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Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#71

Post by Cederfjard »

_delirium wrote: post #43
homakov wrote: post #39

Why does government set N hours at all ? It's must be up to business! E.g., if I have a software company, I want my employees to work 20 hours a week. Isn't it obviously better way for everyone?

In this case, it's exactly as you say: the employer has decided to reduce its employees' working hours. It just happens that the employer is also the government. The experiment in Göteborg discussed in this article involves only municipal employees: the city is experimenting with moving its employees to 6-hour work days, and seeing what effect there is on productivity, morale, and other such measures. There's no requ…

> At least in Denmark (maybe the same in Sweden?)

Yes, the same is true up here.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#72

Post by comrade1 »

furyg3 wrote: post #56

I moved from the US (high on the list) to the Netherlands (bottom of the list) a while ago. Different jobs and sectors vary, but the theme I can confirm is that the Dutch feel more productive, generally (I work in software development). In very broad terms, the Dutch are more likely to plan and stick to those plans. Personal time and time off are valued, so you need to be efficient in your working hours. You can't re…

I have the same experience in Switzerland. I moved from the u.s. (s.f., boston, dc, socal) and despite working less we get a lot more done than in the u.s.

We have an 8.5 hour workday in Switzerland which we strictly stick to - we get comp time if you work over. In the u.s. we were pretty regularly working 10 hour days and 12 wasn't unusual, but we were wasting so much time.

A good example is meetings - most people get to the meeting 5 minutes before the start time. As soon as enough people arrive (usually 5 minutes before the start time or right at the start time) the meeting starts. If the meeting doesn't start by 10 minutes after because someone is missing it's cancelled. There's no smalltalk at the beginning, no socializing, no standing around stuffing your face...

Our company was bought by an American company and some of the Swiss staff transferred to the u.s. for awhile. Meetings were one of the most confusing changes for them - they'd be waiting in the conference room with no one showing up, then a few stragglers 10 minutes after the start time, and then every stands around talking about non-work stuff like they were at a high-school mixer. One colleague asked to have them start the meeting the first few time but eventually gave up and just started doing it the American way.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#73

Post by vacri »

codehotter wrote: post #60
vidarh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it was left up to business, we had 14 hour+ days. It took many decades of extensive strikes and demonstrations, during which dozens of workers were killed, before the 8 hour day became the norm. The US union that is now the AFL-CIO leadership in pushing for the 8 hour day led directly to making May 1st the international day for labor demonstrations, in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre. If…

You seem to know a lot about this and it's something I've always been interested in: When laws were passed to mandate 8 hour work days, what % of companies had 8 hour work days already? 10%? 20%? 80%? Nowadays we know that total productivity is higher if you have 8 hour work days, even though you work less total hours, because your productivity per hour is much higher. Was something like this known at the time? Or wa…

The 8-hour workday predates the modern idea of time and motion studies, so it's a bit hard to get those kinds of statistics in a meaningful context around productivity.

But for the sake of argument, the percentage would be very low, probably pretty much limited to professionals that could work their own hours. Most people were working poor, for whom the workday was 10-16 hours long, six days per week (in the Western world).

To give you an idea of the significant lenghth of prior work hours, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day has a pair of phrases: "Women and children in England were granted the ten-hour day in 1847. French workers won the 12-hour day after the February revolution of 1848."

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#74

Post by vidarh »

stdbrouw wrote: post #12
dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 hours for work, 8 for leisure, 8 for sleep and 2 rest days a week seems reasonable, at least mathematically speaking. If it were up to me, I'd include commuting time in those 8 work hours as well, making the number no more than 7 hours.

You're basing your assessment of reasonableness on the aesthetically pleasing properties of symmetry? :-)

More likely because Robert Owen's original slogan from 1817 has had nearly 200 years to get deeply ingrained in culture...

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#75

Post by yitchelle »

iamtew wrote: post #21
skrause wrote: post #7

If someone gave me the chance of a 30-hour work week, I would rather work 4 days of 7,5 hours than 5 days of 6 hours. Just the hassle of getting up early, dressing up for work, commuting etc. isn't really worth it when I'm only going to work 6 hours anyway. I'd rather take an extra day off.

