10 ms·

Most people don't get to choose how many hours they work. Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is

by a3n 9y ago

Most people don't get to choose how many hours they work. Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. (I'm not an employer.) It's good for an employer if you work overtime, all he has to pay is time, or time and a half, or nothing if you're salaried. He doesn't have to pay more benefits, as he would with an additional employee. Of course an employer wants to get as much work out of you as possible for benefits paid. As an employee, working overtime only gets you more cash (or even none). Working less makes your benefits more valuable. Even if employment is strictly for money, with no benefits at all, there's an administrative overhead to hiring and managing more employees. As long as we are employed by employers, and especially if we get health insurance through our employer, there will always be pressure to work more, not less.

dgellow 9y ago
So, I currently work in Germany, maybe that’s why, but in my personal experience employers are very strict with overtime and only allow it when there is a justification (e.g: big project to get done at the end of the month). I guess because of strict regulations, but you also have the fact that having tired employees results in more sick days used, a higher error rate and mood swings. To be fair, even knowing this people (including myself) do some overtime. Working more is a short term solution to increase the productivity of a team, but on the long term the benefits of doing so aren’t that obvious.
- a3n 9y ago
  Ah, an enlightened society. As a US resident, I hope to live in one of those someday. Here I'm just a resource like any farm animal.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Germany has maintained a strict no wage growth policy for decades now however to push exports, potentially contributing to the stagnation of the euro zone.
    - saryant 9y ago
      Not sure why the parent post is being downvoted: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-saves-too-much-and-spends-too-little-why-germanys-current-account-surplus-bad https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-save... > Underlying Germany’s surplus is a decades-old accord between business and unions in favour of wage restraint to keep export industries competitive. Such moderation served Germany’s export-led economy well through its postwar recovery and beyond. It is an instinct that helps explain Germany’s transformation since the late 1990s from Europe’s sick man to today’s muscle-bound champion.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Likely because i pegged the euro issue on Germany rather than the PIIGS.
    - stephen_g 9y ago
      The Euro is also a big part of this. It’s undervalued compared to Germany’s economy and inflation rate (meaning cheaper and more competitive exports), but overpriced compared to the countries with trade deficits (PIGS, France, etc). This actually leads to internal devaluation of their economies (and unemployment) to achieve what would normally just be a bit weaker exchange rate. This isn’t a problem for the US states sharing a currency because they have the federal budget spending balances most of this out.
      - wolco 9y ago
        It is still an issue. In places like Canada they have equalization payments that boost the poor regions from the richer regions.
- oceanghost 9y ago
  Us Americans solved that problem by making health care unaffordable and systematically reducing and eliminating sick/vacation pay.
  - observation 9y ago
    If Americans were as physically fit as they were 50 years ago, would healthcare still be expensive?
    - wirelessest 9y ago
      Probably not as expensive, but still much more expensive than it need be. We've got a bunch of perverse incentives where it's cheaper for the patient to choose the option that's more expensive for the payer. Straightening those out would be a small first step, but complexities of the system and incumbent powers have made it pretty difficult.
      - observation 9y ago
        Sure. Why don't I hear more about Americans doing medical tourism then? Is there some kind of information asymmetry, because it sounds to me as if there ought to be a lot of money to be saved if the sick people knew where they could purchase the medicine they require. I can sympathize with this because I remember needing a medical procedure that I was forced to travel to a different country to solve, it wasn't even about the money but a case where I the patient was given poor information and then ignored, I actually took the doctor to the board over it in the end, and they ultimately provided a correct solution but it was easier in the end just to travel abroad to fix it.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  That's mainly because the unions have some power in Germany. Without them German employers would also happily have people work overtime.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    It is the people getting together that gives the unions that power in first place. Law is meaningless if workers don't make it happen.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      True. However, German law is definitely friendlier to labor than US law for example.
