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Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

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Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#181

Post by lotsofpulp »

mlyle wrote: post #26
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #6

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and…

I personally believe that the government should focus on a shorter workweek rather than minimum wage increases in the near term. If we shorten the nominal workweek to 36 hours before overtime is required (and encourage this to be in the form of 4x9 or 9/2 * 8): * Supply of labor will fall, increasing equilibrium pay for everyone * Everyone's quality of life goes up * Traffic and environmental impacts from commuting s…

The biggest problem is the minimum wage for salaried exempt workers needs to be a few hundred thousand dollars.

Otherwise, businesses will continue to label employees managers with no actual management responsibilities with the sole goal of paying someone a lower hourly rate in exchange for a more certain periodic payment.

Once you remove this loophole, hourly pay will naturally rise as businesses will opt to hire more hourly workers. The biggest reason hourly workers lack negotiating power is businesses can lean in the salaried “managers” to fill in at no extra cost.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#183

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #167
DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There should be no minimum wage. People excepting jobs will set the minimum wage because people act in their own self interest.' I'm very capitalistic and libertarian, but reality is all systems need to manage edge cases. Minimum wage is a part of that. To believe that the market can figure everything out requires serious tunnel vision.

> Minimum wage is a part of that. It's not the only way though. We have no legally defined or mandated minimum wage here in Norway (nor elsewhere in the Nordic region I think). But the effective minimum is probably higher than the mandated minimum in any other country. Broadly speaking the way it is done here is that the national association of employers and the principal unions negotiate a tariff for each industry a…

Sure, not the only way. But unions are an example of circuit breaker for when a pure capitalistic system fails. Some countries extend the union to all citizens in all industries as a minimum wage. The nordic region (including gov't) seems to have their shit together, more than the rest of the world. I think less gov't is better, just not the anarchy the previous poster suggests.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#184

Post by vkou »

mlyle wrote: post #117
ethbr0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole point of the minimum wage that the federal / state / local governments are the negotiator of last resort? I.e. people with minimum wage jobs would be paid even less, but for the government using its power to negotiate for them

> Isn't the whole point of the minimum wage that the federal / state / local governments are the negotiator of last resort? Yes. And it's a necessary thing to have. On the other hand... if someone is doing work that returns $15.50/hour on average to the business, and is employed at $10/hour, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour doesn't get that person a raise: it gets them laid off. The things that IMO really help th…

> On the other hand... if someone is doing work that returns $15.50/hour on average to the business, and is employed at $10/hour, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour doesn't get that person a raise: it gets them laid off.

No, what it does is it causes prices to go up, which are amortized across all of society - between both people who are paid $15/hour, and people who are paid $150/hour.

On average, it is a small wealth transfer from the average person to the working poor.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#185

Post by cecilpl2 »

twalla wrote: post #83
austinl wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company I work for shuts our offices down from the 24th to the 2nd. Engineers submit availability for on-call schedules, and get a gift card for each on-call day they're responsible for. I feel very spoiled, but I think this is generally a trend amongst west-coast tech companies? I've had a similar experience at previous places, and it seemed like the rationale for the holiday…

The real rationale is to remove a metric shitton of accrued PTO from their books if paying out PTO on employee departure is something the company does.

My office shutdown this year is three full weeks, from the 20th to the 7th. Nobody is burning PTO.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#187

Post by myohmy »

austinl wrote: post #61
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #6

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and…

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company I work for shuts our offices down from the 24th to the 2nd. Engineers submit availability for on-call schedules, and get a gift card for each on-call day they're responsible for. I feel very spoiled, but I think this is generally a trend amongst west-coast tech companies? I've had a similar experience at previous places, and it seemed like the rationale for the holiday…

My employer does this, and is the only one in town who does. It isn't deducted from our 4 week of vacation either. Its the only reason I stick around despite subpar pay.

It turns out the HR books are right and pay isn't the primary consideration after a certain point. The problem is that most HR people take that and say, "We're already soooo generous, we already offer unlimited vacation (lol), so we don't have to pay people too!"

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#188

Post by mixedCase »

DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #168
trcarney wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you want the best of your labor pool. As for sweatshops in China, these are the growing pains of a developing economy. The work conditions there suck but I bet they are better than being bent over in a rice field all day. You are also rapidly seeing this change as the economy becomes more developed there, even in the face of an oppressive government. https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-working-its-way-up-fr…

You're still looking at the best case scenario (ie. a person willingly entering into prostitution), while blind to the worst. The are reason why unions, minimum wage, unemployment insurance, universal healthcare is so common around the world.

How do any of those things fix slavery? Or are you using a different definition for "willing" more akin to "would strongly prefer to".

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#189

Post by medvezhenok »

mlyle wrote: post #84
toomuchtodo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd simply cut wages when the labor supply shock recedes and labor is in surplus again. Businesses do not pay the minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts; on the contrary, it communicates "we'd pay you less if we could, the law simply doesn't allow us to."

Sure. But note also that there are people one might be willing to gamble on employing at $12/hour but that don't offer a positive return at capital at $15/hour. I think minimum wage laws are important, but that reducing the supply of labor will do more to push up the wages of the lowest earners.

Then pass UBI instead and drop the minimum wage laws (there's no need for them if UBI were a thing). Problem solved.

Right now the problem is in the power dynamic between companies and employees - the dynamic is very unbalanced in the companies favor. In "Bullshit Jobs" Graeber compares the current system to a Dom-Sub relationship with no safeword for the "fake-competitive" industries that are not unionized.

UBI is the safeword.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#190

Post by frontman1988 »

lolsal wrote: post #174
frontman1988 wrote: post #80

I would rather have a 6 day work week with 2 months of paid holidays every year. There isn't much you can do on a 3 day break that you can't do in a 1 day or 2 day break. But a month long break and you can do crazy stuff like hiking in Papua New Guinea or sailing across an ocean.

Life happens outside of two months a year, though.

Yet those two months will be more memorable than the ten months of monotonous life. I just feel work and related city life bullshit stays with you even on the weekends. There is some fun in just escaping. Or maybe I am too much vacation starved due to covid lol.
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