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Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

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Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#211

Post by hueving »

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…

>Dutch feel more productive, generally (I work in software development).

Are they more productive though? That's the important part. I'm not familiar with the Dutch software industry, is it comparable to silicon valley?

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#212

Post by anigbrowl »

mtrimpe wrote: post #168
digitalengineer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess... You were raised Christian? Protestant perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic (EDIT: It's about the feeling of guild, people. It's embedded inside the Protestant Culture, alongside with working hard. As mentioned in Wikipedia link)

Sheesh; why the downvotes? It's a very appropriate comment as the 'Protestant work ethic' is the canonical name for, and most likely significant source of, the exact feeling the GP described.

There are plenty of Protestants in Europe (obviously) and many of them are more conservative than the US as regards work & society - eg it's typical in small towns not to find any shops open on Sunday in the Netherlands or Germany, and IIRC Germany had pretty stringent laws against Sunday working until quite recently. Some of this is related to trade union history, but on the other hand if you're a registered member of a church your tithes (religious tax for the upkeep of the church) will be automatically subtracted from your paycheck by law.

'Protestant work ethic' is something I've only heard talked about in America, usually couched in the form of an indirect put-down of non-protestants. Northern Europeans are more likely to view predominantly Catholic countries like France, Spain, Italy as stereotypically lazy, but this is usually ascribed to the Mediterranean climate.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#213

Post by whatevsbro »

Retric wrote: post #136
tomp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can the guy with the shovel. Ultimately, the concept of "actual value" can be defined as one of two things: money (for things that have value for an individual) and laws (for things that have value for the society, e.g. externalities). Simply said, the society values certain things (short-term profit, growth, cars, cheap food, human lives) more than others (long-term stability, the environment, clean air, rainfore…

Economists have long accepted that individuals and society have vary different short term costs and bennifits for the same activity. Abstractly it's the basis for having governments in the first place. But that's a long way from saying laws directly account for all known externality's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

> Economists have long accepted that individuals and society have vary different short term costs and bennifits for the same activity.

That makes no sense whatsoever. Individuals are human beings, societies consist of individuals.

A society is just a concept, it does not act in any capacity. All action by humans is carried out by individuals, regardless of what organization they represent. No activity whatsoever is carried out by societies, because they can't. They're just concepts, after all.

> Abstractly it's the basis for having governments in the first place.

Considering the above, I guess it's now clear that we shouldn't have governments at all?

I'm not trying to be snide or sarcastic. That is actually my position, but for other reasons. For starters, governments are based on coercion, and coercion is immoral. Hence, governments are immoral, and should not exist.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#214

Post by kourt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #210
kourt wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that 40 hours is basically optimal for turn of the 20th century factory work. I've seen several references[0] that the optimum for knowledge work is 35 hours, but I'd LOVE a detailed citation. While you are correct that people vary, many managers seem extremely ignorant of 200 years of research on this topic and start from grossly wrong initial conditions (e.g., "40 hours is the bare minimum and should be co…

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ "An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950. (The data here is from the US, but productivity increases in Europe and Japan have been of the same magnitude.) The conclusion is inescapable: if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a…

Thanks; I'm familiar with that. Regardless of how total output compares with days of yore, this is now: I'd like to see research demonstrating that, over time, knowledge workers on a 35 hour schedule outproduce those on a 40 hour schedule.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#215

Post by justnotsure »

vidarh wrote: post #145
justnotsure wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note that in communistic states people worked regularly over 8 hours long after 8-hours work week was legislated in the USA. My point is that system evolution via democratic process is much better than bloody revolution that left-wing quite often has on its mouth.

What does "communistic states" have to do with anything? They were/are kleptocratic oligarchies that are so stratified that they have even worse class systems than capitalist states. > My point is that system evolution via democratic process is much better than bloody revolution that left-wing quite often has on its mouth. It was not evolution via democratic process that gave us the 8 hour day. It was not bloody revo…

My grandad worked 14 hours+ shifts in 1950s and 1960s in communistic Poland in a steel mill. Anybody who would refuse would end up in jail or even worse - gulag - for treason.

As bad as capitalism is it will never, ever be as bad as communism can be.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#216

Post by MadManE »

bjourne wrote: post #167
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…

That's because they did it wrong. The idea is that you should only work for 6 hours/day, with the same pay you had before, at the same pace. The 25% lost productivity would be compensated for by hiring from Swedens 10-15% pool of unemployed and underemployed people.

From the business' point of view, why would I keep paying the same salary for 25% less work? That's insane.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#217

Post by WalterBright »

comrade1 wrote: post #72
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 g…

In my experience how late you were for a meeting was a proxy for your status in the company. The longer you kept others waiting for you, the higher your status.

I've seen this play out in social groups, too.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#218

Post by esrauch »

hueving wrote: post #208
karmajunkie wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> obviously these arrangements will affect your salary I don't really find this obvious or self-evident. One of my very biggest complaints about the economic climate today is that all of the productivity gains go to the owners, and very little to workers. If I as a worker am producing more, it follows that I should be working less, or paid more (which amounts to the same thing.) to do otherwise eliminates jobs that w…

>gains go to the owners, and very little to workers. If there is such an obvious imbalance, why doesn't everyone just quit and start their own company?

Because of the obvious barriers to entry to reach a point where you are exploiting workers? Or because some people probably would prefer not to exploit others for profit?

Your point would make some sense if all owners of companies bootstrapped them from startups, when in reality they were likely just someone who was otherwise wealthy and became owners once it was already a successful company when the original owners already cashed out (or passed on, depending on the age of the company).

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#219

Post by randallsquared »

Benji_San wrote: post #117
guard-of-terra wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always a tough choice between a huge house in sprawlville on one side of spectrum and a tiny apartment in the centre of the (non-urban-flighted, alive and walkable) city. And of course everything in between. You can't say that in "better standard of living", home size matters and home location doesn't. Europeans have less sprawl but smaller houses, that's just it.

It shouldn't really be a tough choice. The "suburbia" dream is flawed on so many levels that it isn't even funny. Yet people are clinging on to it like leeches because they've been told it will make them happy.

Perhaps those of us living in suburbs like it? :)

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=78c...

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#220

Post by tekalon »

amirmc wrote: post #149
comrade1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

And yet people complain about the pointlessness of meetings despite not doing anything to make them more efficient (cf start and end on time, avoid chit-chat, stick to the agenda, send actions quickly afterwards etc). It only takes a small about of self-discipline to get there but everyone has to exercise it. I'm lucky to have learned from some excellent meeting-chairs but have only been able to reproduce the efficie…

I hate meetings. A co-worker and I play a game whenever we are in charge of a meeting- see if we can end it early. It's amazing when an hour long meeting can be finished in 20 minutes. Unfortunately, there are a few people that like to drag the meeting out (unprepared, asking unrelated questions, making people wait for XYZ event that could be sent as an email later).
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