    - jernfrost 9y ago
      My native Norway is much like Germany with respect to unions and speaking with my American side of the family, and following American news I get the strong impression that laws protecting people's right to unionize are VERY WEAK in the US. They are also designed in ways which makes people end up resenting unions. I register a lot of union hatred in the US which simply doesn't exist in Norway. Part of the reason seems to be from how unions function in the US. You are either a union shop or you are not. People are forced to join the union or they are forced to not join it. People don't like being made to do things. In Norway it has always been free choice to join a union. There is no such thing as a "union shop". Unions in the US also don't seem to hold much power except in its ability to sabotage the company, and so that seems to be what they do. In Germany and Norway unions are more like partners with management. They are on the company boards. They can't be ignored as easily as in the US. To be heard in the US, it seems like unions have to cause trouble. I think this creates a very unhealthy union environment and creates a bad reputation for unions. Unions in Norway form hierarchies so that you huge national unions which together with representatives for employers negotiate work life in Norway on regular basis. The other part I think is that Norway and Germany has quite extensive welfare systems, so unions are not as actively protecting particular jobs as they are trying to protect people. Losing your job in Norway or Germany is not the same catastrophe as in the US. So people are more accepting towards it. Instead what people want to see is things like job training and aid to help you get a new job.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  I have recently moved from France to the US. Some of it is probably due to startup culture but people seem to work at insane hours. Lots of commits during the night or the weekend, or even now during the Christmas break. In general, the culture in the US seems way more pro employers and companies and anti-employees and consumers.
paganel 9y ago
> Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been “debunked” and “proven” to be false, but I’m just reading now about it in its “Grundrisse” (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it’s frightening about how right he was about subjects reguarding capitalism way back in the 1850s (in this particular case about capitalists’ dependence on their workers’, well, surplus work; if you look at the issue under this light it makes perfect sense why capitalists would insist on their workers not decreasing the number of hours they spend working). I’m no socialist nor marxist (even though I think he’s one of the best social and political thinkers ever) but if we want to really understand how things reguarding humans work we should not be blind-sided by political allegiances.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  The impression i have developed of Marx's thinking is that in his fervor to get his labor theory of value to work he ignored or managed to talk himself in circles regarding the impact of industrial machinery. Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said labor out. Marx instead tried to reason that machines were simple stores of labor, never giving more out than was used to make the machine in the first place. He still managed to make some observations that i will claim still holds to this day. While in volume one he focused on the industrial labor side, as a way to lay the foundation of his other commentary, his later volumes pulls in finance and lending. From that he concluded that it would actually be in the best interest of industrial capital to collaborate with labor in a common front against finance, but that sadly they would side with finance capital until it was too late.
  - paganel 9y ago
    > Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said labor out. I agree with this, but trying to look at the issue with Marx's eyes I think he saw the subject like this (I'm no Marxist, nor an economist, just making an educated guess): Of course that the machines help their owners (the capitalists) make more money in absolute terms (the amplifier of labor you mention), but at the end of the day what matters for a capitalist (and is one of the essences of capitalism, I think) is that he should make more money compared to the other capitalists. Now, I think Marx says that all capitalists (as a class) can have access to the same machines -> they can all enjoy the same returns caused by said newer, better machines -> so technology/science progress is no differentiator in the long run between capitalists, because the new, better machines bring them the same rate of profits (of course a company or two can go bankrupt if they haven't modernized fast enough, but we're