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Belgium approves four-day week

euronews.com

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Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#81

Post by dahfizz »

renewiltord wrote: post #60
dahart wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article didn’t make any arguments about increased productivity, it was suggesting that better work-life balance was healthier and helps parents with children. What evidence is there for an increase in productivity when moving from 40 to 32 hours/week? I believe productivity increases have been demonstrated in some cases for hourly reductions when moving from overtime (say, 60 hours/week) down to 40. This is groun…

I think we can agree that working 100% of the time leads to poor societal outcomes and 0% of the time leads to poor societal outcomes. We probably have some shared view that it’s Laffer-curvish without being sure of the shape. It just seems unlikely to me that 40 hrs is a total system optimum since it was a historical accident. Personally I think it might be 50 hrs/week but it just seems strange that we’d believe tha…

This is moving the goalposts. The original claim is specifically that working a 4x8 week increases total productivity, not some nebulous "societal outcomes".

Personally, I find the "societal outcomes" argument much stronger. I personally would like to work less and get paid the same.

Claiming that productivity will increase as hours worked goes down is a big claim that requires big evidence.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#82

Post by aaomidi »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #57
ATsch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't even really decided. Like most current worker protections, it was arrived at through struggle between industralists and the then still powerful labor unions. They won the 12 hour workday, then the 10 hour workday, then the 8 hour work day and that's when the unions were defanged.

>then the 8 hour work day and that's when the unions were defanged. And now the working hours are going back up. I can talk about my country in Europe, that after the 2008 crisis, and due to the increased competition pressure form globalization, many workers' rights and protections were reduced "to increase economic competitiveness", and many professionals, blue and white collar, are now doing more than the 8h/day ei…

This is effectively a description of neoliberal politics. There's going to be a pushback against it, and I hope that pushback doesn't get taken advantage of and go full nazi-lite movement.

We're already kinda seeing something similar in the US. Where a lot of republican voters are part of the "lower class" of society, and their anger is being taken advantage of and translated to xenophobia.

Combating this and creating a fair society is the hardest (yes, including climate change) challenge I see in us going forward.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#83

Post by pipodeclown »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #80
marlowe221 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... compressed 4 day weeks do nothing for you if you're a parent. My kids get out of school/daycare at 3:30 pm. That's hard enough to deal with working 8x5 days, especially post-COVID when after school care of any kind is basically unobtainium a this point. I literally cannot work 9 or 10 hour days.

You probably have a partner and can arrange for shifts. Part of the deal is about flexible working hours. But yes, it is nowhere as bold as the French 35-hour work week.

In the Netherlands, 36 hour workweeks (many workers doing the 4x9 set up), is becoming more normal. I'm in the financial sector and all of the large banks have a 36 hour workweek.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#84

Post by IshKebab »

ghaff wrote: post #27
IshKebab wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You already have this now - always had it. There's nothing new or interesting about what you're "proposing". That's not remotely true. There's a real stigma about part-time work and most employers would just say NEXT! if you said "please can I work 4 days a week for 80% pay?".

Well, it's not 80% pay given benefits and overhead costs associated with having an employee. Probably more like a 30%+ cut. ADDED: Assuming it really is a 20% cut in productivity which, for office workers, probably isn't the case but would be for many others including white collar jobs like lawyers, doctors, consultants, etc.

Yeah mean a 15% cut right, because the fixed overheads stay the same? Yeah that's probably why most employers aren't keen on it.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#85

Post by ATsch »

aaomidi wrote: post #82
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>then the 8 hour work day and that's when the unions were defanged. And now the working hours are going back up. I can talk about my country in Europe, that after the 2008 crisis, and due to the increased competition pressure form globalization, many workers' rights and protections were reduced "to increase economic competitiveness", and many professionals, blue and white collar, are now doing more than the 8h/day ei…

This is effectively a description of neoliberal politics. There's going to be a pushback against it, and I hope that pushback doesn't get taken advantage of and go full nazi-lite movement. We're already kinda seeing something similar in the US. Where a lot of republican voters are part of the "lower class" of society, and their anger is being taken advantage of and translated to xenophobia. Combating this and creatin…

I think one has to be very careful with taking the narrative of lower class, "hillbilly" republicans too much at face value. While yes, these people definitely do exist, the perception that this group is representative of republicans is something that is deliberately cultivated for political means.

