Right. So they can optionally work weekends and get compensated with penalty rates. Can't really see an issue here? We have the same system in Australia for lower paid workers.
Greece introduces the six day work week
141–150 of 162 posts
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
A long time ago my retort when someone would claim California's government was oppressive was; I can walk into the grocery store Sunday morning and buy hard liquor.
How did you know that the Soviet Union and other oppressive governments prohibited Sunday morning vodka sales?
Who said anything about other countries? Presumably he was referring to other states / counties which did/do ban liquor sale on Sundays
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#143Greece fell from being in the top 10 wealthiest countries in eu to literally second to last. Of course the worker rights bacame a joke in the process.
I’m blown away that Greece was anywhere near the top wealthiest. What exactly did they do? I’m guessing tourism and agricultural exports?
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of automation has ever seemed to result in a net reduction in work to do thus far
That kind of misrepresents the situation because our social and economic systems screw over the employees whose jobs are automated away. Initially there's the same amount of work, but if they don't find something else to do, they won't be able to pay their bills or buy food, and they'll be out on the street. So we end up with crappy, low pay service jobs that only exist so people have some way to scrape out a living.…
Nobody is hiring armies of workers just so those workers can “scrape out a living.” Companies cut jobs, they rarely create them for charity
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#145Isn't Greece's unemployment rate the highest in the E.U.? Yes, they may be "low-quality" workers applying for jobs, but if a company can't find "high-quality," they must make do. How did we lose the art of training new hires?
Companies have no pension to tie people to those jobs, people make more money by job hopping, companies don’t give large enough raises to keep people, companies lay off people at the slight change in fortune. Correspondingly it doesn’t make sense to spend the time training someone if they leave as soon as they are productive.
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im sorry but a basket is absolutely useless when we’re talking about basic needs like housing.
2/3 basic needs (food & clothing) are a lot cheaper than they were 50 years ago, and 1/3 is more expensive.
That 1/3rd is often the difference between life and death.
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the gains from increased productivity have been reaped by executives, not workers. You keep working the same hours to make your bosses more money, when you could be working less instead. This income gap has been widening since the 1970s[1,2]. [1]: https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide... [2]: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
This cannot be true. Imagine your job is producing chairs. You make 1 chair per day. Now you get a machine that improves your productivity and you can make 4 chairs per day, but your pay doesn't increase, instead the executives pocket all of it! But what about the 3 extra chairs? Somebody somewhere gets chairs that wouldn't have got them if you had been producing 1 chair per day. Wealth is about stuff , not money. If…
I think you're underestimating how many chairs a single person can have. And cars and houses and services. And obviously some businesses will grow or shrink relative to others based on how elastic the demand is. Also it's a bigger range than just the executives.
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#148Two things happen at the same time: 1. people say that robots are taking all the jobs 2. countries raise retirement age & adopt 6 day work week, because there's too much work to be done I am not entirely sure, but maybe robots are not that bad, assuming appropriate taxation to fund pensions & 5-day work weeks?
Much of the improvement in working conditions, general welfare and home ownership came from western elites' fear of communism. As that fear recedes, elites feel more comfortable squeezing us.
they're not "elite" they just have more government rectangles than us
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And it seems that this has happened for a select few It's happened for anyone that owns housing without a mortgage in a wealthy country. Everyone else has to work full-time to pay their landlord or bank. Given the housing stock is kept artificially low, all remaining money in the average paycheck will necessarily be eaten up by housing. It doesn't really matter how productive the economy is. If shelter is kept scar…
"Given the housing stock is kept artificially low," I'm not sure I'd call it artificial. There are rational market forces at play. The real issue is that everyone wants to live in the same places, and the people there already want to preserve their lifestyle and investment.
>The real issue is that everyone wants to live in the same places
They want to live where they can survive, and survival is dependent on money.
Many people (myself included) would be perfectly happy living in a quiet remote area with basic amenities.
Re: Greece introduces the six day work week
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
This cannot be true. Imagine your job is producing chairs. You make 1 chair per day. Now you get a machine that improves your productivity and you can make 4 chairs per day, but your pay doesn't increase, instead the executives pocket all of it! But what about the 3 extra chairs? Somebody somewhere gets chairs that wouldn't have got them if you had been producing 1 chair per day. Wealth is about stuff , not money. If…
> Now you get a machine that improves your productivity and you can make 4 chairs per day, but your pay doesn't increase You are looking from a single worker's perspective. A more realistic example is 4 workers used to make 4 chairs per day, and now 3 workers can make the same number of chairs. Boss makes more money. No net gain for the remaining 3 workers (and the laid off worker has to find another job, potentially…
And the net benefit to society is that now that fourth person has time to do some other beneficial activity for society.