talking about more general stuff). What I think Marx is saying is that the main (and in his view the only one that counts) differentiator between capitalists consists in how well they can "squeeze" out labor out of the, well, labor-classes (industrial workers back in Marx's time). And if you look at the economic history of the past 25 years (give or take) you can see that the grand winner of this period, China, is actually a capitalist country (I'm ignoring its one-party rule thing) that knew pretty damn well how to squeeze out labor out of its citizens/workers, and also that the United States has had a better economic run compared to Europe also because it treats its workers worse (and unfortunately people over here in Europe have started noticing this and have started copying the US). > From that he concluded that it would actually be in the best interest of industrial capital to collaborate with labor in a common front against finance, but that sadly they would side with finance capital until it was too late. That sounds pretty interesting, I've never got to read his Capital II and III, I guess I'll give them a try.
maaaats 9y ago
> or nothing if you're salaried It doesn't work that way. Many people in the US believe so, though, making companies get away with paying too little.
- kombucha2 9y ago
  Honestly it did work that way in certain states until recent legislation.
losteric 9y ago
Better public education (especially for adults) would reduce supply/demand discrepancies, giving the average American employee more bargaining power. Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations.
- pbourke 9y ago
  > Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations. I’m curious what you base that statement on, as I’ve generally not found it to be true during my career.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Which aspect?
Simon_says 9y ago
Not quite. People don't get to choose work hours per week, but they can choose work hours per lifetime. I worked about 16,000 hours and retired.
- tigershark 9y ago
  So are you saying that a Walmart employee can choose to work for 7 years and then retire? Hardly believable.
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    No, I'm saying I chose not to work for Walmart.
    - EKLM-ZK88 9y ago
      There are a lot of people who dont get to make that decision, and they probably dont get to choose how many hours they work until retirement.
kiliantics 9y ago
So then it's because of a lack of unions. Collective bargaining could give employees more power in the negotiations to reduce the number of hours worked, while still keeping a living wage and benefits.
pjmlp 9y ago
People that enjoy living in countries with strong union law usually get to choose, unless they rather keep quiet instead of reporting abuses to the respective work authorities. This includes IT related jobs. If people on US and other countries want these benefits, choose to get strong instead of demonizing unions.
- cjalmeida 9y ago
  Avg dev salary in Dallas: $93k. Avg dev salary in Berlin: $55k. There's a saying you should be careful with what you wish for, you might as well get it. (I deliberately didn't pick SV/NYC. Dallas and Berlin are very similar cost of living wise.)
  - walshemj 9y ago
    want to add the additional annual leave you get in Germany and average cost of the same health care in Dallas into that equation let alone the other benefits?
    - cjalmeida 9y ago
      Sure, please. I'd love to see what are those extra benefits worth $40k yearly. (free healthcare doesn't count as the US amount usually includes insurance)
      - geezerjay 9y ago
        > I'd love to see what are those extra benefits worth $40k yearly. How about 35hour work weeks and the fact that overtime is paid? If you factor that into account and add to the healthcare and extra vacation days I'm pretty sure those fictional $40k/yearly fade out rather quickly. And by the way, average income means jack shit when the income distribution is so lopsided, particularly when discussing issuez linked to poverty and the lack of basic services.
        wolco 9y ago
petra 9y ago
Still, in the same way that wages are adjusted by both sides of the labor market, why aren't work hours adjusted too ? You see those kinds of adjustments with female employees: there's a decent amount part-time work and no-overtime in that segment, especially at families with decent income. But not so with males. And often, for males with the privilege to work less, their job is their identity. So it's natural they like going to work. But if the stats of this Gallup survey[1] are correct, that 70% of Americans hate their job, the reason clearly isn't love, but necessity. [1]http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/majority-u-s-workers-not-engaged-job-gallup-poll-article-1.2094990 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/majority-u-s-workers-n...
walshemj 9y ago
Not for hourly paid workers it isn't that its where you made bank - you know you should never post first class post on Friday - they keep some back for the OT shifts at the weekend