As examples like recent protests show, the true core are people like business owners and wealthy suburbanites who are very much voting for their interests, not against them. This is also shown by how in every presidential election since at least 2012, voters below $50k always voted firmly in favor of democrats while voters above $100k voted firmly in favor of Republicans.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#86

Post by IshKebab »

mettamage wrote: post #47
IshKebab wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You already have this now - always had it. There's nothing new or interesting about what you're "proposing". That's not remotely true. There's a real stigma about part-time work and most employers would just say NEXT! if you said "please can I work 4 days a week for 80% pay?".

It is possible, you need to be at a company where work is viewed as work and the rest of your life as the rest of your life. Not all companies are like this, some companies think that your work is your life. With those companies they'd probably next you. Then again, I'm just n=1.

Yeah I mean, I've done it for about a year. But we're definitely the lucky ones.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#87

Post by renewiltord »

dahfizz wrote: post #81
renewiltord wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can agree that working 100% of the time leads to poor societal outcomes and 0% of the time leads to poor societal outcomes. We probably have some shared view that it’s Laffer-curvish without being sure of the shape. It just seems unlikely to me that 40 hrs is a total system optimum since it was a historical accident. Personally I think it might be 50 hrs/week but it just seems strange that we’d believe tha…

This is moving the goalposts. The original claim is specifically that working a 4x8 week increases total productivity , not some nebulous "societal outcomes". Personally, I find the "societal outcomes" argument much stronger. I personally would like to work less and get paid the same. Claiming that productivity will increase as hours worked goes down is a big claim that requires big evidence.

Haha, I'm moving the playing field, but there are no goal posts in this game. We're just talking.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#88

Post by aaomidi »

ATsch wrote: post #85
aaomidi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively a description of neoliberal politics. There's going to be a pushback against it, and I hope that pushback doesn't get taken advantage of and go full nazi-lite movement. We're already kinda seeing something similar in the US. Where a lot of republican voters are part of the "lower class" of society, and their anger is being taken advantage of and translated to xenophobia. Combating this and creatin…

I think one has to be very careful with taking the narrative of lower class, "hillbilly" republicans too much at face value. While yes, these people definitely do exist, the perception that this group is representative of republicans is something that is deliberately cultivated for political means. As examples like recent protests show, the true core are people like business owners and wealthy suburbanites who are ve…

You're absolutely right.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#89

Post by app4soft »

stronglikedan wrote: post #70
app4soft wrote: post #65

> Belgium approves four-day week Without mentioning "work" or "job", the title looks like week in Belgium would consist of only 4 days now: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.

Makes sense. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the new week end . ;-)

> Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

There are no such days in Belgium anymore.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#90

Post by RamblingCTO »

hatchnyc wrote: post #40
RamblingCTO wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth is this related to "agile" software/product development? > I always see lots of supporting infrastructure being skimped on so a new feature can be delivered faster That's bad management and has nothing to do with agile. Reserve time for bug fixes (or have fire fighting capabilities) and refactoring, include time for tech tickets. ALWAYS. Plan workload jointly with developers, talk to them regularly. It's…

Right, nobody who has a bad experience with agile is doing it right. I am very familiar with this line of argument. Fact remains though that back when everything was waterfall (proudly) and we shipped physical media to clients, when a bug often meant flying a support engineer out to the customer’s office, software was generally delivered more completed and vetted, and the QA group wasn’t allowed to report to the same…

> Now some software companies don’t even have a QA organization, we are inventing new organizational and technical structures to ensure that the developers are perpetually on call to resolve issues, and there is definitely a school of thought that says delivery of a complete product is an anti-pattern because after all every feature is just an experiment that you are testing on your users.

That's bad management again imho, not tied to agile. I hope you're not working like that! We are a small startup and have a ratio of 2 QA per 7 developers. And QA is kind of outside the scrum process (with more QA resources I could have some integrated and working on new features directly, that would be nice, but you know, money and stuff). We actually run automated end-to-end tests via selenium via CI on every new docker image release on a production-like environment. Plus manual QA.

My point wasn't that "agile" wasn't done right, but that management is shit and it wouldn't even make a difference if you used waterfall or agile in this situation.

Also, > to ensure that the developers are perpetually on call to resolve issues

That's a good way to get rid of your developers lol.

You're points about "always on" business are interesting, but I don't experience it like that. Maybe depends on the country/sector?

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