The Movement to Institutionalize Rest
Rest is critical to work-life balance and it's time we treated it as such.
By Tomo Wakiyama Newton
The steep development of machines during the Industrial Revolution changed the rhythm of work life. What was meant to aid human labour also grew to dictate it, drastically increasing work hours from less than 40 hours a week to 70 hours a week by the 1850s.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of America, signed in 1938, brought the 40-hour work week back. Part 3 of the Canada Labor Code, which was enforced on 1968, lays out the same standards of the 40-hour work week in fields of work under the domain of the federal government. Despite these policies setting a default, a report written on the increase of work hours of employed men in America from 1979-2004 found that men working over 48 hours a week rose from 16.6% to 23.3%. The Harvard Business Review reports that 62% of high-earning individuals work more than 50 hours a week, with the top 10% working more than 80 hours a week. Workers are willingly clocking in more hours and relinquishing vacation days, declaring a deep loyalty to their jobs and “wear[ing] their commitments like badges of honor”.
The Harvard Business Review report shows that extreme workers often sacrifice their housework and homecare, their intimate relationships and sexual satisfaction, and relationships with their children (although familial relationships were sacrificed by two-thirds (65%) of men compared to one-third (33%) of women). Stories shared by extreme workers expressed a lack of patience, dependability, and quality time with loved ones, indicating that the opportunity costs of working long intense hours is the nurturing of personal relationships and a sense of community.
The makeup of extreme workers is heavily gendered. In the US, women make up less than one-fifth of those working over 60 hours a week, implying that either the desire or ability to work these intense jobs is not gender-neutral. Furthermore, the at-home support that extreme workers benefit from is segregated by gender: 25% of men reported having a spouse or partner that supported their home life, while only 12% of women reported having the same support.
It seems like one must draw from an endless pool of availability, energy, and commitment in order to gain respect, promotion opportunities, and success in the workplace. This creates a slim portfolio of candidates from those who don’t have dependants and families, those with at-home partners and supports, those who are without illnesses and disabilities, and those who prioritize work above all else. This is most often the able-bodied, mentally-healthy, educated, ambitious white male with an at-home partner to take care of the house and family. Sound outdated? I’d like to think so too.
The cultural and institutional glorification of “working hard” is pervasive, justified by employers by the increased profits for their companies, and justified by employees by the rewards of promotion, pay raise, affirmation, and a sense of achievement, but at the significant sacrifice of a personal life.
To this point, Tricia Hersey created The Nap Ministry and wrote a book called “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto”. Hersey is a performance multidisciplinary artist, writer, activist, theologian, and daydreamer, who has been at the forefront of the movement advocating for and embodying rest as a form of resistance against capitalism, consumerism, grind culture, patriarchy, white-supremacy, and racism.
In her book and work at large, Hersey teaches that rest as a matter of social justice cannot be addressed without acknowledging its origins in the Black liberation movement. She tackles shame-laden topics such as laziness, a term she outright refuses to adopt into her vocabulary, by drawing connections between the rhetoric of laziness and the exploitation of plantation workers who were forced to work 20 hours a day in the fields. She frames it as a false evil created and weaponized against Black workers in the context of capitalism. A 2020 CDC study conducted in the US showed that there is still an undeniable racial disparity when it comes to rest: 43.5% of Black adults reported short sleep duration (less than 7 hours a night) compared to 30.7% of white participants.
Cultural reclamation and healing cannot be done without the creativity, mental freedom, and spiritual health that rest allows, and Hersey is adamant that rest must be firmly treated as a fundamental human right, rather than a reward to the exhausted individual, whose brain and body will suffer as a result of sleep-deprivation. The capitalistic world perceives the individual according to its production potential, and to resist this lens is to reject the entire system. It also requires a deep sense of self-worth and “deprogramming from grind culture”.
“I believe that resting is another dimension… It is a portal for us to go inside of, to invent, to imagine, to simply heal, to have space and so I’m wanting more people to see slowing down and resting as the antidote.” — Tracy Hersey.
In Japan, high rates of death by overwork, or “karoshi”, has been a well-known phenomenon since the 1990s, and campaigners estimate around 10,000 karoshi deaths annually. In 2018, a “Work Style Reform” bill was introduced in Japan with mixed success; vacation days could be enforced upon employees, but the cap on work hours was put at 80 hours a week. There are many permitted exceptions to these policies, and hours are not always tracked accurately.
A report published by the WHO reported an estimate of 398,000 deaths in 2016 as a direct result of working over 55 hours a week, making it clear that the extremity of overwork is not contained to Japan or North America.
Yes, we can all reassess our relationships to rest. We can do our best to take control of our personal schedules and carve out more time for rest. We can practice saying no to new projects and more work for the sake of our personal lives. But without institutional change, it will always come at the sacrifice of professional success.
So, what can be done to institutionalize rest?
1. Workplaces can reduce work hours, or even experiment with the four-day work week.
2. Workplaces and governments can implement menstrual days, like Spain did just last month.
3. Workplaces and governments can provide paid mental health and burn out days to their employees.
4. Workplaces can allow for flexibility with different work schedules according to the needs of their workers, making success in the workplace more accessible for people with disabilities, dependants, and differing challenges and priorities.
Engaging in the rest is resistance movement is more than just resting. It’s about reassessing our values, our rights, and our relationships.
Tomo Wakiyama Newton (she/they) is a Master’s of Public Policy candidate at the Max Bell School and founder of a solidarity organization that cooks for shelters in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal called Community Cooks Collective. Their interests include harm reduction, restorative justice, food security and community organizing.