This is a fairly common thing here in the Netherlands actually, four day work week. Most of my colleagues I know who does this to have some extra time with their family/kids. Usually it's a split in the middle of the week or something, for example my manager doesn't work tuesday's, it's his "papadag" as he then spends time with his kids and don't have to send them off to day-care or get a nanny. Another colleague of…

A family of that we know has a job sharing between the parents. This is an interesting arrangement as they are sharing the same job.

I think the dad does 3 days and the mum does 2 days. They have found it worked for them and they can share the joy of looking after their kids on a weekly basis. They still do the 8hr/day for 5day/week. In this way, they are having vatertag and muttertag every week.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#76

Post by ddebernardy »

showsover wrote: post #2

This stood out to me: >The Swedish town of Kiruna actually gave up its six-hour working days in 2005 after finding that the increased intensity of work was not a positive. "People have seen there that the intensity of the job increases significantly, with negative effects on health as a consequence," Could that be because we are used to fit our work in 8 hours and work accordingly? Doing 100% of your work in 75% of t…

This was the big problem in France when they passed the 35h work week with no pay loss. Workers were suddenly expected to do the same output in 4h less, and this increased stress levels quite a bit -- or so I've been told by friends who live there.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#77

Post by justnotsure »

vidarh wrote: post #53
justnotsure wrote: post #17

The innovative US economy will make it all irrelevant anyway by introducing more and more work from home jobs. Work from home is almost common in the US and basically non-existent in Europe. I wouldn't trade Swedish 6-hour workday with my American-based 8-hour while working from my coach at home. Somehow socialists are always one step behind Mother Nature, i.e. free markets.

The "innovative US economy" had to be forced by socialist unions to cut the working day to roughly 8 days. It took decades of strikes, demonstrations and bloodshed to reach that goal. You know why people demonstrate and celebrate workers right on May 1st? Because then largely socialist and anarchist US unions decided, led by the AFL, in 1888 to restart demonstrations for the 8 hour working day with a major demonstrat…

I appreciate Unions and I strongly believe that capitalism works well only in connection with democracy. Sure if people who just didn't try hard enough at school and end up at bad jobs vote for 6 or even 2-hour day work, let them have it! I don't care, I'm paid per hour I want to put as many hours as possible.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#79

Post by pgeorgi »

iSnow wrote: post #18
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #4

And once again the Netherlands shows up on the bottom of that list, so I'll say it once more: we have a high participation of women in the work force, but most of those only work part-time, often in stereotypically "women's jobs" (receptionist, secretary, kindergarten). Makes the stats look much more progressive than reality, even though 32/36 hour work weeks are common.

It's even worse here in Germany where 37.5/40h work weeks are the norm but a lot of people, especially women, only find part-time jobs.

Which goes the other way, too: I'm somewhat of an exotic creature for daring to work part-time in Germany as a male and as a software developer.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#80

Post by cabalamat »

wobbleblob wrote: post #47

> "though the United States is an outlier here, working both long and hard" The article conflates productivity with 'working hard'. Productivity is a measure of how much value is produced ('money is made') per hour of work. A bulldozer operator working an 8 hour day to move a few tons of dirt is more productive than a worker who needs many 12 hour work days to move the same amount of dirt with a shovel and wheelbarro…

> Productivity is a measure of how much value is produced ('money is made') per hour of work. [..] A trader at a bank who moves millions of shares with a phone call and a few mouse clicks is more productive than the bulldozer operator. [..] A high productivity per hour in a country means fewer ditches are dug using shovels, and more credit default swaps are sold.

When you say "value is produced", you seem to be conflating two concepts, how much value is captured by an individual/firm, and how much value is created for the whole economy.

When bankers make lots of money for themselves and their employers, are they creating wealth for the economy, or are they merely participating in a zero-sum game where their gain is someone else's loss? I expect it's a combination of the two.

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