It's about time

Here's hoping Boston's frazzled will leave their desks on this Friday before the weekend with the extra hour in it to catch some of the noon-to-2 p.m. program. It is part of a worthy national movement that ha so far been barely on the radar of most people, who may be too busy and too tired to revolt.

John de Graaf, national coordinator for the event, says planners had envisioned thousands of Americans taking today off to clamor for change -- guaranteed vacation time, a shorter work week, and simpler lifestyles.

"That was a pipe dream," he said in a phone interview, sounding exhausted himself from working two jobs -- as a public television producer in Seattle and as a modern Paul Revere seeking to awaken overworked Americans to a better way.

The call is being issued in small public forums around the country as well as in campus workshops and programs sponsored by religious organizations. In the Boston area, groups have been meeting over the past month.

"People are just starting to plug into this," says de Graaf, who expects the movement to catch fire in the next couple of years, prompting legislation the way the first Earth Day was the catalyst for environmental laws.

"America is the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't have a law guaranteeing paid vacation time," he says, noting that most US companies give their workers an average 11 vacation days per year, while no country can get into the European Union without mandating at least four weeks.

Juliet Schor, the Boston College sociology professor who wrote the 1993 book "The Overworked American," has found that the workload only continues to increase. She notes that from 1973 to 2000 the average US worker took on an additional 199 hours per year, going from 1,679 hours to 1,878.

The reasons are a weave of ego, fear, pressure from managers reacting to pressure from shareholders, and a volatile economy. For the working poor it's worse: They can hold two or three part-time jobs with no benefits and still fall behind.

The new movement not only seeks change in the workplace but hopes to focus Americans on the way time poverty translates into a weakening sense of community, fragmented families, illness, and a fast-food society obsessed with consumption -- the reward for working so hard.

It's time to ask the big question, says de Graaf: "What is an economy for?" The answer might prove to be as stunning as the first great American experiment.