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Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

theatlantic.com

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Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#61

Post by grecy »

read wrote: post #6

I can see an argument a 6-hour day hurts workers. They get less pay while putting in more effort. If it's true there are 5 stages to producing ideas, a 6-hour day benefits from unconscious thinking done away from the task [1] at lower pay. Whereas an 8-hour work day benefits some of a worker's thinking for their non-work projects, which currently happens on the job. The substance behind the work is more important tha…

> They get less pay while putting in more effort.

Who said anything about getting paid less? A salary is a salary.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#62

Post by [deleted] »

mseebach wrote: post #41
danbruc wrote: post #21

Something similar seems a good idea to me, too. Example. Germany has 42 million employees and 3 million unemployeds. Reduce working hours from 40 to 37 hours per week - with reduction in salary, but probably not the full 7.5 % - and hire one new employee for every 13 employees. And there you go - no more unemployment and more leisure time for everybody. Saved unemployment benefits can be used to counter salary reduct…

So these 3 million unemployed people can be evenly spread out over the economy, sharing in 3/40ths of the jobs of doctors, nurses, machinists, programmers, cleaners, gardeners, engineers, chefs, management consultants, inbiss cook and street sweepers? And this can happen with less than a few percent friction cost? Explaining why this will fail, let alone describing how it did indeed fail where it was tried is econ 10…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#63

Post by jrochkind1 »

Those two charts are begging to be combined into one two-axis chart, with average hours per week on one axis, and productivity per hour worked on another axis.

As it is, as two separate one-axis bar charts, they are mostly incomprehensible for the intended purpose.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#64

Post by antjanus »

rdl wrote: post #32

I don't think 6h/day of work is particularly unreasonable, if you can avoid losing blocks of time to useless activities (unneeded meetings, or waiting for people). If you're remote, and only clock-in when actually working, spending 3-4h/day working productively can easily outdo someone spending 10h/day in an office. I've worked in places where my ultimate client billable rate was obscene, and tracked to the 6min or 1…

At my old job we had a saying. "If you get a solid 4 hours of coding done a day, you've had a productive day"

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#65

Post by antjanus »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #23
Brashman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience in the US is the same. 9-5 is just a saying. More typically a work day is 9-6 or 8-5 to account for a 1 hour non-paid lunch.

I'm not really sure where the term 9-5 came from considering I've never had a job or known anyone who actually worked 9-5 with a one hour lunch.

Yeah, it's what annoys the crap out of me. A 9-5 week means you worked 7 hours a day. That's a 35 hour week.

:/

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#66

Post by nirnira »

Great idea, but this is too limited IMO. Such a law would only protect those who sell their labour under traditional wage contracts. However there are countless other people who sell their labour in different ways - plumbers, electricians, contractors, potato farmers, etc. And where are the protections for them? These workers are all vulnerable to horrendous exploitation from the greedy consumers who drive them to work like dogs, demanding ever more toilets unblocked, wiring systems installed, and potatoes produced.

We should shield these vulnerable workers from exploitation too - plumbers could be limited to only fixing three blocked toilets per day, for instance. Electricians could only be allowed to install one wiring system per day. And what about potato farmers? Why not limit people to buying four potatoes per person per supermarket trip.

These measures would help ensure protection of quality of life, and even promote the economy. Millions more could find opportunities working in these fields, and with the load spread more evenly, everyone could enjoy more leisure and rest.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#67

Post by enraged_camel »

steveridout wrote: post #2

Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because: - The people working six hour days have been told that this may improve productivity so the excitement of being part of the experiment may indeed encourage them to be more effective in the short term - They have a strong incentive to work harder because if the experiment concludes that six hour days are more effective, they wi…

Or rather, the effects will be tainted because it's not a double-blind experiment with a randomized group.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#68

Post by rodgerd »

dpweb wrote: post #47

This sounds great for salaried people where an hourly bill rate doesn't play in, but I doubt will get much traction when you're getting paid by the hour. Less hours = less revenue and upping the bill rate to compensate that's not going to catch on. Companies will just view it as a higher bill rate. Too bad though, because I've worked in alot of offices and from home, contracting etc.. Clearly at least two hours out o…

> Too bad though, because I've worked in alot of offices and from home, contracting etc.. Clearly at least two hours out of eight are wasted every day. People take smoke breaks, people chit chat, go to lunch, browse the web, stay in meetings too long, and on and on. I could see people really trying to be productive knowing they are only on a six hour day.

Very valid point.

I saw a doco, years ago, about Americans who'd moved to France for work. A constant comment was the astonishment at how much more productive the French were per hour in their office environment. They were coming from US workplaces where the norm was to have a big commute, work an hour or more a day of unpaid overtime, to one where the sub-40 hour work week was rigidly enforced. The main thing that went away was zoned-out office workers spending their days talking about TV and office gossip. (YMMV, of course).

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#69

Post by enraged_camel »

themgt wrote: post #12

I'm much more productive with 10 hour work days. Get in the zone, write a shit-ton of code, and then get back to reality. Three or four 10-hour days sound a lot nicer than 5 6-hours.

For me, when I work has a much, much bigger impact on how much stuff I get done than the number of hours I work.

I'm not a morning person, yet my job has me coming in before 8:30 so I can attend morning standups (ugh). Right after lunch though, I can easily get in the "zone" and do a ton of good work.

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