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For 11 Years, the Soviet Union Had No Weekends (2018)
- muglug 7y agoGoogle cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hlGqIxGOFfEJ:https://www.history.com/news/soviet-union-stalin-weekend-labor-policy+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hlGqIx... Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar#Work_weeks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar#Work_weeks
- selimthegrim 7y agoI always wondered if that Strugatsky book _Monday Begins on Saturday_ was playing on something else...
- bitwize 7y agoSophie Lewis should be made aware of the nepreryvka, as it could be a useful tool in implementing a core part of her feminist platform: abolishing the family.
- sethammons 7y ago> But though Sundays were holidays once again, they came at a different cost: For ordinary workers, quitting one’s job, missing a day’s work or being over 20 minutes late became criminal offenses, with mandatory prison sentences. Damn. Recently, talking with folks down at a resort in Mexico, the workers all reported 1 day off per week, and it was staggered. Seems similar to what was described in the article. Painful. For me, it would be ideal if everyone worked 3-4 days. A day for rest, a day for errands, and a day for fun means three day weekends are ideal from a worker perspective. And it is important that those days can overlap with others - what good is a day of fun if you can't do it with friends and family?
- NikolaNovak 7y agoI'd agree as something I'd "want". But from your own example, it is completely unfeasible for the resort, and myriad other businesses where there is no "productivity booster" - you just need bodies in slots :/
- earthtourist 7y agoOf course there are productivity boosters. The dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, vehicles, computerized booking, and many other pieces of technology have replaced the need for many additional workers. The problem is that, as states, we are not translating these increased profits into increased quality of life for citizens. UBI is the most obvious way to start doing it. What we want is to in effect charge companies in relation to how much profit they're making off replacing workers (increasing productivity). When a company is able to replace 10 workers with technology, they should pay at least enough taxes for 5 workers to live off UBI. Repeat until everyone that wants to can live comfortably off UBI. While other people voluntarily work to make a lot more money than UBI.
- caseysoftware 7y agoWe are translating these into the option of increased quality of life. The fact that people spend 2-3 hours/day watching TV, YouTube, and screwing around online in general is a demonstration that most people do have a higher quality of life. Or to put it another way, most people don't have to work 16+ hours/day just to stay alive. What people choose to spend that time doing is up to them. Most will use it to watch TV/Netflix/etc while a much smaller number will work on skills and things to make their lives better.
- Dylan16807 7y ago> Or to put it another way, most people don't have to work 16+ hours/day just to stay alive. They almost never had to, so that's a pretty lousy bar to use. If you're working a ton of hours in a low wage job, there's a good chance you can't get a stable home if you cut back to a reasonable amount of hours. In a situation like that it's not "optional", even if you wouldn't actually die. Even if you have a solid 40 hours a week job, and you get paid well enough that you'd be happy cutting back to 32 hours a week, it's very hard to arrange something like that. It's only optional if you have an especially good negotiation position or you're lucky, not if you're a normal worker. > a much smaller number will work on skills and things to make their lives better It's pretty awful to expect someone that's already working far more than full time to spend even more time practicing work skills on top of that. Anyone that can do so is amazing, but anyone that doesn't do so should not be blamed. Edit: To the dead reply to this: No one with an ounce of self respect is going to incentivize leisure? Even if you have no humanity in you, and don't think people deserve a single free hour in the week, it's less efficient to work people until they're worn out. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face because the poors don't "deserve" it. People don't get depressed because they lack 100+ hours of labor to slog through in a week. The ennui of feeling no purpose kicks in a hell of a lot lower than that.
- mywacaday 7y agoI worked as a life guard in New Jersey in 2000 and the day was staggered as well. Presume it's the same in all services that have a 7 day cover requirement.
- flattone 7y agoBut imagine owning a company and having friends who make law... and being ‘driven’ Wouldnt you prefer no days off and criminal penalty for tardiness?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- logfromblammo 7y agoSocialization days need to be synchronized. Errands often need to be anti-synchronized, so that your time off falls when most others are working. Fun days are somewhere in between. You need your group to have its time off all at the same time, but sometimes a service employee needs to be working at that time. I'd think that in Mexico, those resort workers would probably prefer that everybody get Sundays off. But resort guests and management would prefer that services be available every day of the week, including Sundays. The described arrangement appears to be that full staffing is equal to 6/7 of the employee roster. Or, conversely, that the employee roster is 7/6 (117%) of the daily staffing requirement. How difficult would it be to expand the roster to 7/5 (140%) of the requirement, or 7/4 (175%), for two or three days off per week, respectively? That still wouldn't address the non-synchronized schedule, but it would provide more downtime.
