I’m not sacrificing shit, asshole. We fucking deserve a 4 day work week after decades of skyrocketing productivity and shit wages.
We’ve been sacrificing every time we get a “raise” or a “cost of living adjustment” that doesn’t even come close to keeping up with inflation.
Productivity has been on a rocket to the moon since the beginning of the industrial revolution, so centuries.
Every time I see any discussion about a 4 day work week, it’s always the same. Discussion is focused around what changes/sacrifices the workers are willing to make to accomplish this. Fuck that noise, nothing should be sacrificed. Your pay shouldn’t change, your leaves shouldn’t change, nothing should change. Fucking capitalist mentality bullshit.
Not to mention a complete absence of service/retail voices.
The only way they could afford that is going to ten hours a day over 4 days- or the company has to increase their hourly wages to compensate.
But of course no one is actually advocating a 4 day for retail and service. It’s for office workers who want to go shopping on Friday too
I have worked in service/retail, and this argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most service/retail is actually 7-day weeks, but the workers average out to 5-day weeks with rotating shifts etc.
All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).
The 4-day week isn’t about office workers, it’s about everyone.
All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).
You’re forgetting that retail and most service workers aren’t salaried in the US. They’re paid hourly. And most are living paycheck to paycheck-or very close to it.
In order for to not loose on pay, either the company has to increase their rates (lol. Not gonna happen,) or they have to work more hours across the four days to make up for the lost day.
And many retail workers are already do 12’s and 16’s to eek out overtime.
Edit: To put this another way, OT starts at 40 hrs. Most retail/service managers do everything they can to keep their employees at less than 40/week. OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.
If you reduce the threshold to 32, that’s still going to be true- on the 5/2 week day-weekend rotation it only helps the weeked- moving hours to them. It doesn’t matter to managment whose working that shift- only that it gets worked.
So, now, you’ve got an entire sector’s worth (and the largest economic sector at that) of people who are being shorted hours- and we all know that corpos are not going to be increasing wages to match: that would be a 25%increase in wages- and not just for the full time employee. Most large companies will dictate the wages for everyone at a given position.
Alternatively, they can just pay time and a half for the last 8, which might be only a 10% loss.
Regardless, retail/service sectors won’t really see any changes. This is probably true because many are working 20+ hours of overtime at low wages anyhow. Those companies have already decided paying adequate wages, and attracting employees is “too expensive”
Right, the point of the 4 day work week is that it will become the new standard for full time work, rather than the current 5 days.
So all your points are kind of moot, as they will ideally be addressed through cultural changes, employee expectations, or regulation.
No…. My point is that your “ideal” world doesn’t exist. The real world includes Walmart, Kroger, Cargill, Amazon and a thousand other companies owned and ran by assholes who only really care about profits.
I think most of us realise that corporations will not do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Doesn’t mean we should just say “Fuck it, never going to happen”. We should demand better.
OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.
That isn’t necessarily true. Assuming OT is paid out at a time and a half rate, if you have one employee working 50 hours a week at $10 an hour, you would pay $1040 + $1510 = $550 per week, plus the cost of benefits per employee, which is $75 per week. Total: $625
If you hire an additional employee, each working 25 hours for $10 an hour, you pay $500, but the cost of benefits has doubled to $150. Total: $650
This is a extremely simple example. I am ignoring the fact that you would probably pay someone new to the job at a lower rate, the associated training costs of hiring an employee, payroll taxes, most businesses employ a higher number of people, does the business do 401K matching, whether these people work on the same shift and probably a hundred other things.
*eke out overtime. No need to be surprised about it by saying “eek!”
Well, honestly? It fucking sucks getting off work and retail locations are all closed.
I went to the recycling depot at quarter to 5 the other day and buddy is like, we close at 4:30.
Ok cool, let me dump this plastic in the Pacific Ocean since it’s probably going there anyway.
…. The irony of your complaint….
And the entitlement.
It’s delicious.
get an office job then. We don’t need your plastic imported shit from China anyway
I can’t deny the truth of this, it’s true that only a relatively small group of jobs could realistically implement this. You can’t make a delivery truck go 20% faster, or get 20% more customers in your store at a given time. Many such jobs scale productivity with time by their nature (to some extent). While I absolutely think those workers deserve the same pay for less work at the very least, the reality is that no company will do it. There’s no benefit for them.
They’ve been discussing 4 days for decades. Our commitment to our work slavery is embarrassing.
