Notes on Free Time Strategy & Tactics

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

FREE TIME/ FREE PEOPLE

NOTES ON STRATEGY AND TACTICS

I: Over-all Strategy

Some aspects of our Strategy are likely to be different from much of the past work that most of us have done.

1) Most of us are used to organizing around issues that have already become well-defined (like “sweatshops” as a sub-set of workers’ rights and “global warming” as a sub-set of environmental destruction). But here we are giving a definition and focus to a problem that people feel but mostly think of as their private pain or failing -- not a social issue. This resembles the very early days of the rebirth of the women’s movement.

Naming the Issue is our first concern.

2) In shaping this Free Time effort, we must meet the needs of two different groups -- hour/wage employees and salaried employees.

For deep change to happen in American society, these two groups will have to work together -- and that has been rare in the past generation. Building such a coalition is hard; yet the Free Time approach offers a striking opportunity to build it.

These two groups experience money issues in very different ways. And they experience the denial of Free Time -- family time, neighbor time, Spirit time -- in different ways.

But for both groups to see that they share the deep human soul-need for Free Time can become a very powerful way for them to see the shared humanness in “the other” as well as “the self.”

The Free Time outlook makes possible not a mere pragmatic coalition between wage-workers and salary workers, but one rooted in a deep human sharing.

Both wage-workers and salary-workers need to consciously seek policy changes that enhance Free Time for both groups.

 

II. Next Steps in Our Own Organizing

We might think about our work in several overlapping time frames:

a. Many of us can plan a “Sabbath for Sabbath” in our own congregations or can encourage congregational leaders whom we know to do this. On a “Sabbath for Sabbath,” the sermon and religious study would focus on work/overwork/ Free Time questions, perhaps with special prayers, study sessions, celebrations, a collection, etc.

More broadly, we can start asking our religious groups to prepare curricula for adult and child study on Free Time, intertwining materials from our religious traditions with contemporary socio-economic information, etc.

b. Many of us can take personal responsibility to bring together a “constituency conversation.” Specific signers have already agreed that they will plan --

• a lunch where someone who has explored the Free Time issue in depth can talk with a dozen or so evangelical Christian leaders and thinkers;

• an informal gathering of women concerned with the “hyper-overwork” that is characteristically imposed on home-and-job women;

You yourself may be in a position to set up such a constituency conversation. If so, and you want help from others in our network, you can call the office.

c. In some cities, it would make sense to hold more formal day-long “consultations,” where there could be presenters and discussion around various aspects of the Free Time question. This should be planned with the coordinating office on Philadelphia, which can help get presenters, etc.

What might such a one-day consultation look like>? -- For example, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. there could be three sessions. One could explore how different religious and spiritual traditions look at work and rest, and what changes religious communities could make in order to strengthen sacred rest as well as deepening the sacredness of work; another session, at how wage-workers and salary workers are now being affected by overwork and what they are doing about it; a third, at various policy alternatives.

d. With about eight months notice, we can bring together a three-day or four-day retreat of people who are or want to become Free Time activists. This would be useful in bonding people together, developing new approaches, addressing a range of constituencies, etc.

Such a retreat should also itself provide time for reflection, singing, celebrating, shmoozing -- reducing the danger of ”organizer burnout” and putting the principles of Free Time into joyful practice among its organizers.

e. In some neighborhoods or workplaces where the level of neighborly organizing is already high, we could work for a Free Time Model Action -- a celebration that brings religious congregations, local unions, and other groups together both to experience a Free Time moment and to spread the idea.

(In other neighborhoods or workplaces, this might be a goal for further down the road.)

This would be a strong way of both organizing a base and winning media attention to spread the idea -- since such public actions would attract more attention that writing articles, or giving speeches.

The point of a model action is both to present in graphic, living form, a micro-version of the changes we are proposing, and to create a snowball effect beyond the model itself.

A Neighborhood Model Action: Imagine the religious congregations, labor union locals, etc., of a given neighborhood agreeing to proclaim Days of Renewal and Celebration from Friday through Monday of a given week.