- bsanr2 7y agoBest Buy warehouses work on that schedule. Sundays are off, except during peak. You're supposed to get two days off a week, but it's entirely possible for the non-Sunday day off to be Monday of one week and Saturday of the next. This is somewhat better than the stores, where most full time workers must have open availability 7 days a week. I think the longest I went without a day off was 11 days, during the holiday season. My managers went probably 2-3 weeks. We were supposed to have been better than most US retail in these respects. Half of America is a de-facto vassal state to the other half.
- vz123 7y agoIt was 1940, before the war. I mean, your citation. There is no "prison sentence for being 20 minutes late" in the decree. Google translated version of the decree: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fru.wikisource.org%2Fwiki%2F%25D0%25A3%25D0%25BA%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B7_%25D0%259F%25D1%2580%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B8%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B8%25D1%2583%25D0%25BC%25D0%25B0_%25D0%2592%25D0%25A1_%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A0_%25D0%25BE%25D1%2582_26.06.1940_%25D0%25BE_%25D0%25BF%25D0%25B5%25D1%2580%25D0%25B5%25D1%2585%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B5_%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0_%25D0%25B2%25D0%25BE%25D1%2581%25D1%258C%25D0%25BC%25D0%25B8%25D1%2587%25D0%25B0%25D1%2581%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B2%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B9_%25D1%2580%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B1%25D0%25BE%25D1%2587%25D0%25B8%25D0%25B9_%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B5%25D0%25BD%25D1%258C%2C_%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0_%25D1%2581%25D0%25B5%25D0%25BC%25D0%25B8%25D0%25B4%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B2%25D0%25BD%25D1%2583%25D1%258E_%25D1%2580%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B1%25D0%25BE%25D1%2587%25D1%2583%25D1%258E_%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B5%25D0%25BB%25D1%258E_%25E2%2580%25A6%2F%25D0%2598%25D1%2581%25D1%2585%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B4%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%25D1%258F_%25D1%2580%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BA%25D1%2586%25D0%25B8%25D1%258F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...
- SkyBelow 7y ago>And it is important that those days can overlap with others - what good is a day of fun if you can't do it with friends and family? Depends upon if those in charge of setting this up viewed family as a bad thing. From the article: >The ostensible reasons for the shift were economic. Its accidental social consequences, like families being unable to come together, or religious practice made more challenging, seem to have been seen as a bonus. In one diary entry dated shortly before the changeover, the historian Ivan Ivanovich Shitz wrote disparagingly about how the nepreryvkawould kill off Sundays and all Christian holidays, he wrote, and make it impossible for people to meet in groups, whether union-based or political, or as a family. Finally, he wrote, its primary function seemed simply to generate the illusion of a culture of intense work.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ph0rque 7y agoHere's one cultural tidbit: the Russian word for Sunday means Resurrection. That was one of the reasons the authorities did not want that day to exist.
- cousin_it 7y agoYes. And the Russian word for Saturday is "Subbota", derived from Sabbath.
- paganel 7y agoI think it is still an open question, at least according to this [1]: > Borrowed from Medieval Latin sabbatum (or from Vulgar Latin *sambatum), from Ancient Greek σάββᾱτον (sábbāton), from Hebrew שַׁבָּת (šabbāṯ, “sabbath”). It's funny cause in Romanian we're using "sâmbătă" for Saturday, which is pretty damn clause to that Vulgar Latin term "sambatum" (which makes sense, Romanian being a romance language), but our official etymological dictionary [2] gives the old slavic "sonbota" as a source. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s%C7%ABbota https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s... [2] https://dexonline.ro/definitie/sambata https://dexonline.ro/definitie/sambata
- asveikau 7y agoTrue in many other European languages too. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese come to mind. In English we derive it from Saturn, which is also a god, but I guess too far removed for us to think about it. AFAIK a fair number of European names for days are derived from pagan gods. Even more if you count the Sun and Moon (Sunday, Monday) as gods, as many historical European cultures would have. Even Thursday is for Thor, Friday for Freya. Which is to say Germanic gods too, not just Greco-Roman or Hebrew.
- pmyteh 7y agoThe early Quakers considered the use of pagan gods' names-derived days of the week and months of the year to be idolatrous and didn't use them. You still find use of phrases such as 'first day school' and 'on the 21st of the fourth month' sometimes. And my marriage registry entry is dated '17 vii 2010', the traditional Quaker date format. Which at least has the advantage (like ISO format) of being unambiguous!
