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Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#71

Post by irrational »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #47
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #38

They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the custo…

> they will just make everyone part time. The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance

So the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare so that it can be used to blackmail employees?

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#73

Post by pwinnski »

slively wrote: post #49
pwinnski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the h…

Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...

The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#75

Post by lm28469 »

sokoloff wrote: post #11

In some places in Europe, after some period of employment, you can demand of your employer to let you work 80% of hours for 80% of pay. I have team members in Europe on this schedule and it works out well for everyone. Based on that experience, I'd also be open to such an arrangement for employees based in geographies where that's not legally required, but is legally and practically permitted. My guess is that most p…

> My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that

People are always surprised when I tell them I work 4 days a week; asking if I have kids or a sick mother to attend to. Recruiters are especially weird with questions like: "why do you only want to work 4 days a week?"

I usually just reply "Why do you want to work 5 days a week?", most of the time they don't know what to answer

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#76

Post by x86x87 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #31
seibelj wrote: post #4

I work 70 hours a week. Surely you wouldn’t outlaw my ethic? And if a run a company, surely I could require my employees to work 5 days, 40 hours? The solution is to let business owners switch to 4 day weeks and then let the free market sort it out.

I prefer working all the time. It is way more fun to build stuff, especially if that's your own company.

Nope. Your system is flawed because you cannot extended it to all of our society. It's great it works for you but that's about it.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#77

Post by n8cpdx »

x86x87 wrote: post #69
n8cpdx wrote: post #37

Why not a one day weekend? How is three days any less absurd and arbitrary than two? Frankly, given where we are at as a society in terms of labor and productivity relative to demand, it seems like now isn’t the time to be pumping the brakes. The basis of fully automated luxury communism has not yet been delivered and won’t be for a while; Europeans will likely freeze this winter and even in the US, if I call 911 I’m…

Why rest at all? I mean we are all machines and our goal in life is to work!

I encourage you to read the rest of the comment, where I lay out alternatives to arbitrary day-based systems that allow _more_ rest for people who want that and _more_ flexibility for everyone.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#80

Post by soperj »

just-ok wrote: post #51
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #38

They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the custo…

The OP notes they’re referring explicitly to jobs with a 5 day work week, so your comments re: service industry, etc. are valid, they’re already excluded. Irrational might not be the right word; arbitrary is pretty accurate, though. If productivity and output change minimally, why should expectations or pay? Let’s be honest, the typical 5-day office job work week the OP is referencing has a LOT of downtime.

> has a LOT of downtime

the way I look at it, I'm being paid for being available during those work hours, not necessarily doing work during all those work hours.

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