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Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

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Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#371

Post by kube-system »

greyman wrote: post #362
garden_hermit wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"encourage"

That's the title says, but we see similar initiatives in EU as well, and it would basically mean that the employee can choose that he wants to work only 4 days. Of course, even now anyone can also have 4 days workweek, if employer agrees to it. But in this case it is something mandatory.

From the article:

> The government included the promotion of an optional four-day workweek in its annual economic policy guideline finalized Friday

But even if it wasn’t optional, the idea of mandatory labor laws is hardly groundbreaking anyway. The US has many regulations regarding working hours.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#372

Post by ikrenji »

ForHackernews wrote: post #337
gombosg wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about these tracking software and I sincerely hope they won't get any more prevalent. As I see they are somewhat present in the contracting world. I treat it as a total, humiliating devaluation of creative engineering work (and thus their identity!) to that of unskilled factory workers.

Eventually, maybe developers will realize that they have a lot more in common with those "unskilled" workers they disdain than they do with their capitalist owners. Unions would be helpful for both, in my view.

anyone employed anywhere should be unionized, thats just common sense

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#373

Post by balfirevic »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #104
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand that concept that certain management types think they can keep you perpetually under a feeling of obligation alone.

Knowing the manager, he was extremely devoted to his work, the company and the craft. He was just holding holding me to his own standards. I'm assuming this is a problem in a lot of organisations; the people who rise to the top are the ones who lean more towards work on the work-life balance scale.

> Knowing the manager, he was extremely devoted to his work, the company and the craft. He was just holding holding me to his own standards.

He doesn't seem to have attained a high level of proficiency in the craft of people management and employee retention, though :)

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#374

Post by nirui »

onion2k wrote: post #213

I think a lot of the replies in the thread so far have focused on tech (understandably, this is HN after all) but that's missing something obvious - the 4 day week would apply to everyone. In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive work all the time they're present. Retail workers…

> Retail workers, factory workers, people who fill in the holes in roads, telephone support people, etc aren't contending with pointless meetings and busy work though. They can't do 40 hours of work in 32 hours by removing some of the hours they're not really working. What they do doesn't compress like that.

It depends.

In China, the tech companies are testing AI telephone support. My banks uses it, JD.com uses it, China UNICOM use it. If you dial to those companies, an AI will take the call and guide you through the process, no human interaction needed. Not only that, some AI will even call you to schedule appointments etc.

Another example is the supermarkets. Almost all supermarket in our city has deployed self-checkout stations, and some of them even laid off almost all but 1 or 2 of their checkout workers.

I assume this trend will eventually expand to other labor types, so the workload of those workers will be lighten as result. (But of course, we can keep the load the same, but laid off unnecessary people instead, which is more likely if the government don't intervene)

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#375

Post by JesseMReeves »

nrdvana wrote: post #310
lmm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be incredibly productive while doing it. Do you have an objective measure of that? I've worked with plenty of people who thought they were being productive for 60+ hours/week, but none of their productivity actually stacked up. Founder/CTO types were the worst, they'd bypass process and cause outages but because of their position everyone had to coddle their ego…

I can do 60s in bursts, and the bursts have lasted as long as 2 months before. I usually burn out as soon as we hit the finish line, and work 10-20 hour weeks for a while until all the comp-time is used up. But I can really do a fantastic amount of programming when I dedicate my entire brain to the project and completely exclude all other thoughts. OTOH I have to admit that both of the biggest production screwups I e…

Can you give us some advice on how you recharge effectively between such bursts? Since starting receiving salaries I am staying within 40+ hours work weeks but it does depress me because indeed my head is not always in the game. I thought about only doing the necessary busywork for some weeks because I want to get difficult projects done that just won’t work out if I’m not full-in. But I get feelings of guilt whenever I do that, and that prohibits recharging.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#376

Post by jason0597 »

tjpnz wrote: post #349
varjag wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not just that. The minute we got off the plane in Tokyo we were met by a greeter pointing people to the escalator. Not that you could miss it, that was the only exit. In the city you could see people guarding potholes. Bus stations (not particularly busy) would have a couple men at each station that would help arrange the passenger luggage: something usually helped by the driver in the West. Once we took a ni…

Does it make sense from an economics standpoint? Perhaps not. But there are benefits to society as a whole. Quite often the people doing those sorts of jobs are getting on in life, if having that job means the person can stay active that could represent a few additional years where they won't be a burden on the health system.

Honestly, giving people these unproductive jobs seems to me like a way of giving out UBI without people even realising it. Because at the end of the day, these jobs are just UBI. They don't add much to the economy.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#377

Post by ajuc »

gjhh244 wrote: post #370
varjag wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not just that. The minute we got off the plane in Tokyo we were met by a greeter pointing people to the escalator. Not that you could miss it, that was the only exit. In the city you could see people guarding potholes. Bus stations (not particularly busy) would have a couple men at each station that would help arrange the passenger luggage: something usually helped by the driver in the West. Once we took a ni…

The alternative is to pay people for doing nothing, like many EU countries do. In the end it's not cheaper.

There are similar measures in many EU countries. For example hiring unemployed people to help kids pass particularly busy streets near primary schools.

https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/k/r/1/6c/83/5b7d5e3b2b9de_p.jpg?153...

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#378

Post by varjag »

gjhh244 wrote: post #370
varjag wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not just that. The minute we got off the plane in Tokyo we were met by a greeter pointing people to the escalator. Not that you could miss it, that was the only exit. In the city you could see people guarding potholes. Bus stations (not particularly busy) would have a couple men at each station that would help arrange the passenger luggage: something usually helped by the driver in the West. Once we took a ni…

The alternative is to pay people for doing nothing, like many EU countries do. In the end it's not cheaper.

That's called welfare, which has an advantage of not masking unemployment. (but to be fair am unsure if people doing traffic cone jobs in Japan are considered employed)

Anyhow my point is it has little to do with system redundancy.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#379

Post by toomanybeersies »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #288
SilverRed wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can see. These front desk jobs exist as theft/crime deterrent and to handle edge cases. Sure you could fully automate fuel stations but who is going to call the police when kids start spray painting the windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk watching cctv all day. And who is going to deal with customers who are trying to report something is wrong with a pump. These jobs have already been automa…

> but who is going to call the police when kids start spray painting the windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk watching cctv all day. A neural network trained to classify spray-painting kids?

The deterrent effect is less because clerks are more effective than cameras at detecting crime, and more because people don't like committing crimes when there are other people nearby.

Obviously that's not an absolute statement, especially considering that armed robbery is a thing. But in general humans are better crime deterrents than security cameras or robots.

In a lot of cases, that's the sole reason for employing security guards, since the only thing they're actually allowed to do when they encounter crimes in progress is ring the police.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#380

Post by jpetso »

ineedasername wrote: post #301
namdnay wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that if the additional costs are applied to everyone, prices can increase without one restaurant in particular being penalised Demand is probably slightly elastic, but not that much (there are plenty of restaurants in France, despite very high cost of employment)

If we're just talking about restaurants in France, at least part of the higher employment costs are cancelled out-- relative to the US-- by not having to tip 20%, so the menu prices can be higher without actually passing all of that increase on to the customer.[1] As for demand, it is always elastic. A lot of people eat fast food, and a lot of those people are going to be in a position where they're just barely fitti…

On the other hand, if you work fewer days, there's more time for home cooking :P
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