- petermcneeley 7y agoThe economics of this is quite sound for capital intensive production. A more sane version of this is shift work. With 2-3 shifts working a factory around the clock 5 days a week.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoDamn the Soviets did some dumb shit.
- galuggus 7y agoMany jobs in China have two days off a month. This is true of waiters, cleaners and many factory workers. Software developers are a bit better off often working six days a week from 9am to 9pm
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoChina had only one day off a week for everyone as recently back as in 1999 when I first visited. The Chinese 996 system is common at Chinese internet companies, fortunately American companies operating in China are exempt from that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sgt 7y ago6 days a week working 9am to 9pm? When do they go to the grocery store or even have time to spend at home?
- wutbrodo 7y agoPerhaps they're more likely to have traditional family roles? Leaving aside extended families, I'd find it hard to imagine that a nuclear family unit could sustain both adults working a schedule like that.
- retrac 7y agoThis is very true. The 12 or even 16 hour workdays we hear of in the early industrial era in the West seem incomprehensible. Until you realize that the factory complex was essentially their whole life and community. Don't need to walk far to work, or go shopping, or spend time cooking, when you live on-site in the dorms and your wife works in the company canteen. And you get most of your paycheques deducted for that privilege, so going anywhere else is mostly theoretical anyway even if you had time off.
- 7y ago
- daenz 7y agoUnfortunately the lessons learned here are from such a distant past that many people think they no longer apply. We'll be doomed to repeat these mistakes by people who tell us it will be different this time around.
- WilliamEdward 7y agoI would be more worried about repeating mistakes from the other side of the political spectrum this time, since that's more likely and currently what seems to be happening.
- collyw 7y agoOrange man bad, yeah?
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoGood, bad is up for debate. But orange men, permanent. I dont think he would abide, if voted out.
- int_19h 7y agoThese things go in pairs. Fascism and other forms of right-wing extremism were a response to the socialist revolutions of early 20th century. And it, in turn, reinvigorated left-wing movements in countries it affected. So if we're really repeating that stretch of history, look out for the modern equivalent of the Spanish Civil War somewhere.
- wmf 7y agoYeah, more recently we have innovated completely unpredictable and exhausting working schedules assigned by computers that can't be questioned. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/starbucks-to-revise-work-scheduling-policies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/us/starbucks-to-revise-wo...
- toiletfuneral 7y agoah yes, the classic: "if people get healthcare, its stalinism"
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago"we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us"
- oldsklgdfth 7y agoAs a holder of a semi-bs job, I feel I am in a similar situation.
- babuskov 7y agoPeople in underpaid jobs in my country have a similar saying that translates roughly to: "I can always work less than you pay me".
- collyw 7y agoIt amazes me that so many millennials seem to be pushing for communism.
- petrocrat 7y agoI don't see that many pushing for communism. Now, a lot are pushing for universal healthcare and similar social safety-net programs. Confusing these two things is a hallmark of either a propogandist or one of their rubes.
- SkyBelow 7y agoI see a decent number, though I'm not sure I would call them millennials as they seem to be a bit younger. Many I've spoken with seem happy to compromise, and if you asked them further details they all seem to have quite a different view of what they want. It's kind of like a bunch of people who all believe in God but once you start pushing for details you find that every one of them has a difference concept and many haven't spent much time even thinking beyond the common schema. For example, does their view of communism allow for some private property or not (and often with some special subset that I've commonly see named personal property instead of private property). It is also a bit like those who advocate for the free market. Many advocate for a free market. Very few advocate for a market so free that humans can be traded. And there are many products that you will find some think should be regulated within their free market while others do not.
- jefftk 7y agoA downside they don't discuss in the article is that there's less slack in the system. If you're already running your machines constantly, and something goes wrong (ex: war, pandemic, famine) where you suddenly need to scale up, you were already right at the edge of what you could be doing.
- nradov 7y agoThe USSR at that time was extremely poor and already trying to scale up production as fast as they could (although the manner they went about it was cruel and inefficient). There was no way to keep spare production capacity in reserve even if they wanted to.
- briandear 7y agoThey were even more poor because Communism destroyed the free market and the will of anyone to create business or meaningful economic activity.
- trhway 7y agoDon't forget "subbotniks" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subbotnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subbotnik ) - on weekends many workers would "voluntarily" do unpaid labor like cleaning city parks, etc.
