4 ms·

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising

pwinnski 4y ago
Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the head of HR proposed it, the CTO agreed, and it went to the CEO, who said no. He didn't want the CTO org to have benefits the rest of the company didn't have, and didn't want to extend a four-day work week to all departments. When they continue to have trouble filling open job positions because they aren't competing will in the market, perhaps he'll change his mind. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com
- slively 4y ago
  Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.
    - slively 4y ago
      > Ford’s initiative was not widely copied overnight. In 1916, the federal government passed an act to require an eight-hour day and overtime pay for railroad workers, but most workers still didn’t have those protections, and working hours remained a hotly contested issue. "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike,"
- _flat20 4y ago
  > Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. Not how it happened when going 6 to 5 days. People made it happen. And OP is one of them.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    This is widely believed, at least the first part, but not true. People (trade unionists) made eight-hour workdays happen, but Henry Ford made a five-day workday happen[0]. As I stated, most labor rights came about because of blood, sweat, and tears. Just... not that particular one, oddly enough. The fact that Ford's five-day work weeks were made up of eight-hour days, for that you can think unions and the hard work of many people! But the shift from six days to five, not so much. P.S. OP was probably not working age in 1926, as they would need to be to have made the shift happen originally. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...
- ghaff 4y ago
  And that CEO is not necessarily wrong. Even if you posit that certain types of creative problem solving might be as productive with a 32 hour work week as a 40 hour one, I'd also posit that there are a lot of jobs within companies that really do mostly map to hours in seats. And granting, say, engineering only a special privilege like that seems like it would be terrible for morale--especially given that there are doubtless other jobs at a company that could in principle also be equally productive with 4-day weeks. And it probably goes without saying that most people would not be OK with a pay cut--which might have to actually be more than 20% given the cost of benefits is fairly fixed.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    To add insult to injury in this case, all departments were completely on board other than sales, and this was an engineering-driven SaaS company. Sales people at that company are paid commission, and most of them outearn all software developers at the company, and even the C-suite. Still, it was in deference to them that the initiative was squashed. On paper, it may have seemed like the right move, but it was huge demoralizing to the engineering org to be told, essentially: we will neither pay enough to be competitive, nor offer any other compensatory advantages, primarily in deference to this other department that we do pay well. The morale question was apparently only considered in one direction.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I actually find that a bit surprising. I would assume a lot of sales comp was commission driven so presumably reps could just have kept on working however many days they wanted to. Of course, they presumably wouldn't have had the support they wanted for one day a week so there's that.
dsugarman 4y ago
>The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious Seems like all anti-work propaganda (ie: r/antiwork) to me, there's no meat. You could turn this post into an inductive proof saying it is so obvious that having X-1 days is better than X days of work until you get smacked in the face trying to hand wave that 1->0 will have no impact on productivity.
- ahoy 4y ago
  The worker is alienated from (most of) the product of their labor. Until that changes, "productivity" doesn't benefit them, only their employers. Why should we want more of that?
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    I agree. The capitalist is anti-worker
- dfxm12 4y ago
  there's no meat This ignores that there have been trials about this. Companies trying 4 day work weeks have found their workers to be more productive. Also, consider that worker productivity has gone up since the 70s, but wages haven't kept pace. In surveys, most people say they'd rather have 4 day work week. 5 days is in second place. then it goes down from 3. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  it's fine to dream of ways to replace work with automation, for massive productivity increases to lead not only to bigger investor returns but also a higher standard of living, and to talk about how it can be realized without waiting around for it to happen or making everyone's lives worse. aren't we mostly dev types here, where this is what we think of already all the time - how to reach your goals with less action and time. why choose to owe all that time saved to your boss where the primary reward is more work to spend that newly-gained spare time on (I know the reasons people give)
henryfjordan 4y ago
Productivity has risen 61% since 1979: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/. 40 hour work weeks have been the standard. Wages only rose 17% in that same period. The capitalists have been able to bank the other 44%. A 3-day work week (aka 40% less productivity if you assume a perfectly linear relationship between time working and productivity) would still mean a nice little gain for the capitalist compared to 1979 numbers. If you've worked, you've contributed to that 44% productivity gain. Why should you need to revolt or organize to get what you've already worked for? Capitalists are taking a larger and larger share every year. Is that ethical? I get that pragmatically many aspects in life are a power struggle, but "throwing the question back" is really a way of putting the burden of fixing an unfair system back on the victim.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  The difference between producitivity and wage gap is fully explained by increasing healthcare costs: https://www.ajmc.com/view/healthcare-costs-increased-twice-as-fast--over-last-decade https://www.ajmc.com/view/healthcare-costs-increased-twice-a...
  - topkai22 4y ago
    The difference between productivity and wages is not fully explained by increasing benefits/health care costs, but it is something like over half the difference. Benefits costs do a better job explaining increasing wage inequality, but again not all of it and doesn’t address what’s happening outside the US
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    That would be very convenient for capitalists but it is false, though even if it were true for the US it is not true for European countries
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Healthcare costs are largely driven by metabolic syndrome: the main cause of diseases of major modern civilizations. Half of Americans are on track to be pre-diabetic or diabetic by 2050.
leshow 4y ago
I don't think framing this as someone's individual responsibility is at all fair or realistic.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
i think if i tried anything i would just be left to fall on my sword alone.

