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California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

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Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#131
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gave me two beautiful examples, the best examples, thank you very much. Medicine (healthcare's real name) and driving. Right so, that ties in to what I was saying, you do need more people for the menial jobs, 20% more bus drivers hired. It doesn't increase COSTS, it increases WAGES, not the same thing! Throwing away half the good food just for the sake of wasting it increases costs, hiring 20% more bus drivers in…

There is currently a shortage of bus drivers in San Francisco. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/12/29/bay-area-transit-look... Reducing the hours to 32h/w doesn't increase the amount of employment when there are currently openings and the current staff is working overtime to meet the commitments. Going to 32h/week and then overtime increases the amount of overtime that the currently employed get and makes the existin…

> There is currently a shortage of bus drivers in San Francisco.

Translation: there's a surplus of employers who don't want to bid up. Anything other than bidding up, no bidding up, no just no bidding up, never clear the market. No, drag the bosses kicking and screaming, not even, kicking screaming shitting their pants and swearing treacherous vengeance upon the auctioneer. The auctioneer, the worker who'll do the work, their enemy, for asking them for a raise instead of every single other thing they can do instead, which is everything, put a man on Mars before raising wages, invent a time machine before raising wages, elect a gestating fetus as Governor of California before raising wages, sell their sole to the shittiest loser among the demons of hell before raising wages, anything just don't ask for what makes perfect obvious sense.

Bid up or shut up, nobody can say there's a shortage, shortages don't exist. If you paid $10000000 a year for bus drivers would people go to California to drive? Yeah then there's no shortage.

Shortage. No, conspiracy to suppress wages. And if you can't pay what it costs to find someone, tell the truth that you're a shitty poor employer, don't say there's a shortage. There is just as much a shortage of bus drivers in California as there are Apple shares that cost one dollar. It's a surplus of poor and entitled...well not buyers, they don't buy anything, not even prospective buyers like I guess...bidders. Poor and entitled bidders, "pobres diablos de mala muerte."

Doctors there is a shortage because they restrict supply, that's a fair description. So in fact there's a commensurate surplus of medical-school applicants and foreigners who want to become American doctors, but they get turned away, that's a shortage. So in fact no amount of money can actually get America the supply of medicine it needs to have dignity, no amount of money can "incentivize" these overeducated losers to make America healthy. That's a shortage. Going back to the bus driver, would people move into California to drive for ten million dollars a year? Yes, and there would be more drivers, no shortage. "Oh but that's not a reasonable salary" It is if you say there's a shortage! Whereas with doctors, would there be more doctors if you paid ten million a year in salary? No, there would not. A billion a year? No, there would not. So in fact it would backfire, the more America spends on healthcare the less of it it gets, shortage.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago. Knew a tech worker that had worked years of unpaid overtime for IBM. She said it was fine, because she was exempt. So I looked up the definition of exempt. She didn't meet the legal definition. Argued with her for hours over it. She refused to believe that she was being taken advantage of. In her mind all a company had to do was say you were exempt, and that was enough. Eventually I gave up. Following…

So what is the definition of an exempt worker? How do I know if I am not exempt and being used.

Employee misclassification is very common, even and especially with higher-paid salaried positions. Whether you are exempt depends on the actual work you do in the day, and in what proportions. It does not depend on your job title, official job description, salary/hourly status, or pay level.

Example: You work 60 hours a week for BigCo. You have a fancy Director of BlahBlah title. You receive a salary of $500k. You spend 49 percent of your time performing truly managerial tasks. The other 51 percent of your time, you’re pitching in to help with your subordinates’ production-level work. Guess what? You’re non-exempt 100% of the time, and your employer owes you 20 hours of overtime each week, at an approximate rate of $240 per hour. This isn’t a kooky law school hypothetical, by the way: actual employees have sued and won on similar facts.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are Amazon warehouse workers or delivery drivers really as productive... Is this the only thing anyone is ever concerned about? How about employee general well-being? The fact that average worker wages have been absolutely stagnant while average worker productivity has soared since the 70's? Maybe it's time workers won something instead of just getting squeezed for more productivity.

