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32-hour workweek still is too much. For six-hour workdays would be a reasonable change. Specifically for the United States - also a mandatory 20-workday vacatio

32-hour workweek still is too much. For six-hour workdays would be a reasonable change. Specifically for the United States - also a mandatory 20-workday vacation (I live in the EU, heard Americans only have 2 weeks an that sounds nightmarish). People need to have lives, not just jobs+recovery. Working for 5 consecutive days feels like living in the office and only coming home to sleep and do home chores - this doesn't even justify commuting.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
They won't reduce the workweek without reducing your pay. There might be some 3-card-monte-style shuffling so that it seems like they didn't (at first), but no rational person (or company) pays more for less product. In the United States, employees have no leverage.
- exe34 1y ago
  > In the United States, employees have no leverage. If only there was some kind of organisation that workers could form to improve their collective bargaining power...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    If there were some kind of organization like that, mobsters would take it over, and they'd collude with the business to squeeze the workers for all they're worth. Believe it or not, some of us have first and secondhand experience with unions, so we don't pay much attention to the communist propaganda bragging about them. Besides, in an economy where many are unemployed and desperately seeking jobs, they tend to want fewer barriers to getting hired, not more. Only the most mature companies can afford the extra overhead of a unionized workforce... how many of the people here reading your comment work for startups? Do you think that they read it and say to themselves "gee, I know that we can barely afford to keep the lights on and we're just six, but I wish there was a union here holding the CEO's head under water until he gives us more raises"?
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Depending on what you consider a startup, they employee less than 10% of full time workers in the US. The great majority of folks are not working for startups. Possibly higher than that on HN though.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >The great majority of folks are not working for startups. I was speaking to a particular audience, here, which isn't a randomized sample of the American workforce. And the sort of people who do the sort of jobs that we all do here, we're the ones that it's being talked about "shortening" the workweek... because for the other crowd, shortening the workweek happens when you piss off the assistant manager, and they only schedule you for 3 hours next week. Additionally, you might consider that instead of focusing on the less than 10% that are startups, you should talk about the more than 95% that aren't gigantic fortune 100 companies with employee head counts numbering in the tens and hundreds of thousands.
    - collingreen 1y ago
      I get that you don't like unions but this is a weird argument. Unions being corruptible isn't a great reason to imply companies should be able to do anything they want to their workers and the workers should placidly accept it. Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad. In a labor market, companies aren't entitled to labor and laborers aren't entitled to jobs. If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable. If a job doesn't pay what you want, you dont have to do it. Things get complicated (intentionally?) when companies control large swaths of jobs at once or have outsized impacts on their employees' lives and future careers. Employees don't have nearly as much impact in the other direction (individually) and this asymmetry is the cause of lots of abuse historically. Unions are one way to help steady and maintain the labor market in order to keep it fair and efficient and powerful. In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    Please put the snark down for one second. Unions have been intentionally eviscerated by both the government and the media (eta: as evidenced by at least one sibling comment). It took a heroic effort to start one union in one Amazon factory, and that was under "the most pro-union administration in American history" (and it is sad to realize that it might be near the top of that list). Setting that aside, employees still have no leverage as many benefits that people rely on are tied to employment requirements. People can't take off time to retrain for a better job, have to come in when they're sick, etc., because if they upset their employer, they may lose their job which means losing food assistance they need for their kids, and employers know this... This is a systemic issue.
    - exe34 1y ago
      > This is a systemic issue. And the only way you will fix it is by collective bargaining. Not by giving up.
    - qwerty456127 1y ago
      > have to come in when they're sick To infect more people. This should be outlawed as sabotage and bioterrorism. If an employee would come in sick to my office I would be really mad at them, fire them if they do so twice.
  - SirMaster 1y ago
    People negotiate things like a higher salary or more PTO etc every day. How can you say employees have no leverage?
- qwerty456127 1y ago
  > but no rational person (or company) pays more for less product. Spending time at the office looking busy not a product.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    If someone will consistently pay you to do it and you consistently agree to sell that, then it is a product to be bought and sold. Pretending otherwise just leads to mental illness, like leftism.
deafpolygon 1y ago
Not just “2 weeks”, most offer 10 days - and that has to include sick time off. I once had 4 days sick, and my manager had to call me into a meeting with HIS manager to impress upon me that there was 6 months left to the year and I could only take 2 more sick days before they would have to count it against me on my performance review.
qwerty456127 1y ago
By the way, I meant "foUr six-hour workdays would", sorry for a typo.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