by a3n 9y ago

dgellow 9y ago

So, I currently work in Germany, maybe that’s why, but in my personal experience employers are very strict with overtime and only allow it when there is a justification (e.g: big project to get done at the end of the month). I guess because of strict regulations, but you also have the fact that having tired employees results in more sick days used, a higher error rate and mood swings. To be fair, even knowing this people (including myself) do some overtime. Working more is a short term solution to increase the productivity of a team, but on the long term the benefits of doing so aren’t that obvious.

a3n 9y ago
Ah, an enlightened society. As a US resident, I hope to live in one of those someday. Here I'm just a resource like any farm animal.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Germany has maintained a strict no wage growth policy for decades now however to push exports, potentially contributing to the stagnation of the euro zone.
  - saryant 9y ago
    Not sure why the parent post is being downvoted: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-saves-too-much-and-spends-too-little-why-germanys-current-account-surplus-bad https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21724810-country-save... > Underlying Germany’s surplus is a decades-old accord between business and unions in favour of wage restraint to keep export industries competitive. Such moderation served Germany’s export-led economy well through its postwar recovery and beyond. It is an instinct that helps explain Germany’s transformation since the late 1990s from Europe’s sick man to today’s muscle-bound champion.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Likely because i pegged the euro issue on Germany rather than the PIIGS.
  - stephen_g 9y ago
    The Euro is also a big part of this. It’s undervalued compared to Germany’s economy and inflation rate (meaning cheaper and more competitive exports), but overpriced compared to the countries with trade deficits (PIGS, France, etc). This actually leads to internal devaluation of their economies (and unemployment) to achieve what would normally just be a bit weaker exchange rate. This isn’t a problem for the US states sharing a currency because they have the federal budget spending balances most of this out.
    - wolco 9y ago
      It is still an issue. In places like Canada they have equalization payments that boost the poor regions from the richer regions.
oceanghost 9y ago
Us Americans solved that problem by making health care unaffordable and systematically reducing and eliminating sick/vacation pay.
- observation 9y ago
  If Americans were as physically fit as they were 50 years ago, would healthcare still be expensive?
  - wirelessest 9y ago
    Probably not as expensive, but still much more expensive than it need be. We've got a bunch of perverse incentives where it's cheaper for the patient to choose the option that's more expensive for the payer. Straightening those out would be a small first step, but complexities of the system and incumbent powers have made it pretty difficult.
    - observation 9y ago
      Sure. Why don't I hear more about Americans doing medical tourism then? Is there some kind of information asymmetry, because it sounds to me as if there ought to be a lot of money to be saved if the sick people knew where they could purchase the medicine they require. I can sympathize with this because I remember needing a medical procedure that I was forced to travel to a different country to solve, it wasn't even about the money but a case where I the patient was given poor information and then ignored, I actually took the doctor to the board over it in the end, and they ultimately provided a correct solution but it was easier in the end just to travel abroad to fix it.
maxxxxx 9y ago
That's mainly because the unions have some power in Germany. Without them German employers would also happily have people work overtime.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  It is the people getting together that gives the unions that power in first place. Law is meaningless if workers don't make it happen.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    True. However, German law is definitely friendlier to labor than US law for example.
  - jernfrost 9y ago
    My native Norway is much like Germany with respect to unions and speaking with my American side of the family, and following American news I get the strong impression that laws protecting people's right to unionize are VERY WEAK in the US. They are also designed in ways which makes people end up resenting unions. I register a lot of union hatred in the US which simply doesn't exist in Norway. Part of the reason seems to be from how unions function in the US. You are either a union shop or you are not. People are forced to join the union or they are forced to not join it. People don't like being made to do things. In Norway it has always been free choice to join a union. There is no such thing as a "union shop". Unions in the US also don't seem to hold much power except in its ability to sabotage the company, and so that seems to be what they do. In Germany and Norway unions are more like partners with management. They are on the company boards. They can't be ignored as easily as in the US. To be heard in the US, it seems like unions have to cause trouble. I think this creates a very unhealthy union environment and creates a bad reputation for unions. Unions in Norway form hierarchies so that you huge national unions which together with representatives for employers negotiate work life in Norway on regular basis. The other part I think is that Norway and Germany has quite extensive welfare systems, so unions are not as actively protecting particular jobs as they are trying to protect people. Losing your job in Norway or Germany is not the same catastrophe as in the US. So people are more accepting towards it. Instead what people want to see is things like job training and aid to help you get a new job.
on_and_off 9y ago
I have recently moved from France to the US. Some of it is probably due to startup culture but people seem to work at insane hours. Lots of commits during the night or the weekend, or even now during the Christmas break. In general, the culture in the US seems way more pro employers and companies and anti-employees and consumers.

paganel 9y ago

> Employers, especially those that pay benefits, want you working as much as possible. Anything less is money on the table. That’s exactly Marx’s point when he discusses his theory of Surplus Value. I know that that theory has been “debunked” and “proven” to be false, but I’m just reading now about it in its “Grundrisse” (I had read its Capital I some years ago) and it’s frightening about how right he was about subjects reguarding capitalism way back in the 1850s (in this particular case about capitalists’ dependence on their workers’, well, surplus work; if you look at the issue under this light it makes perfect sense why capitalists would insist on their workers not decreasing the number of hours they spend working). I’m no socialist nor marxist (even though I think he’s one of the best social and political thinkers ever) but if we want to really understand how things reguarding humans work we should not be blind-sided by political allegiances.

