5 ms·

Four day work weeks are popular in the same way it is both popular that taxes should be lower and public spending are both popular. Degrowth/anti-capitalism are

Four day work weeks are popular in the same way it is both popular that taxes should be lower and public spending are both popular. Degrowth/anti-capitalism are popular to many but even among this subset of people they are very upset (as we have seen) when prices of things go up slightly. I understand the arguments for the four day work week as it relates to reforms (such as the hours threshold for receiving healthcare could be lower) but that does not seem to be what this author is talking about here.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Data shows productivity is maintained in the pilots so far. Reverse Parkinson’s Law. https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies https://hn.algolia.com/?q=4+day+week+success https://hn.algolia.com/?q=4+day+week+success https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law (Prices will rise and neutral inflation rate higher than historically regardless due to structural demographics globally; importantly, labor has power to enact change as the working population cohort shrinks)
- danbruc 3y ago
  What about someone driving a bus, working on a production line, ... everything would become almost 20 % more expensive.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    In certain industries, consumers will pay a bit more and shareholders will see lower returns. People work to live, not live to work. There are already shortages of bus drivers because the pay is insufficient for the work. This is good, because when there is surplus labor, stakeholders will say “thems the breaks.” Better to be perpetually starved of labor and force systems to adapt. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-remains-severe-without-job-quality-improvements-workers-children-and-parents-will-suffer/ https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-rema...
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Bus drivers and line workers are also among the lower fruit for automation. Increasing their price could be what’s needed to push us into a higher-productivity state.
      - danbruc 3y ago
        Let's look at this the other way, everyone gets a 20 % wage cut and we maintain current prices. On the one hand we would have additional demand for labor to do the 20 % of work, on the other hand we would have a 20 % drop in demand, so there might not even be a demand for additional labor pulling wages up. I would expect a relativ shift towards essential goods but I do not see how this could incentivize more automation.
        kelnos 3y ago
        Or no, we don't do that. Everyone gets the same pay, and prices stay the same. Shareholders see lower returns, but them's the breaks. This idea that we should prioritize dividends and capital appreciation over the happiness and mental health of the masses... it's disgusting.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        danbruc 3y ago
        Same prices and same wage does not work, because your wage now only produces 80 % of the products compared to before. If someone is syphoning off 20 % of your labor for nothing, then I am all with you and this should be brought to an end, but I fail to see how working a day less each week could be an effective tool to achieve this.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Everyone gets the same pay, and prices stay the same. Shareholders see lower returns, but them's the breaks This gets attempted once a generation somewhere in the world. The problem is when you devalue capital, it isn’t maintained. The only way your equation balances is with a massive jolt to TFP. There isn’t a free lunch in reducing labour; we must be realistic about the tradeoffs involved.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    We watched everything become 20% more expensive in 2021 and we didn't get an extra day off. I'm happy to try it again if I can get a day off every week. This time I'm prepared, I have a nice mortgage that can be made 20% less expensive in terms of real dollars.
  - WWLink 3y ago
    Or would it? Perhaps running easier shifts and staffing better to handle things like employees on sick leave, would lead to less attrition, fewer sick employees, and better job satisfaction. If you can convince the employees that you're on the same team, they might also be more open to communicating inefficiencies like "this process is crap, if you change these steps you'll have fewer defects and the line will run faster". Saving EVEN MORE money and time.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      That is certainly a possibility but I have doubts. If you could gain 20+ % percent of productivity be making your employees work 20 % less, it would be stupid for any company to not do this. What seems more likely to me is that you can gain a few percent which would make the overall impact less than the full 20 %. Making processes better and so on seems mostly unrelated to me, that you could also do with a full work week.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    I think nursing is one sector I could see directly translating shorter work weeks to higher costs. Something like bus drivers you could remove part of services. With factories labour should not be significant part of cost compared to raw materials. In many areas you could just provide less hours of services, thus lower costs. But in some this is just not possible and those will cost more.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      What is the cost of raw materials? It is the labor that went into digging them out of the ground and refining them.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Some things may get more expensive, and maybe that's fine. Inflation is a thing, and things become more expensive all the time; hell, over the past couple years, things became a lot more expensive, and we didn't get anything good in return for it, like a shortening the work week. Production lines don't need to run 24/7. Advances in automation, and productivity in general, could also close the gap. I'm so tired of this idea that the point of life is to produce more and more and more. That degenerates into the point of life being to work and work and work. It's dumb. Human lives could be so much more.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  As far as I can tell all those links you posted were case studies involving public administration jobs and bureaucracy. Parkinson's Law is explicitly about this. It is not at all clear if (or how) productivity would go up in most other jobs, including construction, factory work, barbers, nurses, garbage men, chefs, etc. While technology may make it possible that people are productive per hour, there is no study or even pathway for how a chef (for instance) could produce more meals in 32 hours than 40.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-week-manufacturing-work-life-balance https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-we... https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lamborghini-introduces-four-day-week-production-workers-2023-12-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lambor... https://www.equipmentworld.com/business/article/15280393/hawaii-contractor-says-fourday-work-weeks-make-crews-happier https://www.equipmentworld.com/business/article/15280393/haw... (4/10 admittedly)
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies/case-study-golden https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies/case-study-golden (City of Golden, Colorado police department)
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        https://web.archive.org/web/20240214223733/https://ehq-production-us-california.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/cfbe4617ccc633a3398b57da3c6290e271e2ce96/original/1707496976/32b4a17b6f7324f5514392756db3db3b_Compressed_Workweek_6-Month_update.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240214223733/https://ehq-produ... ("City of Golden 6-month Update on Police Department Compressed Workweek Pilot") Highlighted results: * Faster call response times across the 6 month trial * Faster responses on Priority 1 calls (e.g., crimes in progress, life threatening emergencies) for 4 of 6 months * 3x increase in code enforcement (e.g., parking tickets) * 79% decrease in overtime spending * -304 hours/month of overtime * 50% drop in resignations and retirements (!!)
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> Degrowth/anti-capitalism are popular to many but even among this subset of people they are very upset (as we have seen) when prices of things go up slightly. Citation: trust me dude I don't really recall getting upset at prices of things going up unless I perceive that the price change has no correlation to the value delivered. I get angry when my cable internet bill would go up $20 every quarter because they were selling me the same (terrible) service still, for a higher price. Just helping themselves to a larger portion of my monthly income while delivering the exact same product. Or you have the even worse version of that, streaming services that raise their prices, as they're removing content from their libraries. Conversely, I've personally known tons of people who buy higher priced products for the perceived value they gain. That's an utterly normal thing.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  I'm sorry for throwing more anecdotes into the barrel, but our local Facebook groups absolutely lose their shit when things go up in price (or are perceived to go up in price.) Things like fast food places upping the price of a burger, or grocery stores charging a dollar more for eggs than last year, are certainly noticed. (And honestly, for people on a fixed/limited income, food prices going up are probably a fairly reasonable thing to be upset about!)
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I mean companies gouging on the prices of every day goods under bullshit "inflation" excuses is a hot topic right now, and deservedly so I feel. It's hard to take their cries of "we can't help it!" as seemingly every major corporation is reporting record profits constantly. Irrespective of the larger economic forces at play there, if you're simultaneously whining about how you need to raise your prices because everything is expensive, or worse still, doing it because your laborers are demanding better wages, while not paying said wages and charging more and then posting record profits? I think people have every right to call your price rises bullshit.
timeon 3y ago
> Degrowth/anti-capitalism I think you are merging too much of it here. I was born in communist regime and as far as I can remember degrowth was never popular.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Data shows productivity is maintained in the pilots so far. Reverse Parkinson’s Law. https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies https://hn.algolia.com/?q=4+day+week+success https://hn.algolia.com/?q=4+day+week+success https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law (Prices will rise and neutral inflation rate higher than historically regardless due to structural demographics globally; importantly, labor has power to enact change as the working population cohort shrinks)