They won't reduce the workweek without reducing your pay. There might be some 3-card-monte-style shuffling so that it seems like they didn't (at first), but no rational person (or company) pays more for less product. In the United States, employees have no leverage.

exe34 1y ago
> In the United States, employees have no leverage. If only there was some kind of organisation that workers could form to improve their collective bargaining power...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  If there were some kind of organization like that, mobsters would take it over, and they'd collude with the business to squeeze the workers for all they're worth. Believe it or not, some of us have first and secondhand experience with unions, so we don't pay much attention to the communist propaganda bragging about them. Besides, in an economy where many are unemployed and desperately seeking jobs, they tend to want fewer barriers to getting hired, not more. Only the most mature companies can afford the extra overhead of a unionized workforce... how many of the people here reading your comment work for startups? Do you think that they read it and say to themselves "gee, I know that we can barely afford to keep the lights on and we're just six, but I wish there was a union here holding the CEO's head under water until he gives us more raises"?
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Depending on what you consider a startup, they employee less than 10% of full time workers in the US. The great majority of folks are not working for startups. Possibly higher than that on HN though.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      >The great majority of folks are not working for startups. I was speaking to a particular audience, here, which isn't a randomized sample of the American workforce. And the sort of people who do the sort of jobs that we all do here, we're the ones that it's being talked about "shortening" the workweek... because for the other crowd, shortening the workweek happens when you piss off the assistant manager, and they only schedule you for 3 hours next week. Additionally, you might consider that instead of focusing on the less than 10% that are startups, you should talk about the more than 95% that aren't gigantic fortune 100 companies with employee head counts numbering in the tens and hundreds of thousands.
  - collingreen 1y ago
    I get that you don't like unions but this is a weird argument. Unions being corruptible isn't a great reason to imply companies should be able to do anything they want to their workers and the workers should placidly accept it. Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad. In a labor market, companies aren't entitled to labor and laborers aren't entitled to jobs. If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable. If a job doesn't pay what you want, you dont have to do it. Things get complicated (intentionally?) when companies control large swaths of jobs at once or have outsized impacts on their employees' lives and future careers. Employees don't have nearly as much impact in the other direction (individually) and this asymmetry is the cause of lots of abuse historically. Unions are one way to help steady and maintain the labor market in order to keep it fair and efficient and powerful. In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
- dfxm12 1y ago
  Please put the snark down for one second. Unions have been intentionally eviscerated by both the government and the media (eta: as evidenced by at least one sibling comment). It took a heroic effort to start one union in one Amazon factory, and that was under "the most pro-union administration in American history" (and it is sad to realize that it might be near the top of that list). Setting that aside, employees still have no leverage as many benefits that people rely on are tied to employment requirements. People can't take off time to retrain for a better job, have to come in when they're sick, etc., because if they upset their employer, they may lose their job which means losing food assistance they need for their kids, and employers know this... This is a systemic issue.
  - exe34 1y ago
    > This is a systemic issue. And the only way you will fix it is by collective bargaining. Not by giving up.
  - qwerty456127 1y ago
    > have to come in when they're sick To infect more people. This should be outlawed as sabotage and bioterrorism. If an employee would come in sick to my office I would be really mad at them, fire them if they do so twice.
- SirMaster 1y ago
  People negotiate things like a higher salary or more PTO etc every day. How can you say employees have no leverage?
qwerty456127 1y ago
> but no rational person (or company) pays more for less product. Spending time at the office looking busy not a product.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  If someone will consistently pay you to do it and you consistently agree to sell that, then it is a product to be bought and sold. Pretending otherwise just leads to mental illness, like leftism.

deafpolygon 1y ago

Not just “2 weeks”, most offer 10 days - and that has to include sick time off. I once had 4 days sick, and my manager had to call me into a meeting with HIS manager to impress upon me that there was 6 months left to the year and I could only take 2 more sick days before they would have to count it against me on my performance review.

qwerty456127 1y ago

By the way, I meant "foUr six-hour workdays would", sorry for a typo.