- Avshalom 7y agoI haven't had a weekend in 8 years.
- sgt 7y agoMaybe give it a shot this weekend. It's Easter, too.
- Avshalom 7y agoThat's not how retail works, I could put in for vacation at least two weeks from now but otherwise I get one or more days off more or less at random that by design don't really line up with any one else's days off
- ThorinJacobs 7y agoIf my experience in retail is any indicator you're lucky if that request gets approved....and even luckier if your manager remembers that they approved your request!
- petsfed 7y agoThe apparent randomness of the retail schedule was one of my leading complaints. I didn't really mind that I didn't have Saturday and Sunday off per se, it was that I never had the same day off, so my friends couldn't include me in a consistent game night or something. The constantly changing schedule made retail deeply corrosive to all of my interpersonal relationships, and made holding down a second job nearly impossible (which I really needed when I was part-time).
- sgt 7y agoWhen you say retail, you mean like working in a store with shifts?
- metelev_sv 7y agoSuch a calender is not first try to change calender. There was so-called "French Republican calendar" with ten days in a week, for example. And also they try to count years from the beginning of revolution, both in Russia and in France. The change of starting point of years counting is also religiously motivated, because currently we have a 2020 years from the birth of Jesus Christ. When I see that BC and AD change the meaning, I suspect that it is a part of the same process, probably third try to change calender.
- Natsu 7y agoIn ancient times, dates were usually the Xth year of some king's reign. The Holy Roman Empire declared Jesus as their king and made the calendar accordingly, which spread throughout the west. Various revolutionaries naturally want to put themselves on the top or are otherwise hate Christian culture and therefore have tried to change the calendars or change what the BC/AD/BCE/CE acronyms stand for or whatnot due to their desire to exclude Christianity from their cultures. There are plenty of other calendars in existence, though. Japan still has eras based on their emperor at the time, for example, though the western calendar is a lot simpler because you don't have to memorize a huge list of emperors and do a lot of math to figure out how many years ago something happened. Quick, how long ago was Showa 55 if Showa went up to 64, Heisei up to 30, and 2020 is Reiwa 2? And that's an easy one. https://www.ewc.co.jp/Pages/Information/CalendarEN.aspx https://www.ewc.co.jp/Pages/Information/CalendarEN.aspx Yeah, it was 1980, so that was 40 years ago. How many got the overlapping wrong and were off by 1, though?
- metelev_sv 7y ago> The Holy Roman Empire declared Jesus as their king In west tradition it is often INRI inscribed above Jesus head. That stands for "Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdæorvm". Not king of Romans, but king of Jews. That was declared as His fault, because that time Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, not independent kingdom, so when one declare himself as a king, he really declare rebellion. This was used by the Jews to force Pilate to execute Him. Implicit side of this: He was really the King of Jews and He put the end of Old Testament history. Birthday of Jesus Christ was accepted as a starting point for calender several hundred years after His death and Resurrection. Roman Empire does already transformed to Byzantine Empire at that time. Nevertheless in Byzantine Empire commonly was used calendar since creation of the universe. And in Russia also, till 1700 AD. So it is not such a straightforward acception of the calender, but status of calender nowadays as a status of English language, most of us understand it, even if not use in everyday life. And it is really important, because makes the birthday of Jesus Christ just one day in history, which in turn makes Him real person, non fictional, non mythological.
- strategarius 7y agoIn Soviet Russia, weekends have you.
- c3534l 7y agoThe Soviets met their production quotas, at the cost of unrelenting and dangerous working conditions for little to no pay, a stark lack of consumer goods, and in many cases starvation and mass execution or deportation. But they got Stalin his steel. They met the quotas set at the top.
- mitjak 7y agoeh, would Stalin really tell the world the quotes weren't met after all that effort?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hirundo 7y ago> The nepreryvka was supposed to ... set a match to productivity So it succeeded! Or does this mean set a match as to a rocket rather than to Joan of Arc?
- droithomme 7y agoDecades ago in the US I worked at a big factory that had an odd schedule very similar to this. It was absolutely exhausting. I was far less productive then than I ever have been. Also my coworkers were by and large imbeciles and criminals since anyone normal or competent quit after six months as I did.
