"Work kills people and no one cares"

When Jeffrey Pfeffer says that "work kills people and nobody cares", he does not say it metaphorically.

He says it exactly, with all his letters, based on the research he has been doing for decades, both in the United States and around the world.

Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and author or co-author of 15 books on the theory of organization and human resource management, says in his latest book "Dying for to Salary ". for a salary, in English), that the current work system makes people sick and even ends up with people's lives.

He tells the story of Kenji Hamada, a 42-year-old man who died of a heart attack at his office in Tokyo. I worked 75 hours a week and it took me about two hours to get to the office.

Just before his death, he had worked 40 consecutive days without stopping and his widow had declared that Kenji was overly stressed.

It is only one of the many examples cited in the publication, in which the author puts into context the effects of a work system that sometimes becomes "inhumane" because of from an excessive workload.

According to the evidence collected by Pfeffer, in the United States, 61% of employees consider that stress has made them sick and 7% that they have been hospitalized for work-related reasons.

In fact, his estimates suggest that stress is linked to the annual death of 120,000 American workers.

And from an economic point of view, academics stand out, stress costs more than 300 billion dollars a year for employers in this country.

At BBC Mundo, we talk to him.

In your book, you mention that there is a toxic work system that kills people. What evidence do you have about it and how does modern work affect employees?

There is evidence of its effects on health. Long hours of work, lay-offs, lack of health insurance and stress create enormous economic insecurity, family conflict and disease.

The work has become inhuman. On the one hand, companies have basically ignored their responsibility to their employees.

But it also happens that, along with the growth of the "labor market economy" (of self-employed workers), precariousness of employment also increases.

Who is responsible for this phenomenon?

If you think of the 50s or 60s, leaders said that it was necessary to reconcile the interests of employees, customers and shareholders. Now everything is focused on shareholders.

In investment banks, for example, there is a very general practice in which you work, you go to your home to take a shower and come back to the office.

Under this system, many employees become addicted because they end up using cocaine and other drugs to stay awake.

Although the phenomenon you describe is cross-cutting, are some sectors more affected?

An employee of a factory, an airplane pilot, a truck driver, has a maximum limit of hours of work.

But ironically, in many professions, there are no limits.

In the case of the United States, you wrote that the workplace is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

At least the fifth cause, maybe more.

And who supports these deaths?

Employers are responsible and governments are responsible for doing nothing about it.

So what role does politics play in all this?

He has a huge role We need to do something to stop this. But we can not do anything at the individual level.

If you want to solve the problem in a systemic way, a systemic intervention is needed and must come from a type of regulation.

How do business leaders react when you talk to them?

Nobody argues that the data is not correct because the data is overwhelming. But that sounds like the game of "hot potato": people see the problem, but no one wants to take over.

In fact, the health costs are enormous. Working conditions cause chronic diseases such as diabetes or cardiovascular problems.

But also in terms of costs, companies can argue that changes to the work system will affect business profits.

It is that it is not true. We know that people who are stressed are more likely to quit. We know that sick employees – psychologically or physically sick – are less productive.

According to studies conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, more than 50% of work days lost due to absenteeism are related to work stress.

The American Institute of Stress estimates that the annual cost is 300,000 million US dollars per year.

It is therefore very expensive to have sick workers or employees who go to work, but whose performance is poor. It costs businesses a fortune.

On the workers side, you wrote that people should take care of themselves. But if an employee is calling for better working conditions, it is very likely that he will end up being fired. How can we change the working conditions?

First, employees must take responsibility for taking care of their own health.

If you are going to work in a place where you are not allowed to reconcile your professional life and your family life, you must leave.

Then people answer, "I can not leave." And I say, "If you are in a room and this room is smoky, you will try to escape, because the consequences for your health will be very serious."

The other thing is that people have to lobby for laws and act collectively to protect themselves, because there are also costs to society.