It won't happen until we eject the gerontocracy from Congress. So, probably not in our lifetimes. It will become a norm to see sitting Congress persons in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks and freezing in speech. AI lol? These people don't get AI any more than my parents. They want to fund wars abroad and think houses cost $200k. They are completely out of touch.
Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
91–100 of 157 posts
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#92To be blunt: at this point, no one. If the 4-day work week didn't happen during the ZIRP, it's not happening now. I know there are studies that show it can be better and more productive, but employers don't care. They want butts in seats as long as possible.
Is that a smoke able Blunt? Otherwise none care.
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#93I've "corrupted" (from the point of view of GDP productivity and such) a lot of people into asking for (and mostly getting...) a 32h/week work schedule. I've been doing it for almost 8 years now, and at this point, it's simply a non-negotiable in any sort of employment discussions (that, and not carrying a pager). I work Mon-Thu, 8h/day, and I'm generally unreachable Fri/Sat/Sun (doesn't mean I won't put in a long we…
the primary issue I see with this is for things where unfinished work results in something going from being finished the next day to blocked from Thursday until Monday. Some small question or task that could be done in 5 minutes but now has to wait that entire time. Just not going to work for many businesses
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#94Has anybody tried a 3x12h? I think I'd get just as much done and be way happier. I hate the commute, the meetings, the office bullshit. I just want a long list of tasks, some drum and bass music, and a fresh pot of coffee. Let me do 3 heavy sessions a week and give me freedom to be human the rest of the time.
I know a guy who did and he hated it. 9 to 9 at the office, going to the gym afterwards was out of the question and he was eating a lot of crap from the vending machines.
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#95Considering the opposition to working from home from some parts of (USA) society, I have trouble seeing this get widely adopted. At least in the short to medium term. The anti-WFH people appear to fall into 3 camps: landlords and property owners, middle management who believe people are not as productive or efficient at home. And, as pointed out in a reply, there's also the group who believe that face to face communi…
Suggesting a fourth category, in which I consider myself and know I have plenty of friends and colleagues:
When you don’t have the space at home for a proper office, so you end up with something that is ergonomically suboptimal and makes a mental shift between ‘home’ and ‘work’ harder. When I’m already balancing my effort carefully to not end up spending more energy than I can recover week by week, asking for WFH without also cutting work days is something I find draining.
The “it’s great, but not for me”-crowd. Forcing people into the office or out of the office is the employer drastically changing the terms of the employment, and should at least be done over an extended period of time or in consultation with the affected employees (not including exceptional circumstances such as when it was part of the temporary efforts to dampen the pandemic).
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#96So far, the highest number of 4 day week companies in the private sector appears to be in the US, followed by the UK.
Source: I maintain a page listing 120 4-day week companies. For every 10 new companies I add, 6-8 will be from these two countries.
For anyone interested:https://okjob.io/companies/
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Those owning the means of production converging on amassing every surplus productivity gain 2. “Over regulating” my country I wonder which I would choose.
It’s not a simple problem. Heavily regulated places like the EU don’t grow as fast. Non growth is problematic too since we need to still help millions of people out of poverty in a sustainable way. There is no free lunch and simplistic solutions like four-day workweek don’t address the full problem.
> Non growth is problematic too since we need to still help millions of people out of poverty in a sustainable way.
By letting surplus value go to those who own the...
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#98For the US the biggest impediment is healthcare is based on a per employee charge, not per hour charge. So there's this perverse incentive to extract every possible hour of labor from an employee, even with overtime at time and a half, to defray another fixed cost.
Without public health care and the subsequent lifting of healthcare costs from employers back over to a progressive tax system, I can't see the 4 day week being widely adopted.
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#99The Netherlands is arguably one that heavily embraces the 4-day workweek. In this country, employees can request a shorter work week (4 days) for proportionality less wages (so eg for 4 days get 80% of wages). More than 80% of working moms utilise this option and around 10% of dads. [1] Among my friends I have parents where both of them work 4 days, taking the 5th day off on separate days, and their kid goes to dayca…
In France primary schools are traditionally off on Wednesdays and when I was there it wasn't uncommon for mostly women to have that arrangement: 80% pay but Wednesdays off.
However, they also traditionally had school on Saturday, right? For some reason, that made me irrationally upset when I thought of my kids going to school on Saturdays. I get the argument behind it (it let's the parents take care of things outside of work), but it seems like it also would prevent family outings.
Best I can tell, most schools no longer have classes on Saturday, but they do have Wednesday morning at least. And, at least at my daughter's school, most are there (or at another _recreation center_) in the afternoon.
Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?
#100A rabblement of lemmings. They ran down to the cliff with their economies in hand and plunged into the sea.