Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by myohmy » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #82

mlyle wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that one needs both and that they serve complementary purposes. But a minimum wage is useful to the extent that there are jobs for your lowest skill, least desirable workers. And ensuring that may take reducing the work week.

Higher minimum wage laws do hurt low skilled workers. We have two great big machines at work each will pay for it's self in under a year at current minimum wage rates. There is no choice but to replace the people for machines if we want to remain competitive.

If the machines can replace people then they will replace people regardless. Its a capex vs opex decision and capex is almost always better in the long run. That's why that argument is a bit of a red herring.

Self checkout came regardless of whether the state had a minimum wage increase or not. As soon as the technology was mature enough it was rolled out.

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

#192

Post by ghaff » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

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.

Haven't done this long of a pure personal trip in a while but in a previous (US) job I took several month long trips with an otherwise conventional vacation/work schedule. Combination of fairly long tenure at the company, some unpaid leave from taking leave for a Christmas shutdown, and concentrating almost all my vacation on those trips.

A 6-day work week means you basically have to take time off to go away for weekends at all.

That said, I'm not convinced a 3 day weekend is much better than a 2 day weekend on a routine basis, certainly compared to have the same time allocated more flexibly.

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

#193

Post by anonAndOn » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #150

anonAndOn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for those with support, safety nets, options & abilities. The young, the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped, the convicted... they're supposed eat cat food and go sleep under an overpass until they get motivated/healthy/unconvicted/a car/____?

> the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the…

The old - One's employment options often severely diminish as they approach retirement. With health insurance (and those costly prescriptions) tied to employment, how little do you think some are willing to work for? Would you work for free if your life depended on it?

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

#194

Post by medvezhenok » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #150

anonAndOn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for those with support, safety nets, options & abilities. The young, the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped, the convicted... they're supposed eat cat food and go sleep under an overpass until they get motivated/healthy/unconvicted/a car/____?

> the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the…

As I noted above, if we had UBI to cover bare essentials, we wouldn't need a minimum wage.

That's basically what Walmart abuses anyways via the welfare system; it's almost a subsidy to make their model kind of glue-together in the end. Let's just make it explicit. Pass UBI, repeal minimum wage laws.

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

#195

Post by wayoutthere » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

throwaway803453 wrote: post #27

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title. I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting. 4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd b…

> I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

As a contractor, I would just charge you for the time it takes to itemize an invoice while I do it sitting on a call for another job I’m also billing for. And I would be very thorough with my itemization so you know exactly what you’re getting…

The non-itemized invoice is free. We can argue over contract terms if you want to or come to an arrangement if you don’t feel you got your money’s worth, but if I disagree the result is going to be completion of the terms of the contract and we go our separate ways. I’m not hurting for work, I can fire an obnoxious customer if it buys me QoL.

The pandemic tipped the balance of power from the money men to the workers. We’re going to watch this dynamic play out in ways large and small, but the net is that employees have a lot more power to set the terms of engagement than employers do right now.

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

#196

Post by mlyle » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

anonAndOn wrote: post #193

mlyle wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the…

The old - One's employment options often severely diminish as they approach retirement. With health insurance (and those costly prescriptions) tied to employment, how little do you think some are willing to work for? Would you work for free if your life depended on it?

I feel like you avoided engaging at all with my comment. I explicitly commented that the safety nets and retirement system are not perfect and could be better, but that I believed minimum wage was not a solution. Increasing the minimum wage isn't going to get more people just short of retirement health insurance.

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

#197

Post by medvezhenok » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #173

anonAndOn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for those with support, safety nets, options & abilities. The young, the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped, the convicted... they're supposed eat cat food and go sleep under an overpass until they get motivated/healthy/unconvicted/a car/____?

The way to get young/unskilled people to build skills earlier in life is to lower the minimum wage, not increase it. No one is going to hire a 12 year old for a part time job if the minimum wage is $15. It just increases the minimum skill level to be hireable. But hire them for $7.50 and they might have skills worth $15 by the time they're 18.

I think you overestimate how wage-sensitive most industries are. Most companies today have consolidated enough to have a lot of pricing power - if they raise prices, consumers will just have to buckle up and take it.

We've already had history in the U.S. where the inflation-adjusted minimum wage was way higher than it is today and yet the labor participation rate was also higher than it is today.

But my personal preference is for UBI coupled with a repeal of the minimum wage.

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

#198

Post by sam0x17 » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

myohmy wrote: post #187

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…

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…

Once you have a full time employee who is "the HR person" who has a department to run, and has OKRs, unless there is absolutely stellar company culture pushing for the contrary, that's it, that's the end, all your good benefits are going to get micromanaged away.

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

#199

Post by meepmorp » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

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.

Where I work everyone gets Dec 24 - Jan 2nd off, "for free." You can also take PTO along with it if you want a longer break.

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

#200

Post by lolsal » Wed, Dec 01, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

frontman1988 wrote: post #190

lolsal wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would urge you to reconsider your work/life balance. Trading 10 months for 2 seems like a poor trade. A 4 day work week automatically gets you 52 extra days a year. If you have flexibility in the day of the week, it's very compelling.