Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day • Hacker News Board

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#51

Post by zeckalpha » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 12:56 AM UTC

xlm1717 wrote: post #22

jontro wrote: post #7

As a swede I think the title is highly misleading. Sweden is not shifting to a 6-hour workday. Sure there are a few experiments but the baseline is that sweden (which has a huge public sector) cannot afford it without raising taxes further. The current forecasts for the future indicates that taxes has to be raised a lot just to maintain the current standard. I would be very surprised if the 6 hour workday would be pr…

As an American, I'm interested in knowing why it would require Sweden to raise taxes. Since you mentioned a huge public sector, is it a case of needing extra workers to work shifts so that pubic services are run at the usual hours? I imagine private companies would be able to get away with it, as long as all their competitors also switch to six-hour workdays.

Income taxes on hourly wages would go down.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#52

Post by e12e » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 1:03 AM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #50

jontro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against the idea. Was just pointing out that Sweden in general is not moving towards this. Not a single political party is actively driving the 35 hour line which was in the talks a decade ago.

But you said they'd have to raise taxes, which directly implies that you think it would hurt productivity.

He(?) said:

> Sure there are a few experiments but the baseline is that sweden (which has a huge public sector) cannot afford it without raising taxes further.

The general idea is that while you might just kick office workers out the door 2 hours early, and not see a drop in what the actually get done (and there are a lot of office workers in the public sector) - in other areas, notably healthcare (and also Miletary, Police, Search&Rescue, Firefighting, Child protective services ... and to a certain extent education) you need to have a certain number of people on at any given time. Like-for-like that means changing from 38 hours to 46 (although it's not that simple, as schedules tend to overlap, and there's probably at least double the people working during daylight hours).

If you pay them all the same, you have a ~15-20% (guesstimate) pay and pension cost increase (along with a similar increase in income tax, but as no one pays 100% income tax that won't cover the new positions).

Being Norwegian, I don't have that much of an idea about Swedish government finances, but it sounds reasonable that the public sector would probably need more staff if moving to 6 hours.

There'd probably be many benefits, eg: lower percentage of sick leave, early retirement due to health issues etc -- but it's not inconceivable that it would be overall more expensive. I think it would be worth it -- but that's a different discussion.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#53

Post by e12e » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

zeckalpha wrote: post #51

xlm1717 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I'm interested in knowing why it would require Sweden to raise taxes. Since you mentioned a huge public sector, is it a case of needing extra workers to work shifts so that pubic services are run at the usual hours? I imagine private companies would be able to get away with it, as long as all their competitors also switch to six-hour workdays.

Income taxes on hourly wages would go down.

Normally 6-hour work-day efforts imply equal pay, so taxation might stay the same, or go up, not necessarily down, even for hourly wages.

For hourly wages, that'd mean a ~20% pay high per hour.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#54

Post by lohengramm » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 1:22 AM UTC

tonomics wrote: post #23

Standardizing work always leads to problems. Some individuals need 3 hours, others 12 hours. The only question is whether the job is done.

Fully agree! Different people at different moments in their lives have different time requirements. There is no way to make everyone happy with one single standard -- freedom of choice is the best choice here.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#55

Post by lfowles » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 1:26 AM UTC

tonomics wrote: post #23

Standardizing work always leads to problems. Some individuals need 3 hours, others 12 hours. The only question is whether the job is done.

And sometimes I need 6 hours in the office to finish the day in a 2 hour blaze of glory

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#56

Post by noarchy » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 2:38 AM UTC

it_learnses wrote: post #5

Can't wait till this happens in North America. I hope we realize shorter work days and basic income in the next couple of decades. Then we will truly have a golden age.

Except these are companies choosing to shorten their work days. This isn't a top-down imposition by government. I suspect you are envisioning a 6-hour day, with government requiring overtime compensation beyond that. As for basic income, that's another discussion entirely.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#57

Post by bmelton » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 2:40 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #30

lukeschlather wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trillions of dollars" doesn't really give any insight into the scope of the problem, it just suggests the number is really large. The scope of the problem is that we have about 1.5 years worth of GDP in debt. So, with yearly payments of 10% of GDP, we could pay down the debt in 15 years. Suppose through automation we increase productivity by 50%. We could shorten the work week by 25%, add a tax to pay down 10% of th…

The obligations extend well beyond the debt. Social security, medicare, and medicaid will be much more costly than the debt for at least 20 years (at current levels). Public sector pensions are another huge non-debt liability.

Another interesting wrinkle that lukeschlather brings up is that if the productivity increases are the result of more and more automation, does that not also mean that there are fewer and fewer people paying into social security? Or am I misunderstanding the statement?

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#58

Post by protomyth » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:33 AM UTC

pnut wrote: post #33

Havoc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully expect the US to be the very last to switch.

US businesses will do one better! 0-hour workweeks for everyone, the second robotic slaves are economically advantageous!

No joke. People are already getting cut to 25 or less hours for health insurance reasons. I was told in a staff meeting that we might be going to a 4-day week with the cut in pay that entails since we will have a budget shortfall and our health insurance is going to do a 3x increase this next year.

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#59

Post by aianus » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:51 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #52

asdfologist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you said they'd have to raise taxes, which directly implies that you think it would hurt productivity.

He(?) said: > Sure there are a few experiments but the baseline is that sweden (which has a huge public sector) cannot afford it without raising taxes further. The general idea is that while you might just kick office workers out the door 2 hours early, and not see a drop in what the actually get done (and there are a lot of office workers in the public sector) - in other areas, notably healthcare (and also Miletary,…

Why would you pay them the same? Hire 14% more workers, work them 35h instead of 40h, and pay them 14% less each. Costs the same, doesn't it?

Re: Some companies in Sweden are testing a six-hour work day

#60

Post by venomsnake » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 3:53 AM UTC

jontro wrote: post #7

As a swede I think the title is highly misleading. Sweden is not shifting to a 6-hour workday. Sure there are a few experiments but the baseline is that sweden (which has a huge public sector) cannot afford it without raising taxes further. The current forecasts for the future indicates that taxes has to be raised a lot just to maintain the current standard. I would be very surprised if the 6 hour workday would be pr…

Since real productive time of programmers is 2 hours daily and probably for managers is 10-20 minutes, we could cut a lot of dead stuff in IT and don't suffer productivity drop. May differ in other situations.