- nimbius 7y agoThis reminds me far too much of "mandatory overtime" in America. Federal overtime law under the FLSA does not prohibit employers from forcing employees to work mandatory overtime. Its technically illegal, but theres nothing to stop an employer from firing you for consistently refusing overtime shifts. Time clocks rarely allow you to punch in anything later than the time specified in the system, or 5 minutes before. Employers can also retaliate for your lack of participation by altering your work shifts between day/night, or cutting your work hours to make you poor. This was pretty common at most of the factories in the south i worked in while saving up for trade school. I once worked at a glue manufacturing plant that routinely scheduled 14 hour overtime on the weekends a few times a month. I refused once, and was fired the next week.
- DickingAround 7y agoThis is a lot worse than a job asking for overtime. I say 'asking' because you can leave that job. If the soviet state demanded it; it's not optional, there is no leaving, there are no other jobs. I actually think the American corporate system is the best of both worlds; you have central control and authority of a corporation which makes it efficient but if that central authority is poor the corporation dies so they're incentivized/evolved to be competent. And you as a worker can leave that corporation anytime you want, so as long as workers are scarce they're strongly incentivized to be good to you. Not a perfect system, but pretty good compared to any alternatives I've seen (e.g. soviet-style top down government control with violence as the enforcement mechanism).
- SkyBelow 7y ago>This reminds me far too much of "mandatory overtime" in America. The big difference is the ability to consent and not consent. Yes, some places demand mandatory overtime or you will be terminated, but that is it. They won't pay you anymore, but you are free to do whatever else you want. In this case, the alternative is often prison. That changes the equation so that a person is not consenting to a trade (work more hours to have this job instead of finding an alternative) but instead being forced under threat. This difference is important. As for the illegal side of things, that is a problem and something we do need to change. Laws should be equally enforced.
- tantalor 7y agoThe way it is described (workers have 6 days on, 1 day off) is identical to the old system, so in terms of wages, productivity, and cost of materials it is actually identical. The only difference is lower costs for machines; since machines are never idle you need 6/7 as many. By example, if your widget factory has 7 workers and 7 machines, by shifting their schedules so each worker takes a different day off, you can do the same amount of work with only 6 machines.
- winfred 7y ago> The way it is described (workers have 6 days on, 1 day off) That's not what it describes. > Eighty percent of the workforce were told to go to work; 20 percent to stay home. The continuous week began as a five-day cycle. Every day 1/5th of the workers were off. So that's 4 days on, 1 day off.
- tantalor 7y agoI see... that it actually less productive than before. Workers are furloughed 1/6 of time instead of 1/7.
- captainmuon 7y agoOne thing I never understood about so called "communist" states is why they treated their workers so badly. You would think a workers' state would prioritize workers' wellbeing above everything else, even to the detriment of other goals. In school, I wondered why the East German government beat down the workers movement so violently, and why they locked their citizens behind a wall. Surely they should have been very pro-union? The state should have done everything to keep their citizens happy, and if they wanted to leave, then why not just let them leave? After all, isn't the point of communism that the people are in charge? My teacher was baffled and couldn't understand my naive question :-D Now, my mental model of these "real socialist" states is that they are just degenerate capitalist dictatorships - namely, you only have one single capitalist, and that is the state itself. I find this explains a lot of their dysfunctionality.
- DickingAround 7y agoAgreed. I think we overlook what really happens when power gets concentrated in a place where it's easy to seize. You make the state own everything? Well, who owns the state? All the people can't do that collectively, so you get some central authority. Once there's an authority, it attracts the least altruistic, most corrupt. It's really not even a problem with humans in general; it's a problem of statistics: There's going to always be some tiny fraction of really awful reasonably competent individuals. And the more power you concentrate, the more it's attractive to the very worst of us.
- bborud 7y agoAm I the only one squeamish about sharing anything with the History Channel logo on it? There'd be a thousand "It was probably ancient aliens that made the Soviets do it, eh?"-jokes as a response if I shared the link.
- colinrand 7y agoWhen I run for public office, my platform will be a 5 day week. 3 days work, 2 days off. Nobody likes Monday's and I'm willing to sacrifice Wednesday.
- jackschultz 7y agoThere's always talk about the format of the 7 day week, about how people want 4 days of work and 3 day weekends. What I haven't seen talked about, and what I'd want to try, is 8 day weeks, with 5 working days and 3 day weekends. I can handle working 5 days in a row but really want the 3 days off between. I'm sure there's good history involved with where the 7 day week came from, and the different history of the names of the days, meaning which culture they came from and with the 8th we'd need something, but if you take a step back and think about it, the number of days in what's considered a week comes from nowhere. We could have 6 day weeks right now and nod our heads with that making sense. Human history is really interesting, though I really wish we could change this part.