digi_owl 9y ago
The impression i have developed of Marx's thinking is that in his fervor to get his labor theory of value to work he ignored or managed to talk himself in circles regarding the impact of industrial machinery. Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said labor out. Marx instead tried to reason that machines were simple stores of labor, never giving more out than was used to make the machine in the first place. He still managed to make some observations that i will claim still holds to this day. While in volume one he focused on the industrial labor side, as a way to lay the foundation of his other commentary, his later volumes pulls in finance and lending. From that he concluded that it would actually be in the best interest of industrial capital to collaborate with labor in a common front against finance, but that sadly they would side with finance capital until it was too late.
- paganel 9y ago
  > Looking at it with modern eyes, it would be easy to make said machinery operate like an amplifier of labor. Meaning that for each unit of labor used to operate the machine, the owner would get a multiple of said labor out. I agree with this, but trying to look at the issue with Marx's eyes I think he saw the subject like this (I'm no Marxist, nor an economist, just making an educated guess): Of course that the machines help their owners (the capitalists) make more money in absolute terms (the amplifier of labor you mention), but at the end of the day what matters for a capitalist (and is one of the essences of capitalism, I think) is that he should make more money compared to the other capitalists. Now, I think Marx says that all capitalists (as a class) can have access to the same machines -> they can all enjoy the same returns caused by said newer, better machines -> so technology/science progress is no differentiator in the long run between capitalists, because the new, better machines bring them the same rate of profits (of course a company or two can go bankrupt if they haven't modernized fast enough, but we're talking about more general stuff). What I think Marx is saying is that the main (and in his view the only one that counts) differentiator between capitalists consists in how well they can "squeeze" out labor out of the, well, labor-classes (industrial workers back in Marx's time). And if you look at the economic history of the past 25 years (give or take) you can see that the grand winner of this period, China, is actually a capitalist country (I'm ignoring its one-party rule thing) that knew pretty damn well how to squeeze out labor out of its citizens/workers, and also that the United States has had a better economic run compared to Europe also because it treats its workers worse (and unfortunately people over here in Europe have started noticing this and have started copying the US). > From that he concluded that it would actually be in the best interest of industrial capital to collaborate with labor in a common front against finance, but that sadly they would side with finance capital until it was too late. That sounds pretty interesting, I've never got to read his Capital II and III, I guess I'll give them a try.

maaaats 9y ago

> or nothing if you're salaried It doesn't work that way. Many people in the US believe so, though, making companies get away with paying too little.

kombucha2 9y ago
Honestly it did work that way in certain states until recent legislation.

losteric 9y ago

Better public education (especially for adults) would reduce supply/demand discrepancies, giving the average American employee more bargaining power. Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations.

pbourke 9y ago
> Higher wages may also support more smaller/domestically owned businesses, which tend to treat their employees more humanely than huge corporations. I’m curious what you base that statement on, as I’ve generally not found it to be true during my career.
- losteric 9y ago
  Which aspect?

Simon_says 9y ago

Not quite. People don't get to choose work hours per week, but they can choose work hours per lifetime. I worked about 16,000 hours and retired.

tigershark 9y ago
So are you saying that a Walmart employee can choose to work for 7 years and then retire? Hardly believable.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  No, I'm saying I chose not to work for Walmart.
  - EKLM-ZK88 9y ago
    There are a lot of people who dont get to make that decision, and they probably dont get to choose how many hours they work until retirement.

kiliantics 9y ago

So then it's because of a lack of unions. Collective bargaining could give employees more power in the negotiations to reduce the number of hours worked, while still keeping a living wage and benefits.

pjmlp 9y ago

People that enjoy living in countries with strong union law usually get to choose, unless they rather keep quiet instead of reporting abuses to the respective work authorities. This includes IT related jobs. If people on US and other countries want these benefits, choose to get strong instead of demonizing unions.

cjalmeida 9y ago
Avg dev salary in Dallas: $93k. Avg dev salary in Berlin: $55k. There's a saying you should be careful with what you wish for, you might as well get it. (I deliberately didn't pick SV/NYC. Dallas and Berlin are very similar cost of living wise.)
- walshemj 9y ago
  want to add the additional annual leave you get in Germany and average cost of the same health care in Dallas into that equation let alone the other benefits?
  - cjalmeida 9y ago
    Sure, please. I'd love to see what are those extra benefits worth $40k yearly. (free healthcare doesn't count as the US amount usually includes insurance)
    - geezerjay 9y ago
      > I'd love to see what are those extra benefits worth $40k yearly. How about 35hour work weeks and the fact that overtime is paid? If you factor that into account and add to the healthcare and extra vacation days I'm pretty sure those fictional $40k/yearly fade out rather quickly. And by the way, average income means jack shit when the income distribution is so lopsided, particularly when discussing issuez linked to poverty and the lack of basic services.
      - wolco 9y ago

petra 9y ago

Still, in the same way that wages are adjusted by both sides of the labor market, why aren't work hours adjusted too ? You see those kinds of adjustments with female employees: there's a decent amount part-time work and no-overtime in that segment, especially at families with decent income. But not so with males. And often, for males with the privilege to work less, their job is their identity. So it's natural they like going to work. But if the stats of this Gallup survey[1] are correct, that 70% of Americans hate their job, the reason clearly isn't love, but necessity. [1]http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/majority-u-s-workers-not-engaged-job-gallup-poll-article-1.2094990 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/majority-u-s-workers-n...

walshemj 9y ago

Not for hourly paid workers it isn't that its where you made bank - you know you should never post first class post on Friday - they keep some back for the OT shifts at the weekend