> “The only red lines are that we want to see a true reduction of working hours and no loss of salary or jobs.”
And there it is. (The proposal is the government pays a fraction of this for a few years before sticking the companies with this.)
It's basically just a minimum wage law but written the other way.
This always sticks the bill with the only person actually paying to begin with, the business owner. If society thinks people should be paid more perhaps it should mandate paying more for the company's products to compensate for making them pay their employees more per hour.
By contrast, the FAANG workweek is 8-14 hours, 5-7 days a week with the possibility of being on-call for emergencies and contacted after hours. Working 72 hr/week while making $200k/yr is only $53/hour. To get to $80/hour would require a salary of $300k. $100/hr is $375k. Oh, and taxes because not an owner of capitalist assets.
I worked in one... engineers didn't work quite that much but about 60 hrs a week. Saturday a full day is standard all year around. The peculiar thing was that right next to our cubicles there was a level 1 phone tech support team. Those guys worked exactly 40 hour weeks. Or team of test engineers were paid $600/month. The tech support guys only $400. I would often ask the engineers if they were cool with the fact that they made the same pay as a phone guy but had to work much harder. At first they were all puzzled, then I'd point out their hourly wage. They all would respond that it didn't matter, it was about social status. Even some of the ladies working in designer bag stores made better pay than them, but didn't have the statis in their view. It kind of blew myind, status means nothing to me, but I am considered eccentric. Anyway, thankfully my base pay was higher than both groups due to nationality.
I've been working 4 days since 2006, when our first child was born. I don't see myself going back to working 5 days a week, even when the youngest one is older. I get to spend more time with our children, and when they're in school (I'm off on Wednesday) I have the entire day to myself. It's totally worth the pay cut! Fun fact: 50% of employed people here in The Netherlands are working parttime in some form.
In fact, 4 10s aren't much harder than 4 8s - for me travel time was dominant as I had to physically go run a lab. So I actually kept my salary while getting permanent three-day weekends. And I justified it by being able to get setup and cleaned up outside of normal work hours which was true and glorious.
By contrast, the FAANG workweek is 8-14 hours, 5-7 days a week with the possibility of being on-call for emergencies and contacted after hours. Working 72 hr/week while making $200k/yr is only $53/hour. To get to $80/hour would require a salary of $300k. $100/hr is $375k. Oh, and taxes because not an owner of capitalist assets.
My friends who work at Google do not have such a workweek. Aren't you exaggerating a bit? At the very least, don't pass it off as universal.
It seems that we're slowly heading to a place where salaries are going to be much lower, because of less working hours and loss of the kinds of jobs that paid a good living wage. Or those same jobs will just pay a lower salary. It could be good or bad. The good part is, less buying. Less shopping. Smaller homes. Lower needs. etc. The bad part, all of that part of the economy that was depending those incomes is going…
House prices not necessarily. House prices are driven by demand and by ability to borrow. If everyone takes a pay cut, everyone can pay less and house prices should go down. The only reason house prices have gone so silly recently is insanely cheap credit has let everyone bid against each other to drive house prices up.
Real estate rarely goes down, outside of a total bubble deflation. People just hold onto it longer, unable to profitably sell, further trapping others in a cycle of rent.
The current bubble will drain money from producers to the value-empty mortgage sector for decades.
Oh, beautiful Spain, playing experiments with an unemployment rate of 16.13%... I love how my country hugs the poverty closer and closer each year that passes by.
Of course you will downvote me, but as an inhabitant of such country, the truth is, this is the result of the socialist and incompetent government that is in power due to the even more incompetent opposition. It's been long since we were the leaders of employment creation in the eurozone, back when Rajoy was in power.
It is a modest trial of a four day work week. You are so far from disaster. This can only be a good thing, if it doesn't work they stop doing it, but probably it will work because people are more productive when they have time to breath.
> “The only red lines are that we want to see a true reduction of working hours and no loss of salary or jobs.” And there it is. (The proposal is the government pays a fraction of this for a few years before sticking the companies with this.) It's basically just a minimum wage law but written the other way. This always sticks the bill with the only person actually paying to begin with, the business owner. If society…
The reality is that wages have never kept up with productivity increase. Companies are extracting more and more productivity out of their employees, which translates to ever increasing profits.
But this is not an economical law. It's absolutely possible to sacrifice ever increases in growth for more worker time.
Growing up in Spain, I am currently living back here after living over 14 years in Germany and spending most of my working life there. I am half Spanish and half German and have a good perspective on both mentalities in general. In my opinion the problem in Spain is definitely the mindset towards work and the way it is perceived. Here work seems to always be some tedious chore that keeps you away from social live. I…
At least Portugal it's not like that /sarcasm :D
I'm keeping on eye on the experiment because of that, maybe this is a better way to increase productivity in cultures like these.
By contrast, the FAANG workweek is 8-14 hours, 5-7 days a week with the possibility of being on-call for emergencies and contacted after hours. Working 72 hr/week while making $200k/yr is only $53/hour. To get to $80/hour would require a salary of $300k. $100/hr is $375k. Oh, and taxes because not an owner of capitalist assets.
My friends who work those hours make well over double what I do from their bonuses. They work these hours because they do datacentre builds and these cost the company a fortune for every day. Doing anything to shorten them is worthwhile and it encourages the type of people who'd work in the oil fields.
There's no way a FAANG could hold onto staff requiring 72h/w without paying huge bonuses.
Growing up in Spain, I am currently living back here after living over 14 years in Germany and spending most of my working life there. I am half Spanish and half German and have a good perspective on both mentalities in general. In my opinion the problem in Spain is definitely the mindset towards work and the way it is perceived. Here work seems to always be some tedious chore that keeps you away from social live. I…
Plenty of assholes bosses in Spain, in my experience I have been very honest from the beginning I had sick people I have to take care of and sometimes I have to leave early or I can't just go to work I was always willing to work remote that day when the job allowed it.
The worst part of working in Spain is the work is usually from 9 to 14 and from 15 to 18 or variations of that, instead of 8 hours straight.