In 2025, 11.2 percent of American wage and salary workers were represented by a union. Union members were 10.0 percent of workers. In the private sector the membership rate was 5.9 percent.
In 1983, the first year with comparable data, the membership rate was 20.1 percent.
In 1905 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law that limited work in bakeries to ten hours a day and sixty hours a week. The case is Lochner v. New York, and the vote was five to four.
Justice Rufus Peckham wrote for the majority. Laws “limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented: “The 14th Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
The Court’s 1937 decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish signaled the end of this view. Federal law today still sets no limit on hours for adults.
“There is no limit in the Act on the number of hours employees aged 16 and older may work in any workweek.” This is how the U.S. Department of Labor describes the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law on wages and hours.
The law requires covered workers who are not exempt to receive overtime pay after 40 hours in a week. It does not set a maximum. “The Act does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or regular days of rest, as such.”
Under federal law an employer may require overtime and may dismiss an employee who refuses. Some states give workers more rights.
An American phrase that went global in 2022, describing an employee who does their job and nothing beyond it. The phrase calls that quitting. Doing what you were hired to do is framed as a partial withdrawal.
The World Health Organization classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019, and American surveys report it at high rates across professions. It is discussed in the United States as a condition of the individual, with individual remedies — resilience, boundaries, self-care.
Several European countries and some American states and cities have debated legislation limiting after-hours contact. In the United States the measures have been introduced in a handful of jurisdictions and have mostly not passed. The idea is live in American discussion and largely absent from American law.
American wage law divides employees into those entitled to overtime pay and those exempt from it, and exempt status covers most professional and managerial roles. For those workers the law places no limit on hours and requires no additional payment.
A number of American companies have replaced fixed vacation allowances with unlimited policies. Research and reporting repeatedly find that employees under them take less leave rather than more, because nobody can say what is normal.
The United States is the only advanced economy with no federal law requiring paid annual leave. There is no minimum, no entitlement, and no obligation on an employer to grant any.
Where leave exists it is a benefit offered by the employer, negotiated individually or set by company policy, and it can be changed.
June 16, 2025. Wall Street Journal. “Many of us feel compelled to say yes to things that make us miserable. Yes to work that is not our job. Yes to taking on jobs when we’re at home or on vacation. Yes to boring, unnecessary meetings or company dinners.”
Key Points: saying yes to unwanted tasks leads to unhappiness, while saying no, when done correctly, brings relief; evaluate requests by weighing their cost to you against the benefit to others before responding; base your “no” on personal principles, use empowered language, and reinforce with confident body language.
The author is Vanessa Patrick, associate dean of research and Bauer professor of marketing at the University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business. She is the author of “The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No That Puts You in Charge of Your Life.”
Some interesting comments on the article:
“Like so many things, it depends. In my experience, unless the corporate world has changed much more than I think it likely has, saying “no” to your boss is generally not a great career move.”
“Following this advice will result in getting you and your priorities fired! This article is written by an academic who clearly has no idea how large, fast organizations work. It’s incredibly arrogant to assume that one always knows the valid reason to do something that seems out of one’s lane. It assumes you work with the same knowledge/data as your boss. That’s rarely the case. The current environment is so ultra-competitive that missing even a slight competitive edge or event could mean the decisive difference. Do not listen to someone so entranced in academia (with tenure and no competition ) who is advising you to do.”
“I started reading this article, then quickly said, “No”.”
“The author clearly never worked at a consulting firm or any kind of matrix organization where there were many bosses with competing interests. However, she is publishing, and that’s important for academicians.”
“After moving 3 times in 4 years for my employer, he then asked me to move again after one year. Talked to my wife over the weekend and decided the family would stay while I listed conditions for accepting the move including weekend flights back home. On following Monday told the boss I would accept the assignment and handed him my written list of conditions. He said forget about it and asked me who he should give the assignment to. I stayed at the then current location for 6 years and moved to final location before retirement. Oh and got a another promotion along the way. Cannot just say no; must be strategic/political. Always do what is best for the company with caveats.”