeness doesn't require you to ask everyone you have a con- versation with "so how was your break?" Every year, the respons- es are similar: "Pretty bad, I've got a bunch of work to do for this one class of mine and I'm still working on my personal statement for law school...." "It was great, I saw a lot of my old high school friends at the bar and basically just chilled for a few days before things get real stressful again..." Generally, the lousy breaks aren't really "breaks" at all - just lulls in the school year that allow you to catch up on work. The good breaks tend to be the exact opposite - some quality time spent with friends and/or family, good conversation, good food, and reading. material of one's choosing. The lesson here is hardly a profound one: For most people, work = bad, and leisure = good. It's a simple, almost universally acknowl- edged truth and yet most Americans now regard the traditional 40-hour workweek as a luxury. The average American today works longer, harder and for less real income than ever before. In the same way that the health care industry has convinced most Americans that any single- payer health care system will be a dystopian bureaucratic disaster ("Ever been to Canada? Talk about hell on earth..."), Americans have somehow been convinced - although I suspect the so-called "Protestant Work Ethic" shares a big part of the blame - that work is some sort of end-in-itself. Apparently it's harder to convince the French that obvious facts are, in fact, not true. Not only does everyone in France have access to health care (even those lazy poor people), but they also have a 35-hour workweek. And no, the country isn't on the verge of collapse; in fact, things over there are going just fine thank you. By almost all accounts, the 35-hour work week (or, rather, the 1,600-hour work year), which was adopted in 1998 by Lionel Jospin's government and now affects almost 50 percent of France's work force, is changing life there - dramatically. The legislation has caused affect- ed employees to have between 11 and 16 extra days off per year. Now, more French people have more leisure time, and they're using it to go on more vacations (2000 saw an 18 percent jump in camper van purchases) and - this should please all you "family values" people - they're spending more time socializing with their friends and family. More people are work- ing too, in June France's state planing commis- sion estimated that the 35-hour workweek was responsible for creating one in six new jobs. French employers have also seen the bene- fits of a reduced workweek - well-rested, happy workers are much more productive work- ers who make fewer mistakes and are less likely to mouth-off to customers. On the other hand, French employers (especially in capital-inten- sive industries) are trying to compensate for higher overhead costs - you lose money when you invest in machines that aren't being worked by someone - by cutting breaks and pushing employees to work at an uncomfortable pace. As a result, French labor ministry research indi- cates that only about 59 percent of those affect- ed by the reduced workweek think it has made their lives better. So, given it's not-quite-overwhelming suc- cess, should we just give up on the reduced workweek? There's evidence that the problem isn't that 35 hours a week is too little, but that it's too much. An 8/8/01 column in the Ottawa Citizen cited an experiment in Finland where the traditional 8-hour workday is divided into two six-hour shifts. Even though they're required to pay workers for working eight hours a day, Finnish employers aren't losing money because the increased service hours, productivi- ty and reduced overhead costs offset the cost of paying workers for two extra hours of work. Similar experiments are being conducted all over Europe. According to Bruce O'Hara, the Citizen column's author, "the.work-time issue has had so much attention in Europe that my guess is that some time in the next five years, at least one city or region will pilot'test a 28- hour work-week built around two communi- ty-wide shifts. I further predict that the model is so practical that it will quickly become the norm across Europe." What the European and hypothetical experi- ments in shorter workweeks indicate (at the very least) is that it may be more than possible to significantly improve people's social lives at little or no economic cost. It's time to take a critical look at America's fabled "Protestant Work Ethic," do an economic cost- social bene- 'fit analysis, and start enjoying life. Nick Woomer can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer@umich.edu. Y UNDER THE FLAK PART V: ON THE HOMEFRONT BY WAJ SYED Ignorance on the Union steps 6yI r. Syed, what do you feel about being picked out of a crowd? Do you mind being profiled by the FBI? What's your take on being a foreigner in this country?" Some of the questions put forth around 5:45 p.m. this Monday by a UPN-50 reporter. Right outside the Union. Perfect set- ting. Not a bad interview either, if anyone caught the 10 o'clock news. Soon after the reporter left, a friend and I remained outside the Union, smoking and catch- ing up. Then a man approached. He started to speak Does anyone see a pattern? I was hoping to make an impressive polit- ical analysis in this column. But right now, I'm biased. Intrinsically and overtly biased. I don't know whether to defend or attack. Just blame. Forget the