Teleworking was possible in the 90s. It took goddamned covid for the stonewall of telework being “impossible to manage” to topple.
really sick that at least half of the country hears about 4 day work weeks and starts crunching the numbers for their overlords
i have to assume it’s pure bitterness. it’s a rite of passage to waste your life from 20-70 and fuck you if it’s any easier for you
No, no sacrifices are acceptable. Workers generally get taken advantage of in the US. I think everyone is tired of being taken advantage of. It’s time for businesses to actually treat people better.
Yes, we are tired of being exploited.
I want 4 days and I’m not willing to make any sacrifices for it. Not a fucking one.
I want permanent wfh and I’d take a pay cut if I never had to worry about it again.
My first sacrifice: the billionaire CEO
If we pass a law forcing employers to pay for commute time, I’m sure all sides will want 4-day work weeks.
That or go for WFH for eligible jobs
We were soooo close… Then big real-estate started losing value so they had to justify the offices somehow.
If they’re paying commune they’ll probably want 2x20 hour shifts
I’m in.
They’d either have to support remote work or pay is enough to live within a few minutes of the office.
I have an hour-long drive because that’s where I can afford to live.
It’s not mentioned much but there is a huge psychological boost to working 4 days a week
5 days a week feels like a week but 4 days only feels like half a week
A lot of U.S. factory jobs are 12 hour days, alternating between 4 day on, 3 days off, 3 days on, 4 days off. Probably not what most people are thinking of though.
My last cushy office job was 4.5 days/week about half the time (beginning of the quarter was 4.5 day weeks, end of quarter was 5 day week), and seemed to work well. Some stupid workaholic assholes would complain about the 4.5 day work weeks though.
In my experience, productivity per hour increases the less hours people work. Workaholics are just trying to stay away from their family, or don’t know what to do with themselves in their free-time, IMO.
The real problem is, how many politicians and capitalists are we willing to sacrifice before we get this 4-day mandate.
It’s more like: How many do we have to keep. The less the better.
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Inb4 “if you only want to work for 4 of 5 days then you must only want 80% pay and oh by the way we still expect you to come in all 5 days anyways because corporate culture or something.”
how about a 0 day work week and i punch you in the face instead
I really need to go look up these work studies on the 32 hour work week. I fully believe that a 32 hour work week in an office setting may boost productivity… But since I work in construction, a 32 hour work week doesn’t seem like it would speed anything up on my end. The work generally just takes time. I can only measure, cut, attach, and repeat at a certain speed, and no amount of rest is going to speed that up.
I worked in an excavating company for a bit. One old crochety guy worked 12 hours every day running an excavator. A younger guy who had stake in the company (also drove an excavator), who never worked more than 8 in a day, looked at him and said: “Why do you only get half as much done, but it takes you twice as long?”
The young guy wasn’t wrong. Being tired does slow you down. But yeah, a four day work week in construction, might slow the project down a bit. But they should just hire more people. And on top of that 6 hour days with additional staff would make the work go a lot faster.
This is why I’d like to read the actual studies. I can only speak on my own anecdotal evidence of 8 hours 5 days a week isn’t draining on me to an extent that I’d actually notice an increase in productivity if I were to only work 4.
am i allowed to say what i feel about the businessmen who perked up at the ‘sacrifices’ section without getting a TOS violation
I typically have a 3 1/2 day work week. I get paid on what I produce. I COULD produce more and get paid more but after over a decade I have leaned that it’s not worth it. The more I make, the more we spend to cover the absence of not being able to live our own lives.
The more I make, the more we spend to cover the absence of not being able to live our own lives. Solid point. I think this is a trap a lot of people fall into.
my work uses two different 4 day setups. we run 24/7/365 coverage. one shift is either 10 hour/day Sun-Weds or Weds-Sat, the other setup is a rolling 10 hour/day 4 days on, 4 days off. One gets you a consistent schedule, but you’re regularly working a weekend day. The other is less consistent (work days cycle back around every few weeks) but you’re for sure to get full weekends now and then.
I don’t think cramming a 40h week into 4 days is what a 4 day work week wants to accomplish.
I’m not a business owner and have no employees but four 10 hour days is likely an easier sell to those who are those things than four 8 hour days.
Where I live (Germany) 40h is the legal maximum. Edit: actually 48h/w is the legal maximum, but 8h/d. Exceptions per day only if you can average it out to 8h over time. Edit over.
Although many workplaces have that, there are countless employers who offer 38,5h 37,5h or 35h weeks. 35h is, for example, union standard for the metal industry union.
So gunning for anything less than an 8:45h day would be a step back.
There are plenty of people with more than 40h/w contracts in Germany. The legal max is still 48 h/w.
My bad then. I thought 48h/w was only the max for emergency workers.