danbruc 3y ago
What about someone driving a bus, working on a production line, ... everything would become almost 20 % more expensive.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  In certain industries, consumers will pay a bit more and shareholders will see lower returns. People work to live, not live to work. There are already shortages of bus drivers because the pay is insufficient for the work. This is good, because when there is surplus labor, stakeholders will say “thems the breaks.” Better to be perpetually starved of labor and force systems to adapt. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-remains-severe-without-job-quality-improvements-workers-children-and-parents-will-suffer/ https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-rema...
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Bus drivers and line workers are also among the lower fruit for automation. Increasing their price could be what’s needed to push us into a higher-productivity state.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      Let's look at this the other way, everyone gets a 20 % wage cut and we maintain current prices. On the one hand we would have additional demand for labor to do the 20 % of work, on the other hand we would have a 20 % drop in demand, so there might not even be a demand for additional labor pulling wages up. I would expect a relativ shift towards essential goods but I do not see how this could incentivize more automation.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        Or no, we don't do that. Everyone gets the same pay, and prices stay the same. Shareholders see lower returns, but them's the breaks. This idea that we should prioritize dividends and capital appreciation over the happiness and mental health of the masses... it's disgusting.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        danbruc 3y ago
        Same prices and same wage does not work, because your wage now only produces 80 % of the products compared to before. If someone is syphoning off 20 % of your labor for nothing, then I am all with you and this should be brought to an end, but I fail to see how working a day less each week could be an effective tool to achieve this.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Everyone gets the same pay, and prices stay the same. Shareholders see lower returns, but them's the breaks This gets attempted once a generation somewhere in the world. The problem is when you devalue capital, it isn’t maintained. The only way your equation balances is with a massive jolt to TFP. There isn’t a free lunch in reducing labour; we must be realistic about the tradeoffs involved.
- jrockway 3y ago
  We watched everything become 20% more expensive in 2021 and we didn't get an extra day off. I'm happy to try it again if I can get a day off every week. This time I'm prepared, I have a nice mortgage that can be made 20% less expensive in terms of real dollars.
- WWLink 3y ago
  Or would it? Perhaps running easier shifts and staffing better to handle things like employees on sick leave, would lead to less attrition, fewer sick employees, and better job satisfaction. If you can convince the employees that you're on the same team, they might also be more open to communicating inefficiencies like "this process is crap, if you change these steps you'll have fewer defects and the line will run faster". Saving EVEN MORE money and time.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    That is certainly a possibility but I have doubts. If you could gain 20+ % percent of productivity be making your employees work 20 % less, it would be stupid for any company to not do this. What seems more likely to me is that you can gain a few percent which would make the overall impact less than the full 20 %. Making processes better and so on seems mostly unrelated to me, that you could also do with a full work week.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I think nursing is one sector I could see directly translating shorter work weeks to higher costs. Something like bus drivers you could remove part of services. With factories labour should not be significant part of cost compared to raw materials. In many areas you could just provide less hours of services, thus lower costs. But in some this is just not possible and those will cost more.
  - danbruc 3y ago
    What is the cost of raw materials? It is the labor that went into digging them out of the ground and refining them.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Some things may get more expensive, and maybe that's fine. Inflation is a thing, and things become more expensive all the time; hell, over the past couple years, things became a lot more expensive, and we didn't get anything good in return for it, like a shortening the work week. Production lines don't need to run 24/7. Advances in automation, and productivity in general, could also close the gap. I'm so tired of this idea that the point of life is to produce more and more and more. That degenerates into the point of life being to work and work and work. It's dumb. Human lives could be so much more.
fasthands9 3y ago
As far as I can tell all those links you posted were case studies involving public administration jobs and bureaucracy. Parkinson's Law is explicitly about this. It is not at all clear if (or how) productivity would go up in most other jobs, including construction, factory work, barbers, nurses, garbage men, chefs, etc. While technology may make it possible that people are productive per hour, there is no study or even pathway for how a chef (for instance) could produce more meals in 32 hours than 40.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-week-manufacturing-work-life-balance https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1207991399/4-four-day-work-we... https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lamborghini-introduces-four-day-week-production-workers-2023-12-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lambor... https://www.equipmentworld.com/business/article/15280393/hawaii-contractor-says-fourday-work-weeks-make-crews-happier https://www.equipmentworld.com/business/article/15280393/haw... (4/10 admittedly)
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies/case-study-golden https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies/case-study-golden (City of Golden, Colorado police department)
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20240214223733/https://ehq-production-us-california.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/cfbe4617ccc633a3398b57da3c6290e271e2ce96/original/1707496976/32b4a17b6f7324f5514392756db3db3b_Compressed_Workweek_6-Month_update.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240214223733/https://ehq-produ... ("City of Golden 6-month Update on Police Department Compressed Workweek Pilot") Highlighted results: * Faster call response times across the 6 month trial * Faster responses on Priority 1 calls (e.g., crimes in progress, life threatening emergencies) for 4 of 6 months * 3x increase in code enforcement (e.g., parking tickets) * 79% decrease in overtime spending * -304 hours/month of overtime * 50% drop in resignations and retirements (!!)

