Not sure what the current work week is (assuming 40?).
Does anyone actually "work" close to that amount? I've got mine down to about 8 hours with an additional 8 of meetings where i sit on mute and contribute nothing.
Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
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Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#52What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).
This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek below that would be considered unnecessary government intervention and is liable to be bad for business and workers. No one wants a pay cut that goes with it.
The proposal isn't a paycut right? As written employees keep the same pay but work 32 hours instead of 40.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#53What would happen to people's salaries in this case. Right now i'd bet most employment contracts for salary states 40 hours a week as a work week. Would everyone take a 20% pay cut? Would people try to keep the same pay for fewer hours.
People would keep the same pay for fewer hours and companies would be lucky if that's all it is.
Keep in mind that wages and salaries have been largely stagnant for decades. Companies and corporations owe their workers a hell of a lot more than "same pay at fewer hours" by now.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#54I've worked for 6 different employers in my life, Ive also employed people. 100% of my experience is that its rare for someone to ping me out of work hours, and if they do, I completely understand that its an emergency. Since I also care about the company's well being, (that's where I get my paycheck from), Im happy to help. In 20 years as an employee or employer this has happened maybe 5 times. I don't know where pe…
I guess you work in IT like 90% of the people here. For those (and me) fixed working hours are non existent. But if you work in a factory , shop etc like 90% of the other people then a 32 hour work week would very much help getting a happier life.
Maybe this won't work in the US. But in Europe I think it certainly does.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#55Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…
Eh whether government should have the right to do this takes a backseat to the fact that the government is the only way we can do this. The government is the only coordinating mechanism we have to enforce something like this, otherwise everyone is playing the prisoner’s dilemma.
Respectfully, this seems like a completely backward take.
If you don't care about whether or not government should be able to do things, and are only concerned with whether or not it does things you like, you end up with a government that can do whatever it wants. Eventually, that power will be wielded by someone you find detestable, or even worse, someone who finds you detestable.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#56My regular workweek is 35h (unionizing helps) and if it would be possible to have working IT processes and reduce some managment overhead, i could be productive the level in 30h (and actually i am). Shorter workweeks makes people focus.
I've seen several cases here where going from 40 to 32 hours to have time for kids (very very common in NL) has kept the same or better productivity.
Of course those were all desk jobs, where it's not about exactly how many hours you're typing code or writing ideas but about the output. I expect it to be less applicable for assembly line kind of work.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#57I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.
Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, yo…
> Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, you start to ask yourself "why am I doing this at all?"
I think you hit the nail right on the head there my guy.
Also once the agricultural revolution happened peasants likely had much more unallocated than the typical office worker in the united states, probably by at least an order of magnitude. I'm not claiming it was a better life but there was a greater amount of self determination which is absolutely something we should strive toward.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#58I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.
Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, yo…
They may have worked every day, but not all day, and not through every season. Yes farming is hard work, but you don't work from 6-6 every day.
Also your slippery slope argument is silly.
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#59I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.
Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, yo…
… you do realize farming isn’t a whole year thing at most latitudes, right?
Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours
#60I really feel like work would be quite tolerable at 4 days a week. 5 days plus commute has always felt suffocating to me.
Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting. When organized religion and cities started to spread, you had one day a week as the day of rest. The industrial age and unionization brought us 5 days, which is now "suffocating." So if 4 days is the norm, that would start to feel suffocating also. Then it would be 3 days. Then, when work is the thing you spend the minority of your time on, yo…
> Consider that people used to work every day. Farming, hunting, subsisting.
I would be surprised if individuals in a hunter/gatherer tribe used to work more than 8 hours every single day.
Most people also used to be in survival mode for their entire lives. That shouldn't be what we are aiming for today.