A.I. aside, we should get 4 day work weeks regardless.
Something you should understand about the 4-day workweek.
From the studies conducted so far we know it seems to increase overall productivity. Which means companies, or at least some, would make more money if they implemented a 4-day workweek. So then you may ask yourself: why haven’t they? Don’t they want to make more money?
Not necessarily. It all comes down to relative wealth. A 4-day workweek would benefit them, but it would benefit regular people more. And so the divide in wealth/power/quality of life would shrink. So technically they’d be richer, but they’d feel poorer, because we’d get closer to their level, even if by just a bit.
that’s nice marketing for bernie but we all know that won’t happen. not without the kind of revolutionary action that inspired our 8 hour working day, and the original “labor day.”
employees in some sectors could easily make do with a 3 day work week, 4 hours per day, no payment reduction. all the rest is just surplus value being generated. however we know that the capitalists will never allow that, and that’s the reason we need to, while pushing for work week reductions, agitate the working class today in order to build the revolution of tomorrow.
Meanwhile my job as a phone jockey went from 500 employees to no hiring for 4 years to now 212 employees and calls are back to back with no hope of new job openings… also makes seniority rough as everyone is a veteran at this point.
Shit drives me nuts. I work for a service delivery organization and the last few years have seen us adopting a new platform that likes to talk up automation and efficiencies. Making things work is my job, but I don’t hesitate to tell folks that while we can help improve and change the jobs they do, they still have to have call center and field resources.
and if extruded proof of work was meaningful work, something interesting would have happened by now
if their little genies were real there’d be a good novel by now
they’ll all just convince us we need to purchase more, thereby lowering “productivity”
In fact, forget the AI
Yea more like if CEOs want their company to be more successful pay people overtime to work five days a week.
But who’s going to make my fart and Trump dancing with Musk videos!??
You think people are making them during their work time? More free time means more people can make those.
You mean Head Fart Tuner at Turbodong2000 is not a real job?
All the productivity gains in the past have helped us reduced the work load so much, there’s no reason AI shouldn’t…
Wait, that never happened, only people forcefully getting reductions in work time have ever gotten results.Also it’s still not clear whether AI makes any sense or not. Yes, I know it is useful to some, but once you consider all the externalities (which nobody ever does, because “not my problem”), it might not be such a great deal.
Bernie the sheepdog says a lot. Ask him to say GENOCIDE
True, and he refuses to call it genocide, even when pressured.
Not a speech from him without the obligatory ‘Hamas bad’ and ‘Pissrahell has the right to defend itself’.
Voted against a ceasefire, etc…
Has been a snake since forever yet the libs can’t seem to notice.
And they call the Magats dumb.
Really that banana republic is a lost cause. Time for it to go.
Been having a 4 day workweek for a decade now, can heavily recommend it. (Work 4x9 hours, every Wednesday of)
*20 hour work week.
Corporate will do anything but. Part time pay, no full time benefits, no pay raise, and now you need a second job.
I think the plan is to lay us off altogether.
And support their lives through robust social programs, right?
To save the working man you’ve got to put him out to pasture.
Soup is Good Food - Dead Kennedys
Thw American workers productivity has gone astronomically high without AI. We should have 4 day week yes but we need the money from all this productivity first.
We as a species could have arranged any kind of leisure society when we started using fossil fuels. The energy bonanza that allowed us to reach 8 billion people with chemically-boosted and machine-harvested food allows it.
Of course, this means a flattening of the lifestyle, no more McMansions but also no more squalor.
We are already more productive than any other time in history and we don’t have a 4 day work week.
If we did get a 4 day work week, the owners would not scale our pay to accommodate for less hours on the job. 15/hr over 50 hours would turn into 15/hr over 40 hours, not 18.75/hr over 40 hours.
Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
–Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness
i feel like capital vol 1 should be read by everyone.
my favorite part of this comment is framing 50 hours like a standard work week
A 4 day work week wouldn’t change anything for people working an hourly wage.
This is talking about redefining ‘full-time’ at a legislative level from being 36 hours to something less.
So would this not be worse for, for example, people on partial disability benefits who are allowed to retain benefits while working part time but not full time employment?
If nothing changes for them but they are now registered as full time employees, they lose their benefits for nothing in return. Who would this help?
I don’t think the work requirements for disability work that way, or are tied to the same legislation.
It would help people who work full-time. People who work hourly already don’t work M-F 8-5 most of the time.
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Interesting. I was under the belief that disability benefit requiments basically meant “unable obtain and maintain full time employment due to a disability”. After some research it seems it’s more about how much money you earn than how many hours you work.
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Are you not conflating Part Time/Hourly and Full time/Salary?
70% of Americans work full time and just under 60% of American workers are paid hourly wage.
For example, every factory I’ve worked in has been Full Time hours with hourly wage pay.
It’s mostly Managerial/corporate positions that are salaried afaik.
AFAIK there is no such thing as hourly full-time in the US. Some places do the paychecks that way, but you are either part-time, full-time exempt, or full-time non-exempt.
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Not what is happening in Spain, nor would it make any sense to mandate that… And you work 50 hours a week?
I’m not saying that the law would require all wages to stay the same, I’m saying that without the law specifically stating that wages MUST raise to accommodate, they will stay the same, resulting in overall less payment. We can’t even get a federal minimum wage increase, certainly not a full wage increase tied to an hours reduction.
Yes, why? The example would still ring true with a reduction from 40 to 32 hours.
But… like… do you think someone would openly campaign with a plan that fucks everyone over? I… I just remembered that Trump is a thing…
But yea, such law would necessitate that
how does a law force companies to scale wages instead of firing? At-will employment is a thing. How does a law also retroactively make all at-will employment subject to investigation if they dont scale wages and fire instead? What laws around the world accomodate this kind of situation?
Lots of people advocate for things that have unforseen consequences. Its not impossible for that to happen, no?
Dude…
Company needs x amounts of work done for which it requires y amounts of employees. An av employee is not going to take exponentially more work on its shoulders all so that the companys profit line, so the company will keep all its employees it requires plus a few ceos…
Could some companies tittering on bankruption go up? Yes, but their and their owners/shareholders interest is to be secondary of that of the greater public
so the company will keep all its employees it requires
Is that not the case now? Companies only have the staff the require at any time, no? So if hours get cut, they cut staff, no? I’m all for reducing work weeks to 4 days, it honestly won’t bother me even if I take a pay cut, I make enough right now so a pay cut won’t hurt me. I’m just wondering how in the world is my employer going to feel incentivized to pay me more an hour to work fewer hours. Let’s say I make $100/hour (I don’t). I work 40 hours a week. $4000 a week, cool. Now a law happens: I can only work 32 hours for full time and more than that is overtime. I’m still making $100/hr, no? Okay, $3200 a week. That’s fine and dandy if you make that much, but I’m just wondering how that helps people who make minimum wage and whatnot. They can just keep working 5 days, overtime now, to keep up their bills while I, a person who makes more than them, get to enjoy the sweat off of their back on my off day?
This already happens with weekends: poor people work them, not the rich. It’s not a zero sum thing, but I’d absolutely prefer a solid UBI plan than a 32 hour work week. With a UBI, a 32 hour work week can just happen naturally as people work less. Either way, I’m just have way more questions with a 32 hour work week than a UBI, and a UBI can get much better support than a 4 day work week honestly.
Its not in their interest to pay you more, tough knuckies for them as it will be mandated
Why do you think you need their consent and support?
