John de Graaf
Photo by Richard A. Huston
December 2004 | Evergreen Citizen
The Time of Our Lives
by Bob Condor
Most of us feel time-poor. John de Graaf, a Seattle author and documentary maker with an office at the public television station KCTS, is doing his part to make us a bit richer. He is cofounder of Take Back Your Time Day. The event is Oct. 24 each year (visit www.timeday.org), but de Graaf and colleagues work year ‘round to win back our lost time. De Graaf took the time to catch up with EM about his latest projects and graciously accept his designation as December’s Evergreen Citizen.
EM: What’s front and center for you these days?
De Graaf: We’re working on a six-point legislative plan to create more awareness about time issues. We call it the “Time to Care” agenda.
Here are the six basic points: 1. Enact a cap on mandatory overtime (making it eight hours maximum or 48 hours a week, allowing employees to choose if they work more than that). This is already law in Canada and all of Europe. 2. Three weeks’ paid vacation (26 percent of American workers have no paid vacation). 3. One week paid sick leave. 4. Enact paid job leave for medical and family reasons. Nearly every other nation offers at least six months’ paid family leave. 5. Establish what we call “part-time parity,” or the ability of hourly workers to make the same wage as full-time employees. 6. Make Election Day a national holiday to encourage our sense of civic involvement.
EM: What exactly do you define as “legislative”?
De Graaf: We know we can’t get a whole package like this one passed. We’d like to get a legislature to agree with just one of these points. Our plan is law in virtually every other industrial nation — even non-industrial nations — throughout the world.
The national scene is bleak. But I’m hopeful about Washington state.
EM: Did the Time to Care agenda get any attention during the presidential campaign?
De Graaf: President Bush did talk about the issue of lack of family time during his convention acceptance speech. But neither candidate talked about it during the campaign.
It’s unfortunate, because I really believe it is a wedge issue. It speaks to conversatives (as much as progressives) who embrace family values. It allows crossover to the candidate who supports our agenda and gets a conversation going about quality of life.
EM: How is it Europe is so far ahead of the United States on quality of life issues?
De Graaf: European countries have had a conversation about it. The labor force is stronger there. They grow at a slower pace than the U.S., about 25 percent less, but by choice. The productivity in those countries is still as high as ours, or close to it, at 97 percent. They simply don’t grow just to grow. People are healthier and live longer as a result.
To read more about John de Graaf’s perspective on time, check out his article in Dragonfly Media partner magazine Resurgence at resurgence.Gn.apc.org/issues/graaf227.htm.
Bob Condor is the editor of Evergreen Monthly.
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