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

> Degrowth/anti-capitalism are popular to many but even among this subset of people they are very upset (as we have seen) when prices of things go up slightly. Citation: trust me dude I don't really recall getting upset at prices of things going up unless I perceive that the price change has no correlation to the value delivered. I get angry when my cable internet bill would go up $20 every quarter because they were selling me the same (terrible) service still, for a higher price. Just helping themselves to a larger portion of my monthly income while delivering the exact same product. Or you have the even worse version of that, streaming services that raise their prices, as they're removing content from their libraries. Conversely, I've personally known tons of people who buy higher priced products for the perceived value they gain. That's an utterly normal thing.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
I'm sorry for throwing more anecdotes into the barrel, but our local Facebook groups absolutely lose their shit when things go up in price (or are perceived to go up in price.) Things like fast food places upping the price of a burger, or grocery stores charging a dollar more for eggs than last year, are certainly noticed. (And honestly, for people on a fixed/limited income, food prices going up are probably a fairly reasonable thing to be upset about!)
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  I mean companies gouging on the prices of every day goods under bullshit "inflation" excuses is a hot topic right now, and deservedly so I feel. It's hard to take their cries of "we can't help it!" as seemingly every major corporation is reporting record profits constantly. Irrespective of the larger economic forces at play there, if you're simultaneously whining about how you need to raise your prices because everything is expensive, or worse still, doing it because your laborers are demanding better wages, while not paying said wages and charging more and then posting record profits? I think people have every right to call your price rises bullshit.

timeon 3y ago

> Degrowth/anti-capitalism I think you are merging too much of it here. I was born in communist regime and as far as I can remember degrowth was never popular.