Work less, live better | The Press

What if reducing your consumption opened the door to a reduction in working hours, therefore to more free time and a better balance? In short, to live better. Marginal idea or beginning of a movement? The concept is gaining followers.

Valerie Simard
The Press

On May 23, Jérôme Lemay announced on Facebook that he had spoiled himself. He didn’t buy himself a spa, a new golf set or plane tickets to Portugal. No. He signed an agreement with his employer to reduce his work week from 40 to 32 hours, now spread over 4 days. For a few years, he had already had a day off (at his own expense) every two weeks. His spouse also benefits from the four-day week, based on 28 hours of work. A position created for him, at his request, by his employer in the funeral sector.

“We have always been economical, underlines the resident of Quebec, who works in television. After our studies, we never got too involved in large-scale consumption. We have always kept a relatively low rate of expenditure. I said to myself: “I make a good living. Do I need more? Why have more money set aside for later?” »

This questioning is obviously not accessible to a whole section of the population who live on low incomes, but Jérôme Lemay considers that his household income is within the average. The couple owns a house, a car, rarely goes out to restaurants. With three children, ages 5 and 8, what they need most is time. Of the time they spend today gardening, cooking or getting involved in a community-based food forest project.

Despite a significant drop in salary, he believes he is able to save enough money for his retirement. But instead of aiming for a hasty retirement, he wants to avail himself of the luxury of time right now.

From indebted to frugal

Vicky Payeur also chose to afford this luxury. But unlike Jérôme Lemay and his wife, she wasn’t always so frugal. By age 20, she had accumulated $16,000 in debt. “That was the trigger,” she says. I realized that the way I lived, the way I over-consumed, was not normal because I was getting more and more into debt. So I changed my consumption habits enormously, my lifestyle too, in order to reduce my expenses, to live more simply. »

Living with less is the name of the blog she created in 2015 when she embarked on the path of deconsumption. Two years later, she had repaid all of her debts. After building up an emergency fund, she quit her job in 2019 when she estimated she needed a net income of $1,200 per month. She established herself as a blogger, speaker and social media manager and was able to buy a rental property in Mauricie with her spouse.

“The greatest freedom I have is that if there’s a day when I don’t feel like working, and I have a little energy drop, I just take time off, then I will do activities that I enjoy, rather than having to work to bring in money. If I can allow myself this free time, it’s really because I don’t have a lot of expenses. »

Recently she published Do more with lessa book in which she presents her tricks for marrying frugality (moderate transport, cooking from scratch, doing it yourself, etc.).

But isn’t it a bit utopian to envisage a drop in income while inflation is rising?

Jérôme Lemay says he hardly feels the impact of inflation for the same reasons.

Now followed by 54,000 people on Instagram, Vicky Payeur believes that the idea of ​​living with less is gaining popularity in Quebec, particularly since the pandemic, which has been an opportunity for many to review their priorities.

Although still marginal, it is an idea that is even more popular in France, where the Collective Work Less questions “the too central place of forced labor in our lives”. “This movement is intended as a gateway to work and a renewed freedom”, it is specified on its website.

Despite this interest, the subject remains taboo in France, as in Quebec.

A taboo that persists

Economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that his grandchildren would work 15 hours a week^⁠1. If automation and robots are there, production is constantly growing, there is a lack of manpower and the idea of ​​reducing working hours always comes up against societal barriers.

A little throwback to 2006, when Lucien Bouchard set Quebec on fire by accusing the Quebec people of not working enough, compared to their Canadian and American neighbors. His remarks had been parodied on the broadcast of the Bye Bye from RBO: “Drop the cranberries, squeeze the drink, put on your Kanuk, go outside, work!” […] You will sleep when you are dead! “, launched an André Ducharme metamorphosed into the former Prime Minister.

In 2006, and still today, working less is associated with laziness and idleness as hard workers are praised.

“The foundation of all of this is the belief that we are genetically wired to work,” anthropologist James Suzman writes in Work – The Great Business of Humanity, published in French last fall. A theory that he deconstructs in this historic essay by demonstrating that work did not play a primordial role in theHomo sapiens hunter-gatherer.

“We now know that hunter-gatherers such as the Ju/’hoansi [du Kalahari, un peuple qu’il a étudié] did not live under the constant threat of starvation. […] They rarely worked more than 15 hours a week and devoted most of their time to leisure and rest. Then came agriculture, concerns about scarcity and this growing emphasis on work.

“Everyone is aware that they would like to have more time, but we become stuck saying to ourselves: I have to work full time, I will consume to feel better”, deplores Jérôme Lemay, who made the choice. to work 32 hours a week.

Companies need to be creative

“Working less can sound pejorative,” says Geneviève Provencher, founder of Flow, the first Quebec job search site that brings together and supports companies wishing to offer flexible working conditions.

Having worked in human resources in large companies, Geneviève Provencher went into business to be able to better balance work and family and to allow others – not just parents – to find a better balance. At Flow, the working week is 30 hours per week. “It has a big impact on people’s morale,” she says.

However, this is an avenue little used by companies, even those who are champions of flexibility (telecommuting, four-day week, unlimited vacation). Since reducing working hours is also accompanied by a drop in wages for employees, “it should be done on a voluntary basis,” says Ms.^me Provencher.

Professor at TELUQ’s School of Business Administration Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay calls on companies to be more creative in terms of work time and team organization. “It always seems very complex when there are people who want to work shorter hours. People might want to work a certain number of months in the year, while parents might want longer vacations in the summer. »

Yet when aging workers ask for a reduction in their working hours, they often meet with refusal, she found in the course of her research. “Until now, I’ve heard people say, ‘I had to threaten to quit, to simply retire, to get the company to agree to negotiate.’ »

“Why would it be devaluing work to allow the time devoted to it to be reduced in order to leave time for other activities? », asks the French philosopher Céline Marty, in her essay Work less to live better – Guide for an anti-productivist philosophyreleased last fall.

A social and political reflection

In France, as here, the subject is little discussed and the point of view of this professor of philosophy, a graduate of the Paris Sorbonne University and popularizer on YouTube, is considered radical since it is a whole model that she proposes to revolutionize: eliminate less essential jobs, produce less but better, establish a universal income, among others.

“Individual choices make it possible to convince by example, so they are important to pass the course and show that it is possible. On the other hand, it remains a privileged solution, for people who have the means to reduce their time, to organize it differently or to reduce their income without it causing them a problem. It is not aimed at the most precarious workers. »

However, this collective and political reflection is necessary, according to her, in the context of climate change. “I don’t think there will be any future other than downsizing. We live far beyond our material means on an ecological level. And besides, we are already paying the consequences now. I don’t know what it’s like where you are, here it’s 40°C. »

1. John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)