Are they productive because THEY are more productive or because tools and systems have allowed for increased productivity? Should Ford assembly line workers have been paid more because his assembly line system was easier and more productive? He ended up paying them more voluntarily, but would you really want to mandate that?

Yes, I would like to mandate that, actually.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#134
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently a shortage of bus drivers in San Francisco. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/12/29/bay-area-transit-look... Reducing the hours to 32h/w doesn't increase the amount of employment when there are currently openings and the current staff is working overtime to meet the commitments. Going to 32h/week and then overtime increases the amount of overtime that the currently employed get and makes the existin…

> There is currently a shortage of bus drivers in San Francisco. Translation: there's a surplus of employers who don't want to bid up. Anything other than bidding up, no bidding up, no just no bidding up, never clear the market. No, drag the bosses kicking and screaming, not even, kicking screaming shitting their pants and swearing treacherous vengeance upon the auctioneer. The auctioneer, the worker who'll do the wo…

> put a man on Mars before raising wages

I realized this is literal. America put a man on the moon to win the space race, meaning fight communism, meaning not raise worldwide wages. Also to prove they could do it and be historic beyond any appeal, but that's not why NASA got the budget they got.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#135
post #59

I see various websites show Canada as having an average of 32.5 hours per week for working hours. I don't think that is accurate. Most business here use a 40 hour week and most government departments have a 37.5 work week. Most European countries I see are well under 30 hours most mid to low 20s. I wonder if that is accurate as well. I do see videos of people from the US living in various European countries who say p…

"low 20s" is such an outlier you need to provide sources that "most European countries" are in that range or people should take this comment as an outright lie meant to deliberately deceive.

The aggressive wording in your comment seems sudden and misplaced. My comment wasn't meant to be bound by law or cited in professional works.

Anyway it's from any of a dozen statistics websites easily Googled like: https://business-review.eu/future-of-work/which-eu-countries...

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#136
post #121

Obviously this will depend on the industry and work environment, but I feel like the "4.5 day workweek" is already a thing for many office workers. What I'm talking about is the culture around slacking on a Friday. At least at my company, it's an unwritten rule that you never schedule a meeting after 12PM on a Friday. You can see from slack statuses that folks most all leave early and take longer lunch breaks. And an…

I am curious how this "no meeting after 12pm on Friday" would apply to companies with offices on the East Coast in addition to California. On the East Coast 12pm Pacific Time would mean 3pm. Would it put East Coast employees at disadvantage?

No more so than east coasters scheduling 9am meetings.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#137
post #14

Unless I'm missing something, this would have no impact on engineers and other professional employees who are "exempt" from overtime. My nominal 40-hour work week meant nothing if there was a crisis or schedule slip that required putting in many extra hours. The claim that this law would force companies to be more efficient by having fewer meetings assumes management are rational. Also, it's weird that it only applie…

That really depends on the industry and company, if you work for facebook,amazon for example, the hours mean nothing but meanwhile, those who work in these companies usually got 3x, 4x pay over the similar positions in other companies.

So it's really the hour rate that matters at the end of day. If you can pull a million a year guess you would be too much adamant about hours. The question is what your objective is, money, or freetime, or whatever your priority.

Re: California considers a shortened, 32-hour workweek for larger companies

#138

Obviously this will depend on the industry and work environment, but I feel like the "4.5 day workweek" is already a thing for many office workers. What I'm talking about is the culture around slacking on a Friday. At least at my company, it's an unwritten rule that you never schedule a meeting after 12PM on a Friday. You can see from slack statuses that folks most all leave early and take longer lunch breaks. And an…

No doubt California is the vanguard of adopting European culture, with work ethic included but among other things.
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