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

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

#121

Post by gertlex »

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…

Honest question that came to mind with these numbers:

While some fraction has gone to the corporations/shareholders ("capitalists"), what fraction of the productivity gains has turned into cheaper consumer goods, aka (can't point at the data, just many who comment on it) the populace owns a lot more 'stuff' like electronics than they did 43 years ago, aka QOL gains resulting from productivity.

Or is it just silly of me to not assume that ~100% of gained productivity went straight into corporations'/shareholders' pockets?

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

#122

Post by dpkirchner »

lm28469 wrote: post #75
sokoloff wrote: post #11

In some places in Europe, after some period of employment, you can demand of your employer to let you work 80% of hours for 80% of pay. I have team members in Europe on this schedule and it works out well for everyone. Based on that experience, I'd also be open to such an arrangement for employees based in geographies where that's not legally required, but is legally and practically permitted. My guess is that most p…

> My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that People are always surprised when I tell them I work 4 days a week; asking if I have kids or a sick mother to attend to. Recruiters are especially weird with questions like: "why do you only want to work 4 days a week?" I usually just reply "Why do you want to work 5 days a week?", most of the time they don't know w…

"And why don't you want to work 6? What are you, a slacker?"

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

#123

Post by wahnfrieden »

scarby2 wrote: post #100
jrumbut wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago. The world isn't static, tradeoffs can change.

> No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago There were lots of us who couldn't believe that so many employees had to be at a desk from 9 - 5 in industries where it made very little sense.

yes but it took millions of people discussing and organizing with their coworkers and pushing back on their employers in various ways to earn it as solidly as it's been. it doesn't just change with the wind or only because employers change their minds about environmental factors

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

#124

Post by ceeplusplus »

iroh2727 wrote: post #95
core-utility wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are free to enter contracts of their own choosing, not forced by arbitrary government regulations. As many other commenters here have pointed out, negotiating oneself to a 4 day workweek (or other offers) is possible. I for one, choose to not take the 20% pay cut and will happily work a 40 hour work week. That's my choice.

Some individuals, in some particular professions, may have this choice. But there are structural forces preventing this on a population level. Most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck as is, and it's not that they're spending frivolously. Our standards of living are based on what's needed for subsistence, yes, but also cultural and historical. Based on how we grew up and how our parents grew up, and how cultur…

Compare the Chinese household savings rate to the American one, and I think you'll find people in the US do indeed spend frivolously. Note that living in HCOL locations beyond your means is still spending frivolously. You don't have a right to live in NYC or SF. If more people realized that, then supply of low wage workers would drop in these places and wages would go up.

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

#125

Post by pwinnski »

ghaff wrote: post #110
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…

And that CEO is not necessarily wrong. Even if you posit that certain types of creative problem solving might be as productive with a 32 hour work week as a 40 hour one, I'd also posit that there are a lot of jobs within companies that really do mostly map to hours in seats. And granting, say, engineering only a special privilege like that seems like it would be terrible for morale--especially given that there are do…

To add insult to injury in this case, all departments were completely on board other than sales, and this was an engineering-driven SaaS company. Sales people at that company are paid commission, and most of them outearn all software developers at the company, and even the C-suite. Still, it was in deference to them that the initiative was squashed.

On paper, it may have seemed like the right move, but it was huge demoralizing to the engineering org to be told, essentially: we will neither pay enough to be competitive, nor offer any other compensatory advantages, primarily in deference to this other department that we do pay well.

The morale question was apparently only considered in one direction.

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

#126

Post by wahnfrieden »

t0mas88 wrote: post #96
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

Huh what? You don't get health insurance when you work part time in the US?

many companies keep their workers under full time to save the cost. in effect this is a handout from the govt to businesses and landlords to enable growth with low wages

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

#127

Post by ceeplusplus »

egypturnash wrote: post #119

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 thinkin…

> 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?

Nobody actually gets paid $7.25/h. Amazon pays $15/h or more nationwide. That's a baseline. In HCOL areas shitty big chain jobs like Target/Chipotle/Starbucks pay $18-22/h and restaurant servers make 25-30. Making those numbers bigger just enriches landlords unless you vastly increase the amount of housing in HCOL areas.

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

#128

Post by wahnfrieden »

thombat wrote: post #52
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #38

They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the custo…

Many customer-facing occupations provide for extended opening hours, Saturdays and even Sundays. Personally I'd be thrilled if half the organizations I deal with went beyond Mon-Fri 9-5, and to do so they'll need some extra staff.

rotations.

yes you get it, the point of labor negotiating for fewer days is that employers don't want to do it because it could be more expensive for them in various ways. what you are really complaining about isn't workers not wanting to keep businesses open longer, it's that employer cost-cutting measures include narrower service hours, and why would workers take it upon themselves to donate their time to solving that if their organized negotiating power is such that it would be charity to the owners

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

#129

Post by grog454 »

soperj wrote: post #80
just-ok wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP notes they’re referring explicitly to jobs with a 5 day work week, so your comments re: service industry, etc. are valid, they’re already excluded. Irrational might not be the right word; arbitrary is pretty accurate, though. If productivity and output change minimally, why should expectations or pay? Let’s be honest, the typical 5-day office job work week the OP is referencing has a LOT of downtime.

> has a LOT of downtime the way I look at it, I'm being paid for being available during those work hours, not necessarily doing work during all those work hours.

Ok, but not every job is like this. A lot of my communication is done asynchronously already. I'm paid 95% for productivity and 5% for availability.

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

#130

Post by jen20 »

missedthecue wrote: post #114
henryfjordan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Modern managerial techniques if anything have regressed the situation.

As for tech and tools, who do you think made those things if not humans?

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