Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#111

Post by DavidPeiffer » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #28

A lot depends on the industry in question. For some things, a 24/7 presence is really needed - network management, many manufacturing processes, power plant and grid operation, etc. Moving to shorter working hours simply requires hiring more people to keep those things up and running. Now if hourly wages remain the same then labor costs don't change much and it might even improve hourly productivity (as tired people…

From a manufacturing standpoint, having to add an additional crew to a 24 hour schedule would also mean additional handoffs and opportunities for things to be missed. In my experience, manufacturing shifts are typically not more than 12.5 hours, but may bump to 16ish if there are calloffs and the like.

My understanding is that in the medical field, handoffs are viewed as large opportunities for mistakes to happen through miscommunication, and that's at least some of the justification behind having people work 12-24+ hour shifts.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#112

Post by nemo44x » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

_flat20 wrote: post #87

codegeek wrote: post #15

"And we know many people who work barely a fraction of the week, yet need to maintain this kind of presenteeism." I don't disagree with you necessarily but the people who game it now, will game it with 4 day week as well. Slackers are always going to slack. 5 day or 4 day.

Choosing life over work isn't slacking.

If your compensation agreement is based on x-hours of work and you deliberately put in less to “choose life” then you are slacking. You agreed to exchange a fixed amount of time for a fixed amount of money and are not delivering on your promise because you are slacking. I wouldn’t call it theft, but it’s definitely slacking.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#113

Post by wahnfrieden » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

dsugarman wrote: post #89

overlordalex wrote: post #13

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising

>The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious Seems like all anti-work propaganda (ie: r/antiwork) to me, there's no meat. You could turn this post into an inductive proof saying it is so obvious that having X-1 days is better than X days of work until you get smacked in the face trying to hand wave that 1->0 will have no impact on productivity.

it's fine to dream of ways to replace work with automation, for massive productivity increases to lead not only to bigger investor returns but also a higher standard of living, and to talk about how it can be realized without waiting around for it to happen or making everyone's lives worse. aren't we mostly dev types here, where this is what we think of already all the time - how to reach your goals with less action and time. why choose to owe all that time saved to your boss where the primary reward is more work to spend that newly-gained spare time on (I know the reasons people give)

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#114

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #97

overlordalex wrote: post #13

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising

Productivity has risen 61% since 1979: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ . 40 hour work weeks have been the standard. Wages only rose 17% in that same period. The capitalists have been able to bank the other 44%. A 3-day work week (aka 40% less productivity if you assume a perfectly linear relationship between time working and productivity) would still mean a nice little gain for the capitalist compared to 19…

Are workers getting more productive, or are tools and technology getting more productive?

It used to take a room full of highly trained engineers using slide-rules, protractors, and graphing paper to design the newest car or plane. Now it's done in AutoCAD. But it's not obvious to me why the employee should collect the difference for the capital investment poured into technology.

In other words, it's not as if humans have evolved since the 1970s to be more productive. Any gains are entirely the consequence of investments in tech and tools and modern managerial techniques.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#115

Post by bell-cot » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #71

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they will just make everyone part time. The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance

So the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare so that it can be used to blackmail employees?

Closer to the opposite - lack of universal healthcare in the USA is a huge downside for most employers here. And I suspect that any decent study would find that just not offering real healthcare (to employees) is 2+ orders of magnitude more common than "or else you won't get healthcare" blackmail.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#116

Post by _yb2s » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #97

overlordalex wrote: post #13

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising

Productivity has risen 61% since 1979: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ . 40 hour work weeks have been the standard. Wages only rose 17% in that same period. The capitalists have been able to bank the other 44%. A 3-day work week (aka 40% less productivity if you assume a perfectly linear relationship between time working and productivity) would still mean a nice little gain for the capitalist compared to 19…

> Capitalists are taking a larger and larger share every year. Is that ethical?

How is this possible? Wouldn't capitalists willing to take a smaller share (higher wages, better product for lower price) out-compete those that don't? It seems to me that the major advantage of capitalism is protection from this type of situation?

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#117

Post by pwinnski » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

_flat20 wrote: post #81

pwinnski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the h…

> Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. Not how it happened when going 6 to 5 days. People made it happen. And OP is one of them.

This is widely believed, at least the first part, but not true.

People (trade unionists) made eight-hour workdays happen, but Henry Ford made a five-day workday happen[0]. As I stated, most labor rights came about because of blood, sweat, and tears. Just... not that particular one, oddly enough.

The fact that Ford's five-day work weeks were made up of eight-hour days, for that you can think unions and the hard work of many people! But the shift from six days to five, not so much.

P.S. OP was probably not working age in 1926, as they would need to be to have made the shift happen originally.

0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#118

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

clumpthump wrote: post #56

What does productivity have to do with wages, hours, or conditions? The labour movement, which got us the weekend and the 8-hour workday, has had its power greatly diminished. That is why we don't work less.

It is my understanding that religion, not unions, gave us the two day weekend.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t...

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#119

Post by egypturnash » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

Please allow me to answer your question in the form of some more questions.

Why are all the bosses trying so hard to get everyone back in the office?

Why are people working from home being subjected to all kinds of "productivity tracking" that results in things like special cradles to put your mouse in to keep it moving around so you look like you're at the computer when you're actually staring off into space thinking about work stuff, at the bathroom, or slacking off in the many ways nobody would care about if you were doing that slacking at work? [1]

Why doesn't your job have a union that can decide that 3-day weekends is a thing they want to negotiate with your bosses for?

Why is modern life structured so that we spend most of our waking hours at work, with little to no room to make social connections elsewhere?

How much more money does your boss make than you do? Why?

Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country?

1: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#soli...

Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

#120

Post by ceeplusplus » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

pwinnski wrote: post #62

n8cpdx wrote: post #37

Why not a one day weekend? How is three days any less absurd and arbitrary than two? Frankly, given where we are at as a society in terms of labor and productivity relative to demand, it seems like now isn’t the time to be pumping the brakes. The basis of fully automated luxury communism has not yet been delivered and won’t be for a while; Europeans will likely freeze this winter and even in the US, if I call 911 I’m…

In the US, we had a 1-day weekend until 1926, and in 1939 the force of law was added to make anything over 40 hours of work "overtime." Henry Ford thought his workers could be just as productive, if not more so, in 40 hours as 48, and would be happier at the second day off to boot, and he was correct.[0] You call it arbitrary, and it was, except it's based on what has been collectively deemed obvious: one gets dramat…

Is a burger flipper or barista serving the same number of customers in four days as five? No? Then where are the diminishing returns there?

Pretty much any reasonable white collar job already lets you work however many hours you want as long as you get the job done and you show up to meetings.