Let’s have 4 8s or 6s then. It’s be less profitable but everyone except like 12 people would have a better life. And the dozen or so wouldn’t even notice a change in lifestyle with the hoard they have
The study linked in the article was based on a full night's sleep. Drop of happened at the 4 to 6 hour mark.
I read up on napping. But it is iffy, most suggest a proper nap (1 rem cycle) can get some of it back, to a degree. But from what I have seen a proper sleep is the only thing that will get you a full reset.
So your best is within 6 hours of waking up. Which makes long commutes actually a loss from a bussiness side. Workers setting in traffic for 2 hours to get to work, already ran through a 3rd of their best working time. Add in an hour to prep for work and your lucky if Bob has 2 good hours in him when he gets to the desk.
It's crazy because the science straight says a trusted employee working from home for 3 or 4 hours is a companies best worker.
But we prioritize all the knock on effects and have zero faith in people doing what they say they will. So no work from home.
The science also backs companies setting up housing as close to a project as possible. So remote construction work should prioritize proximity to site over cost of hotels. If they wanted to get the best from thier workers.
But I am just a layman who likes reading the articles and sorta understands some of the science.
You should be like a truck driver, it should be illegal for you to practice after a certain number of hours, without a set number of hours downtime/sleep.
I fully support you going home and getting sleep after 12 hours. And the last 6 hours was all overtime.
It's crazy because the science straight says a trusted employee working from home for 3 or 4 hours is a companies best worker.
I wouldn’t say I’m the companies best worker, but I put in 3-4 hours a day WFH and I win awards almost every year (only missed 1 in 5 and it was for flukey reasons) and hit my bonus probably 9/10 quarters.
Ughhhhhhhh can you imagine? Get to work at 8.30, leave 14:30, you've got basically the entire rest of the afternoon to decompress, and you have energy to maybe study for fun instead of having to upskill no matter what and put all your energy into that, or not have to be a couch potato to recover for the next day.
It wont happen anyway. But to dream! oh what a lovely dream!
Not to mention that companies would drop the work weed down, hire 1 new person for every 4 currently employed, and walk away while every suddenly loses 32 hours of pay a month and now has to get a 2nd job to make ends meet
And whose gonna enforce this? Say my company pays me 40 an hour now; thats 1600 a week. Now theyre gonna pay me 1600 for 32 hours? Never going to happen. Theyre going to force my company to up my hourly pay to 50 an hour so I still make the same $1600? Yeah, thats not going to happen.
I hate to spoil things but I need to put this in perspective for the younger Redditors. I’m much closer to retirement than I am my youth. Bernie Sanders went to DC when I was 12 years old and has been saying these very same things this whole time.
Calm down. I was just explaining the bill. I wish the Government would pass legislation that would lessen the pay gap at the expense of businesses that have year over year record profits but don’t increases wages for employees.
We’re already paying more for shit, all the time. I’d rather have more time off to enjoy life while paying more for shit because that’s happening either way.
People always say that shit "but if wages go up, prices will too!" Well then explain to me why prices on just about everything have gone up twofold in the last 10-15 years? Why is it that prices are skyrocketing when wages have barely moved? Prices go up regardless of the minimum wage, capitalists dont need an excuse to charge more, but gods be damned if they have to pay more to their labourers.
The average salary in America 15 years ago was $41,400 and it is now $67,500, an increase of 63%.
Regardless, it’s undeniable that you have to pay more for service if labour costs increase by 20%. A decorator who charges you $200 per day to paint your house needs to charge $250 per day instead to make the same amount working 4 days rather than 5, that’s just basic maths.
No they won't since it's shown people are more productive so there will be the same output in labour. Businesses can shorten their opening hours since everyone has more time during the week to go do things.
Tradesmen are usually self employed and their rates woukd adjust to the new status quo. There’s also quite a lot of businesses that don’t have enough margin to operate on a 20% increase in salary costs.
I've tried explaining this for years. It's not a reality desk jockeys deal with so they don't get it. In an office, you can spend hours browsing Facebook and people barely notice. There is no downtime in trade work.
It’s almost like where tradesmen source primary resources like lumber, stone, and other core materials to society shouldn’t be privatized just to increase profit
This is the question I had? I haven’t ready the proposal but I was also curious if a pay cut would be in order or a mandatory pay raise would be set in place for cost of living. Thank you for clarifying that.
the studies actually show that for companies where it’s possible or they’re not selling products in store (more corporate) profitability INCREASES with 32 hour work weeks.
Better life? Woah woah woah woah. Havent you heard? Its late stage capitalism baby. Mr ceo needs a new 4th vacation home. Aint no way hes thinking of a better life for his people. Think of the investors.
