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Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

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Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#41

Post by FirmwareBurner »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #37
thiago_fm wrote: post #29

Terribly written article and headline. Germany isn't 45 German companies that will try it. There's no labor shortage in Germany, what there is, are proper salaries. One example are childcare workers in Kindergartens (Kita). Salaries are low and regulated, so nobody wants to do it. Increase the salary and you will have many workers lining up. Germany has managed to grow for decades, from absolute destruction post WW2…

Increase the salary of childcare workers etc. Do not increase the salary of tech workers in Germany. We are already making more of our fair share. More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes. Sincerely, a tech worker in Germany

>We are already making more of our fair share.

Maybe at big-tech and fanngs. On average at local companies not so much.

> More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes.

Triple take home pay? Highly unlikely. Some outliers sure, on average no.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#42

Post by boyka »

ernst_klim wrote: post #16
mcv wrote: post #6

The 4-day work week is long overdue. Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week thanks to productivity gains, but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. Lots of people are overworked and underpaid. I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.

> Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week. > but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between…

Even in tech, in Germany a 15h work week, i.e., a 36%-40% part time job’s salary would cover taxes, rent and rent utilities, and basic health insurance. No food, clothing whatsoever.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#43

Post by rcbdev »

ernst_klim wrote: post #38
rcbdev wrote: post #27

I feel like the discourse on worker rights / work-life balance and demographic issues are more decoupled than they should be. Low birth-rates are provably related to the ability of parents to spend time with their children. This combined with other initiatives might help Europe recover from the serious imminent demographic collapse.

> Low birth-rates are provably related to the ability of parents to spend time with their children. I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it's the opposite of truth. Poverty is always breeding much better than the middle class, and the fertility rates always fall when standards of living rise. > ability of parents to spend time with their childre Children are an opportunity cost. When parents have a free…

> [...] it's the opposite of truth. Poverty is always breeding much better than the middle class

I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it misses the forest for the trees. Fertility rates fall when standards of living rise - up to a specific point. After that point, fertility rises to sustainable levels again. The research is quite clear on this.

> [...] it's a choice between self-realization and spending time with a kid

And this is exactly my theory on why the "slope" of childlessness occurs.

Rising towards the middle class means that all lesser needs are fulfilled and now only self-actualization remains unmet. The cruel joke is that people then forsake having children in favor of self-realization while someone a with more resources would not feel the need to make this compromise.

So in a sense, the most deprived people don't care and still have children despite the challenges (lower class), the less deprived people forsake children in order to meet their highest-order needs (middle class) and the mostly undeprived do not have to make any trade-offs like that and again have children. (upper class)

I live in Vienna, an arguably more family friendly city, and most middle class people around me (aged ~30-40) do have babies at home - esp. those working in relaxed environments like public sector. If you give people the resources, flexibility and time to have children without worrying, they will indeed have more children (in the long run).

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#44

Post by whstl »

rascul wrote: post #30
whstl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things: - The employer pays salaries based on negotiation, not on merit or some scientific measurement. An employee is allowed to do the same. - Unless the employee is privy to all the details and math pertaining this overhead and is the one who asked for this overhead, then it's appropriate that the employee doesn't care about the overhead at all. - There is also overhead in the employees side that is not take…

> - A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks). I don't understand what you're saying here. If I work 20% less then that's 20% less work that I get done. I don't sit in a chair for work.

20% reduction of work is not working 20% less. It's working 20% less time.

Productivity and time aren't correlated.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#45

Post by rcbdev »

llampx wrote: post #40
4gotunameagain wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increase the salary of childcare workers etc. Do not increase the salary of tech workers in Germany. We are already making more of our fair share. More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes. Sincerely, a tech worker in Germany

Agreed. However, since we don't have the power to set the salary of childcare workers, we will just ensure we don't pay you as much as your colleagues in the US, UK or Switzerland. Sincerely, FAANG

Agreed. However, since I don't like being underpayed, I will pack my things and move to Switzerland after having received my taxpayer-funded education.

Sincerely, a tech worker

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#46

Post by fnordian_slip »

rascul wrote: post #39
truckerbill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumptions only work when things are linear. Reality is generally non-linear as it is one huge tangled mess of feedback loops

I only have my own work history to go off of. Edit: An example. If it takes me 5 days to hang siding on a house, and I don't work one of those days, that's 20% less I didn't work and about 20% less of the work that got done.

Iirc, there are several of studies that imply that if you have the same developer working 40 vs 32 hours, the difference in output is often negligible, since not all hours worked are the same in terms of effectiveness.

You might not be aware of that effect, since you deny it explicitly when it comes to your own work, but you might view it in a different light if you turn it around:

Would you produce twice as much if you were to work 80 hours? Probably not, right? You'd maybe produce about 1.5 times as much, and the quality of your work would suffer greatly, leading to more work in the future.

The same effect might work in the other direction, up to a certain point.

The 40 hour work week is not god-given, in fact it has been reduced quite a number of times in the past (mostly due to unions, like most working condition improvemens). So I can not understand why so many people act as if it were set in stone.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#47

Post by reportgunner »

rightbyte wrote: post #7
reportgunner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of blue collar workers are already furious about things like working from home, 'email jobs', flexible schedules, etc. Sorry, I don't understand this part. Are the blue collar workers forced to work from home, use email and have a flexible schedule ?

Blue collar workers might think that the WFH or flex time are good benefits, which they don't have, and that their own pay should be adjusted accordingly.

I agree with them if they think their pay should be adjusted. Also they can just become white collar if they want the benefits, right ?

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#48

Post by mcv »

ernst_klim wrote: post #28
mcv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably a combination. Of course our standard of living has gone up, but so has wealth inequality. And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend o…

> These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly. > These days, it's common for both parents to work Can…

That's true. Well, we also did sports and had bikes in the 1970s, but I think people definitely have more luxurious vacations than we used to. Back then, my family always went camping for three weeks in a tent. These days, we go on much more expensive vacations abroad. More people go by plane, too.

> What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today?

The home I grew up in was larger than the house I raise my kids in. Lots of older houses weren't all that small, and plenty of new ones aren't that big, but they all got a lot more expensive.

> How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?

I always want to, but never get around to it. This lack of repair has definitely contributed to the disposability of our stuff.

> So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home

But we still have chores at home. Only now we have to do them outside working hours. Although I do quite a bit on my free wednesdays.

> If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent.

I have friends who do. But the thing they mostly cut their expenses on is still their house: they live in an old, poorly insulated house in the middle of nowhere that still needs a lot of work.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#49

Post by [deleted] »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #46
rascul wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have my own work history to go off of. Edit: An example. If it takes me 5 days to hang siding on a house, and I don't work one of those days, that's 20% less I didn't work and about 20% less of the work that got done.

Iirc, there are several of studies that imply that if you have the same developer working 40 vs 32 hours, the difference in output is often negligible, since not all hours worked are the same in terms of effectiveness. You might not be aware of that effect, since you deny it explicitly when it comes to your own work, but you might view it in a different light if you turn it around: Would you produce twice as much if…

[deleted]

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#50

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rcbdev wrote: post #45
llampx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. However, since we don't have the power to set the salary of childcare workers, we will just ensure we don't pay you as much as your colleagues in the US, UK or Switzerland. Sincerely, FAANG

Agreed. However, since I don't like being underpayed, I will pack my things and move to Switzerland after having received my taxpayer-funded education. Sincerely, a tech worker

I assume you feel underpaid only when you look at Swiss salaries form German CoL perspective. But I assume Swiss salaries are not high when you're also paying Swiss CoL, then they're just regular salaries.
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