• The neighborhood congregations, unions, businesses, and other local groups would arrange “neighborhood festival” and “town meeting” time during the four days -- to share their musics, crafts, stories, etc., with each other, and to discuss the social and political implications of ending disemployment and overwork.

• Members of the participating congregations, unions, and other groups would be asked to take vacation time on these four days, and to spend the time at home rather than on out-of-town vacations. Neighborhood businesses would be asked to close on a paid-holiday basis.

• Neighborhood participants would be asked to commit themselves to stick to a maximum 8-hour work day during the following month (or at least the next week), and to take on as a permanent practice a seven-minute period at work during each morning and each afternoon for silent meditative, self-reflective time -- not “working.”

• One problem that might well arise in doing this is that for some neighbors whose income is below the poverty line, taking a Friday as even one extra non-work day (assuming the Monday of this long weekend is a regular holiday) might be extremely damaging. (Note, this is a perfect crystal of the larger question about relationships between underpaid wage-hour workers and better-paid salary workers.)

How could the community meet this problem? Could the neighborhood congregations, unions, and their members also be asked to contribute to a fund for paying eight hours “living wage” support for any below-poverty-level hourly-waged neighbors who agreed to take part in the neighborhood events on the Free Time weekend? Or -- how else to meet this problem in a communal and creative way?

• Automobile traffic would be banned from a significant part of the neighborhood for the four days.

• Juliet Schor has suggested that if we were to create such a weekend, it might make sense to piggy-back it onto the “TV Turn-Off Week” that is now encouraged by some schools, as a time to return family attention to non-TV ways of making family connection. This approach would fit nicely with the Free Time approach.

A Workplace Model Action: In much the same vein, imagine the religious communities working out with businesses the following arrangement for a Week of Reflection and Renewal:

• Employers and workers at a given workplace (both wage and salary workers) agree to set aside special time during a special work-week for family and neighborly activity. For example -- :

• One afternoon, perhaps, to do an environmental clean-up and assessment of a place near work;

• An extended lunch-hour when family members would visit the workplace for a family get-together to share stories, cookery, etc.;

• Another lunch-time set aside for discussion of work itself, how to ease its burdens, how to set aside rest time, etc.

The first proposal above -- for a neighborhood weekend --would be intended to encourage people in making changes beyond the weekend. Thus, too, the experience of religious congregations and labor unions in negotiating with businesses for the second proposal above -- special short-run changes in the workplace -- would be intended to carry over into permanent changes.

 

III. Possible Policy Alternative

Policy alternatives need to be examined in terms of the arenas where it is actually most feasible to win important changes, and in terms of pursuing the important coalition of wage/hour workers and salaried workers.

Taking these into account, it seems useful to hold some Free Time consultations where policy experts meet with organizers from the religious, labor, and other communities.

Two policy changes seem especially fruitful to examine at this point:

a. Forbidding or sharply limiting compulsory overtime (which for some wage/hour workers now is up to compulsory 60-hour weeks, or even more).

b. Persuading and/ or requiring businesses to provide all their workers a certain number of hours a week of paid released time for family and community. (This would draw legitimacy from the present requirement in many schools for students to do community service, and from the beginnings of family leave. )

In regard to both of these, Federal action is probably far off, and there are three far more promising arenas for change:

• Local governments that might use the contract power, as many have done with affirmative action and with the living wage;

• Labor-movement pressure in workplaces, combined with efforts by the religious communities to persuade employers to move forward;

• Private businesses, where business leaders who have already instituted such policies can present them as successful models for others to follow.

Some religious organizations might themselves become models for change. The Unitarian Universalist Association, for example, has a paid-sabbatical policy for all its workers, not only professionals.

For now, instead of adopting any specific policy alternatives, we intend to seek out brief descriptions of “best practices” in workplaces, neighborhoods, local-government policies, etc. to circulate and publicize.

Each of us can run a mental check through our own experience, and share brief descriptions of such “best practices.”