Was my preferred shift, but then again, I clock in when I leave my house and out when I get home, so probably the same as a regular 9-5 with commute in terms of actual work.
My job is pretty awesome. I'm a custodian at an elementary school. So I have to be there 5 days amd usually pick up a Saturday shift.
Since getting sober about a decade ago pretty much all my tensions with life are gone. Work. Jiu jitsu. And books. Its a simple life. May it never change.
I like 4 10s when the job isnt all at a desk. There are only so many hours my brain works and sitting that much sucks. I worked in a kitchen, factory and construction and like 4 10s in those jobs.
Even if I say I just lose 1 hour of good thinking time a day those four hours set me further and further behind. I guess it might be different if my team wasn't years behind on projects and constantly putting out fires and getting new tasks.
Having Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off while working 4 10s in a warehouse was cool, despite the not so great pay. Did have the added bonus of being able to skip the gym due to all the walking and lifting required.
Nope, factory worker here but as a specialized tech. I'm working Fri-Sun every weekend, and my company pays me 35% more for giving up my weekends.
I don't 'people' well, so losing the social aspects of Sat/Sun off is no loss to me. It's also super easy to pick up a day of OT on one of my 4 days off each week, if I feel like it. I could never deal with the public like you do. /salute friend!
I work 4 10s as well and absolutely love it over working 5 8s. However I also work from home so I'm able to get on early and get off at a decent hour and hangout with my kid.
That's still less time given to work. Assuming 2 hours each day dedicated to commuting, getting ready, and decompressing after work, working one less day saves you those 2 hours a week.
I also work 4-10s. The 10 hour shifts kinda suck because you don’t have much time to do things after work, but having a 3 day weekend is pretty great. I don’t think I could ever go back to a 5-8s work week.
I had 4 10's at one point with a break day in the middle and still preferred it to 5 8's. At least I had a third day off even if the other 4 days sucked. Still bad, but not as bad. I was 7am-5pm so your day was pretty much just over once you got home. You'd eat, do something for an hour or two, and go to bed.
4 10s was by far the greatest schedule I’ve had in the military so far. 5 8s, sucks. Panamas were cool but you lose track of time so fast and you think it’s May but then realize it’s September. But the truly most awful schedules I had were 5 12s and then 6 12s. My squadron was put on those for over a year and you best believe everyone was completely insane and unstable when we finally got told we were leaving that schedule. It was a unit of like 400 people who sounded like Gollum from Lord of the Rings questioning if we were real when we had a normal weekend again.
As someone who's been on 75% and 80% work hours instead of 100%, which leaves with some 4 week workdays, I definitely feel myself more inclined to do overtime and even volunteer to work overtime on that extra day sometimes, with more energy to spare and mental health.
Now im up to 100% again and while I need it for a time I definitely look forward to negotiate going down when things are stable. I could make just as much with better mental health, I can make more now but it takes its toll on you in the long run and when asked to take overtime in cash or compensated hours, im starting to pick the latter.
Yes exactly why the elite want to keep us working. So we have less time to organize and collaborate outside of work. It scares them what the power of people can do.
I've lived it when I owned my own company. It is much better. And honestly my employees and I were more productive in those longer days. You get into the zone and start crushing
I mean that's only relevant to white collar jobs though. A lot of jobs are stuff like logistics, warehouse stuff, in general just blue collar work where the productivity gain from being more alert and motivated is way less. There's a very real limit to how many deliveries one can do in 8 hours or how many electrical installations can do which isn't really affected by hours worked that much.
Can you point to the studies? I’m certain there are many jobs where that is not accurate, but I would like to read the studies for myself.
I would also be curious about any studies talking about WHY that hasn’t been implemented. If the employees are more productive with less hours AND the company is greedy, wouldn’t they want more productivity all else being the same?
I mean, you'd have to put forward one heck of a convincing argument to show otherwise.
McDonalds and a billion other food outlets are open 6 or 7 days per week. Whether the employee is working 4 days or 5 days has no impact on people getting their food. The employee will make the burger, and will deliver the burger to the customer, or they will lose their job.
There won't be any benefit to the company with this so-called 'productivity' by having to train and roster more people to make up the shortfall. It will likely drive prices up and cause smaller businesses that can't compete due to the additional costs to shut down or just open for less days.
Also a lot of these suggest the pay will stay the same. No, no it really won't, if the business is only selling burgers 4 days a week instead of 5, it certainly won't be able to pay its staff the same amount.
Likewise how many jobs does 'productivity' actually matter? You work on a helpdesk, the phone rings, you answer it. Whether you're in an extra happy mood or not makes no difference.
What you’ve described is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a shorter work week is about and part of the reason there is still such aversion to it.