kangaroo courts. Forget the 550 men in federal custody not being allowed bail. Forget the ominous interviewing and question- ing. I'm in no mood to debate legalities. What about the ground reality of prejudice? What about the terribly limited information peo- ple receive in this part of the world that add to in gibberish, trying to mimic my friend and me speaking in Urdu and without reason, started to lash out. Thus came a salad of assault and intimidation. He called us Muslim pigs, throwing in the anti-Islamic aspect. He called us incestuous and gay, among other things, throwing in the sexual content. He kicked and punched us when we tried to walk away, thus adding physical- So ... the punch-line of the day for the Feds: Profile anything Islamic, Muslim, or Terrorist. that prejudice? But more than any- thing, what about ignorance? America is ignorant. So are most Americans. And that too in a very important way: culturally. Till now, I've made it seem that I'm upset about being attacked by a wino. I'm not. I'm upset about the entire evening. I'm upset about events that started a little earlier that night, and lasted till even after the wino episode The reporter, one Meg Oliver assault salt and pepper to the mix., And then he topped it all of with some real, non-fat nationalist dressing, saying that we didn't belong: "Get out of my country, you fucking Iranians," he said, amusingly so since one of his targets was a Pakistani, the other an American. The man is being investigated for assault and ethnic intimidation. I wasn't interested to pursue someone with fresh vomit on his parka and more of the same stuff in his mind. All that kept ringing in my head, even after punches, was the quaint timing of it all. I had just been inter- viewed about my views on racial profiling and racism. And I had just been subjected to them. Ten minutes had segregated reason from reality. The FBI's announcement last week that agents would be questioning more than 70 Arab Americans in the Ann Arbor area has stirred some opinion around town. Muslim students at the University, especially Arab males, fear they might be singled out as terrorists based on their ethnicity, gender and age. Meanwhile, the Uni- versity does not seem to be on top of its game. Until yesterday, University officials said they were unaware of any students being sent letters by the U.S. Attorney to students on visas com- ing toward Angell Hall, this one guy who had testified (he had a been a bystander) to the cops about what had happened caught up with me. Dude. You OK? That was some guy. Why was he hitting you? I'm fine, thanks. He thought I was Iranian. Really? Well, you kinda look the part, you know. Where're you from? Pakistan. Dude, he wasn't even close with that one. It's good that you're OK. Strike Three: Ignorance Strikes Back with a Vengeance. Nice-bystander-guy thinks that a) it's understandable that I was targeted because I look Iranian, b) that looking Iranian means one should expect to be attacked, and c) that Pak- istan is far, far away from Iran. Time and space. So then, what's it going to be? Maybe I should have stuck to the analytic guns and pon- dered more over the increasingly praetorian atti- tude towards undesirable foreigners (and undesirable foreigner look-alikes) by the FBI. Maybe I should have mentioned General "Now I'm a real Commander-in-Chief' Bushaparte and his kangaroo courts, or his "You're with us or the terrorists" dichotomy of world politics that is upsetting to nations that don't want to be pulled into the quagmire. Or maybe I should have picked on the sheer inappropriateness of Donald Rumsfeld for saying "he's wanted dead or alive, but I have my preferences," when talk- ing to soldiers, men of discipline and honor, about Osama bin Laden last week. Or maybe I should have considered the political about-face by Colin Powell, who is now urging the global community to help Afghans with food and money. Good for Colin. It must be nice to become a multi-lateralist overnight now that the Taliban are nearly gone, especially after two months of running a uni-lateral diplomatic cam- paign that was threatening to isolate potential allies if they didn't put out (domestic problems or not) and a misinformed military campaign that was bombing, successively, Red Cross buildings and civilian apartments. But I wanted to make this one personal: Racist winos, obtuse reporters, dim cops, idi- otic bystanders - they all make for a mean combo with some quasi-global community Coke and not-all-foreigners-are-bad fries, but from UPN-50, had arranged for us to meet out- side the Union. When I arrived and the camera started rolling, she shot the first question. Where are you from? Pakistan. How does it feel to be an Arab student from the Middle East right now? Strike One: The Coming of Ignorance. Pret- ty reporter girl thought Pakistan was in the Mid- dle East, which for her then meant that I was an Arab. I replied: Pakistan is in South Asia, not the Middle East, and by the way, being from the Middle East does not mean that you have to be an Arab. You guys should know that. That's something which is really badly reported very often. They never aired that comment. But let's go on. After the interview and the wino, the cops came. An officer, one Joe Anderson, tried to calm me down, and asked me what the wino had called me. Motherfucker. Muslim Pig. Iranian. What did you say back? That he was a motherfucker too. And that I 0