pwinnski 4y ago

Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the head of HR proposed it, the CTO agreed, and it went to the CEO, who said no. He didn't want the CTO org to have benefits the rest of the company didn't have, and didn't want to extend a four-day work week to all departments. When they continue to have trouble filling open job positions because they aren't competing will in the market, perhaps he'll change his mind. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com

slively 4y ago
Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
- pwinnski 4y ago
  The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.
  - slively 4y ago
    > Ford’s initiative was not widely copied overnight. In 1916, the federal government passed an act to require an eight-hour day and overtime pay for railroad workers, but most workers still didn’t have those protections, and working hours remained a hotly contested issue. "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike,"
_flat20 4y ago
> Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. Not how it happened when going 6 to 5 days. People made it happen. And OP is one of them.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  This is widely believed, at least the first part, but not true. People (trade unionists) made eight-hour workdays happen, but Henry Ford made a five-day workday happen[0]. As I stated, most labor rights came about because of blood, sweat, and tears. Just... not that particular one, oddly enough. The fact that Ford's five-day work weeks were made up of eight-hour days, for that you can think unions and the hard work of many people! But the shift from six days to five, not so much. P.S. OP was probably not working age in 1926, as they would need to be to have made the shift happen originally. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...
ghaff 4y ago
And that CEO is not necessarily wrong. Even if you posit that certain types of creative problem solving might be as productive with a 32 hour work week as a 40 hour one, I'd also posit that there are a lot of jobs within companies that really do mostly map to hours in seats. And granting, say, engineering only a special privilege like that seems like it would be terrible for morale--especially given that there are doubtless other jobs at a company that could in principle also be equally productive with 4-day weeks. And it probably goes without saying that most people would not be OK with a pay cut--which might have to actually be more than 20% given the cost of benefits is fairly fixed.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  To add insult to injury in this case, all departments were completely on board other than sales, and this was an engineering-driven SaaS company. Sales people at that company are paid commission, and most of them outearn all software developers at the company, and even the C-suite. Still, it was in deference to them that the initiative was squashed. On paper, it may have seemed like the right move, but it was huge demoralizing to the engineering org to be told, essentially: we will neither pay enough to be competitive, nor offer any other compensatory advantages, primarily in deference to this other department that we do pay well. The morale question was apparently only considered in one direction.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I actually find that a bit surprising. I would assume a lot of sales comp was commission driven so presumably reps could just have kept on working however many days they wanted to. Of course, they presumably wouldn't have had the support they wanted for one day a week so there's that.

dsugarman 4y ago

>The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious Seems like all anti-work propaganda (ie: r/antiwork) to me, there's no meat. You could turn this post into an inductive proof saying it is so obvious that having X-1 days is better than X days of work until you get smacked in the face trying to hand wave that 1->0 will have no impact on productivity.

ahoy 4y ago
The worker is alienated from (most of) the product of their labor. Until that changes, "productivity" doesn't benefit them, only their employers. Why should we want more of that?
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I agree. The capitalist is anti-worker
dfxm12 4y ago
there's no meat This ignores that there have been trials about this. Companies trying 4 day work weeks have found their workers to be more productive. Also, consider that worker productivity has gone up since the 70s, but wages haven't kept pace. In surveys, most people say they'd rather have 4 day work week. 5 days is in second place. then it goes down from 3. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
wahnfrieden 4y ago
it's fine to dream of ways to replace work with automation, for massive productivity increases to lead not only to bigger investor returns but also a higher standard of living, and to talk about how it can be realized without waiting around for it to happen or making everyone's lives worse. aren't we mostly dev types here, where this is what we think of already all the time - how to reach your goals with less action and time. why choose to owe all that time saved to your boss where the primary reward is more work to spend that newly-gained spare time on (I know the reasons people give)

henryfjordan 4y ago

Productivity has risen 61% since 1979: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/. 40 hour work weeks have been the standard. Wages only rose 17% in that same period. The capitalists have been able to bank the other 44%. A 3-day work week (aka 40% less productivity if you assume a perfectly linear relationship between time working and productivity) would still mean a nice little gain for the capitalist compared to 1979 numbers. If you've worked, you've contributed to that 44% productivity gain. Why should you need to revolt or organize to get what you've already worked for? Capitalists are taking a larger and larger share every year. Is that ethical? I get that pragmatically many aspects in life are a power struggle, but "throwing the question back" is really a way of putting the burden of fixing an unfair system back on the victim.

throwayyy479087 4y ago
The difference between producitivity and wage gap is fully explained by increasing healthcare costs: https://www.ajmc.com/view/healthcare-costs-increased-twice-as-fast--over-last-decade https://www.ajmc.com/view/healthcare-costs-increased-twice-a...
- topkai22 4y ago
  The difference between productivity and wages is not fully explained by increasing benefits/health care costs, but it is something like over half the difference. Benefits costs do a better job explaining increasing wage inequality, but again not all of it and doesn’t address what’s happening outside the US
- bowsamic 4y ago
  That would be very convenient for capitalists but it is false, though even if it were true for the US it is not true for European countries
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Healthcare costs are largely driven by metabolic syndrome: the main cause of diseases of major modern civilizations. Half of Americans are on track to be pre-diabetic or diabetic by 2050.

leshow 4y ago

I don't think framing this as someone's individual responsibility is at all fair or realistic.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

i think if i tried anything i would just be left to fall on my sword alone.