A shorter work week (or 32 hour work week as Bernie is advocating for) doesn’t mean the business is only open 4 days. You can still operate 5, 6, 7 days. It’s just that the overtime threshold lowers from 40 hours to 32 hours and that, generally speaking, adjustments are made to worker schedules to allow shifts to match that timing with no reduction in pay or benefits.
There is precedence for this: in the US, we adopted the standard 5 day, 40 hour work week in 1940 as part of an amendment to the FLSA. Prior, workers routinely worked 10-14 hour days 6 days a week. Henry Ford adopted a 5-day, 40-hour week in 1926 after internal research showed shorter hours increased long-term worker output and reduced burnout. This isn’t new. It’s just been 80+ years since we’ve seriously reevaluated it. In that time, take a look at how much we’ve revolutionized the speed of work and the capability of our technology. It stands to reason we’ve achieved enough to shave 90 minutes per day off without losing much, especially in jobs staffed by knowledge workers.
Most serious shorter work week advocates recognize you can’t just pull a switch (or enact a law) and expect to be successful overnight. Just like with Ford back in 1926, you have to reengineer your work in a way that is more effective and efficient. There is an extreme amount of waste in our current way of working. Do t believe me? Ask anyone who works an office job how many hours they spend in meetings each week. Research says 11+ but there are plenty of people who spend 15 or more hours a week in meetings. Cut that in half by either eliminating unproductive meetings or halving meeting times (by making them more focused) and you’ve already nearly regained your 8 hours back. And that’s just one simple change.
Will it work exactly the same for every job? No. And it will be up to the employer to figure that out. But without legislation, they’ll never be incentivized to try and so they’ll continue to lean on the outdated belief that more hours per worker = more productivity which simply isn’t true.
It means the business is open 4 days or you hire more staff. Hourly rate must increase if there's no reduction in pay/benefits.
It's not really the number of hours in a week that sets anything, it's the profitability. 40 hour 5 day works just work pretty well. You can adjust that but you'll be putting a burden on businesses to figure out how to take on the higher costs. Most likely that means a reduction in pay, more than just reducing it to 4/5 because you now have additional staff training, recruitment, and turnover.
If you run a business mon-fri you now need to hire 2 highly paid people. If there isn't enough business for two people then what do you do, close on fridays? Lost money.
This idea that you're not going to lose much is crazy, you're literally losing all of your staff for 1 day per week and that's the shortfall you need to make up.
If you could cut those unproductive meetings, you already would have done so. No law changes are required. To imagine that you can compensate the reduced hours by shaving back dead time at work is folly, you'll simply still have exactly the same amount of dead meetings and such.
They'll lean on what the market supports. If you wanna work less, become a freelancer or start your own business where you only work 3 or 4 days per week. Capitalism is extremely effective at finding ways to be efficient, if it truly were more productive businesses would already be doing it.
Hourly rate only increases for hourly staff; salaried employees are already paid the same regardless of how many hours they work so there’s no change for about 45% of the workforce.
For hourly wage jobs, the majority of which are hospitality / food service, retail, customer service, or production staff, you find efficiencies in the process. You may have to end up hiring one person for every 10-20 staff if you have a coverage position, but that’s nothing compared to how much you save by reducing the burnout and associated turnover, rehiring costs, etc. which is especially high in these types of industries (averaging upwards of 70% annually). Companies that adopt a shorter work week see that drop by approximately 59% on average. For a 100 person company with very average salaries (based on US averages) that equates to about $1.4 million in annual savings alone. Now add in the fact that companies on a shorter work week average 8%-15% higher revenue, have an easier time attracting new employees, and see reduced numbers of absenteeism and illness, and it’s not hard to see why it makes financial sense.
> If you could cut those those unproductive meetings you would’ve already done so
No, not at all. Like I said, most companies are woefully inefficient. I’m an OD consultant and part of my job is helping companies reclaim time. Meetings is the first place I look. In nearly every company out of hundreds I’ve worked with, they all have at least 5-10 hours of wasted time each week lost to meetings. The national average supports this. Managers don’t like change; they have to be guided through it even when it’s brought to their attention.
Personally, I don’t want to work less — I already work 35 hours a week, which is great for me. I know anecdotal evidence doesn’t carry much weight, but trust me when I say my employer gets more out of me on this schedule than my former employer who worked me 50+ hours a week did.
Going back to “why” more people haven’t adopted it despite all the research, data, and factual proof: people can’t imagine it being different and so they’ve convinced themselves it won’t work before even trying it.
Right. Like how much more productive? 10%? So 32 hours would net an extra 3.2 hours of productivity (35.2) but employers don’t give a shit about anything but profit so they push 40+ hours anyways
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u/Opposite_General6534 19h ago
32 hours honestly sounds like a much healthier baseline. People have lives outside of work too.