If you have more time off then you have more time to find better uses for yourself than being beholden to the corporate world. Your employer doesn't want you to think like that so they don't want to give you more time to think about doing better things with your life.
Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
181–190 of 238 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#182Earlier 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.
I strongly encourage you to find a jurisdiction that agrees with your belief systems, versus making everyone else suffer due to yours. I welcome government protecting my labor rights from businesses, and I will vote every election for people who will steward such policy. I will even show up to help organize others, even if it provides myself no benefit whatsoever. The world libertarians describe of “everyone is free…
The current labor laws force somebody else's view of what is "full-time" employment on everybody. The ideal of "everybody is free to enter into contracts" doesn't result in crushing employees to dust. It results in businesses that treat their employees poorly going out of business. Competition is required for a healthy economy. In many markets the US has legislated to protect the incumbent businesses at the request of lobbyists. Such legislation allows businesses to treat their employees like shit because starting a competitor is costly and cumbersome due to regulations.
We can have a free and open market and legislation to protect individuals from abuse by employers. Setting a required number of hours to work to qualify as "full-time" and a minimum wage are dictating what an individual is allowed to negotiate for themselves. A high number of work hours or extremely low pay are not abusing individuals if they agreed to work for a company knowing full well what they got in return.
Allow people to make their own choices, whether you agree with them or not, and you will be surprised by the result.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Interesting. In your answer, you focused on the stream of customers walking in the door, rather than on the welfare of the burger flipper or barista. Do I expect a burger flipper working at a hot grill to be just as safe in hour ten as hour eight or hour six of a given workday? No, I expect that burns, for example, are more likely at the end of long shifts than the beginning. In addition, since humans are not machine…
> Do I expect a burger flipper working at a hot grill to be just as safe in hour ten as hour eight or hour six of a given workday? No, I expect that burns, for example, are more likely at the end of long shifts than the beginning
This is completely unrealistic - you clearly have never worked in food service or any sort of low wage customer facing role. There is a rush for each of the 3 meals of the day, and in between your volume is pretty low. And you never work a 10 hour shift, if anything they don't give you enough hours and you work 3-4 hour shifts.
> Then the receptionist can also work four days a week, with someone else filling in, rather than only those less visible
The difference is that the clever people who get their work done in 32 hours are still giving 100% output. The receptionist obviously cannot give 100% output if they are only present for 80% time.
> He reasoned that giving workers two days off instead of just one would enable him to push them harder, and get just as much work done while making happier employees, more loyal to him
No, it was not because they got just as much work done, but because it would reduce turnover [1]. It was a calculated economic decision. And in the real world, corporations have done that analysis and either decided on Ford's approach (as Costco has) or on the minimum pay possible approach (like Walmart). As a worker, you have the choice of going to Costco or Walmart to work.
I'll remind you that factory jobs needed a lot more training than fast food, which meant turnover cost had a real impact for Ford.
> But most businesses in which physical presence for given hours is important already have flexible scheduling to handle days of the week and times of the day at which business is busier.
But each worker still serves X customers per hour and works Y hours per week with flexible scheduling. If you suddenly have 20% fewer hours, then the worker has to get paid 20% less, else the business now pays more for labor. Considering a lot of restaurants operate on razor thin margins, this doesn't work out as well as you think.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The Chinese public have invested in quicksand represented as a low quality housing stock pyramid scheme the CCP is barely holding together with control economy duct tape. Perhaps domestic consumption is lower than the US is due to this higher savings rate, but lets not pretend that savings is going into productive enterprises. With China aging very rapidly and a total fertility rate that will decline below 1 in the n…
Chinese savings are dumped into housing because the stock market isn't trustworthy there, not because everyone decided housing is the most productive enterprise.
Also, dumping your money into savings accounts is definitely better than dumping it into 30% APR BNPL offers for designer clothing and electronics. Or gas guzzling, expensive SUVs and trucks. Ask yourself why Apple has a 50% market share in the US.
> doesn’t make much sense to save for a future with limited returns (time value of life vs money and so forth).
Saving doesn't mean saving until retirement, it just means not spending beyond your means.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#185I do have a three day weekend. This weekend is actually a four day weekend because of Labor Day on Monday. I negotiated for it. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544658 If enough other people do the same, eventually it will become expected, and more people will get it without having to fight. Either negotiate it yourself, or join a union to negotiate for it on your behalf. It's not just going to be han…
Do you find it socially challenging to work alongside people who still work 5 days a week though? Do you feel that they are jealous?
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#186Earlier 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?
Healthcare is a benefit and the lack of universal healthcare has resulted in a competitive market where customers are free to choose the level of care for their need and budget. Universal healthcare is the worst of all worlds, comparatively.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#187How did you arrive at 3 days? Why not 2? Why not 1? Why work at all when we can just print ourselves money until it all collapses? Do you own a business where you've allowed your employees to work different sized workweeks and were able to evaluate the changes in productivity? What data do you have to back up any of your viewpoints that's more substantive than just believing whatever people on reddit or elsewhere on…
the fact that you have to have owned a business to be allowed to have an opinion about working productivity to so fucking telling about capitalist ideology
How else are you supposed to intelligently judge whether a sweeping change like this will work?
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#188"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.
In our short lives, work will probably be the most fulfilling endeavor we undertake, and we should be grateful that there are so many great companies willing to offer jobs to workers like us.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly encourage you to find a jurisdiction that agrees with your belief systems, versus making everyone else suffer due to yours. I welcome government protecting my labor rights from businesses, and I will vote every election for people who will steward such policy. I will even show up to help organize others, even if it provides myself no benefit whatsoever. The world libertarians describe of “everyone is free…
The current labor laws force somebody else's view of what is "full-time" employment on everybody. The ideal of "everybody is free to enter into contracts" doesn't result in crushing employees to dust. It results in businesses that treat their employees poorly going out of business. Competition is required for a healthy economy. In many markets the US has legislated to protect the incumbent businesses at the request o…
Businesses that treat workers poorly don’t go out of business. They thrive. Amazon Retail. Walmart. Etc.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
the fact that you have to have owned a business to be allowed to have an opinion about working productivity to so fucking telling about capitalist ideology
How else are you supposed to intelligently judge whether a sweeping change like this will work?
work for who? because I can tell you how it will work for me and OP.
again, the metrics used are only ones that measure business ends, not human ends. human wellbeing is only a means to an end (production/productivity) in capitalism.