When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
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Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#2Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of working hours.
"While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction."
It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their life. I feel like for most people a job is something you do to fund the things you really want to do.
I would love to see what worker satisfaction would be if their income was fixed, but they could choose whichever job they wanted. (aka. you'll always get paid the same amount of money regardless of what job you do).
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#3Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of working hours. "While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction." It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their l…
Interesting spin of the facts indeed. I wonder who paid Rudolph to make this study.. I suspect it wasn't the workers :D
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#4I can speek for Greece, where is ban on sunday work. For workers it just means they have to work unpaid (and undeclared) overtimes.
If you wont to make people happy, just introduce double pay for overtimes and really enforce it!
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#5Before you draw any firm conclusions, be sure to read the details in the last couple of paragraphs: The subjects' hours were only reduced by about 10%, an average of five hours a week; many of them were still working 40-50 hours; and many of them were still expected to get the same amount of work done, forcing them to take work home with them.
The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far enough.
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#6Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of working hours. "While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction." It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their l…
Interesting spin of the facts indeed. I wonder who paid Rudolph to make this study.. I suspect it wasn't the workers :D
It's very rare for anyone to commission studies like this in the social sciences. Rudolph is a professor at Korea University, and professors do research without extra compensation because it is part of how they get tenure.
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#7Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of working hours. "While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction." It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their l…
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Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#8TLDR - No it didn't, they don't know why, it may have improved well-being.
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#9Before you draw any firm conclusions, be sure to read the details in the last couple of paragraphs: The subjects' hours were only reduced by about 10%, an average of five hours a week; many of them were still working 40-50 hours; and many of them were still expected to get the same amount of work done, forcing them to take work home with them. The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far eno…
My question is can the government actually regulate this kind of thing? As our Greek friend above said, people worked off the books. One might argue that a rational response to the issue is the works to unite against the tyranny. My rebut is that if you're poor, living paycheck to paycheck, you can't unionize because you'll be out of work and starving.
Re: When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?
#10Before you draw any firm conclusions, be sure to read the details in the last couple of paragraphs: The subjects' hours were only reduced by about 10%, an average of five hours a week; many of them were still working 40-50 hours; and many of them were still expected to get the same amount of work done, forcing them to take work home with them. The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far eno…
"The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far enough."
That's a really scary line of logic though. "We did a thing, and there was no effect. We propose that to obtain the desired effect we should do even more of the thing that had no effect."
That's undisprovable.
It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results even harder could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it is. That's being a scientist.
(To forstall the two obvious replies: Consider the difference between the words "evidence" and "proof". And once again, let me underline the scientific dangers in "We tested for X->Y and found no evidence for it, but we're still going to assert that X->Y." This logic doesn't just apply to "work hour reduction", it applies to all null results, of all kinds.)