7 ms·

Why We Should Demand a Shorter Workweek

150 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

marcusgarvey 12y ago
>We are usually so overworked, or constantly worrying about when we will work next, that we really have very little time to fight back or even to enjoy ourselves. Bug or feature?
- loup-vaillant 12y ago
  Feature, obviously. Your boss wouldn't want a pesky union in his company.
- chillingeffect 12y ago
  Strange attractor. It's not the we can't enjoy ourselves, it's that the exhaustion of work affects the kind of enjoyment we seek. Instead of going for a nice, long empty walk for free, we feel we have to spend $30 at the movies. Or we don't have enough time to cook, so we spend $50 on a restaurant. Both of these activities keep the "economy" flowing, by constantly moving money out of our hands. I don't believe us working hard enough to ensure that we can only entertain ourselves by spending money is a diabolical plan. But I think the evil part is when we're influenced to think that we need to spend all that money on ourselves...
  - Roboprog 12y ago
    The tone in the article that your employer wants you exhausted is a bit weird. Sure, there are probably a few megalomaniacs that want unchallenged world domination, but most employers are simply ordinary people who want more money by you doing more work. Exhaustion might be a very real effect, but I don't think it is usually a goal of an employer.
happyscrappy 12y ago
It is always surprising that HN falls for this Marxist claptrap. Globalization, and the consequent lifting from poverty of hundreds of millions, is responsible for the slight flattening of wages in the West. Not that we shouldn't always strive for better but has there ever been a successful implementation of Marxist ideals no matter how small? Brook Farm?
- littletimmy 12y ago
  The world is not split into Stalinistan and Reaganland. There is a happy middleground that is currently in place in Western Europe, a place which coincidentally has the highest quality of life in the world.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Yes and they are Capitalists. The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is why a tiny Nordic country is usually used.
    - ginko 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index Didn't know that Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Germany are tiny Nordic countries and not part of Europe.
    - noir_lord 12y ago
      > The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is why a tiny Nordic country is usually used. Perhaps if you average all of Europe which is a couple of dozen countries however against specific large countries (say the UK, France, Germany) then I'd say it's not that clear cut. Indeed look at the US, the disparity between the poorest state and wealthiest state is as great as the disparity between European countries. The US is materially more wealthy (largely by want of having the worlds largest currency and the PPP boost that gets you) however the UK (for example) has shorter working hours, better social welfare system, free at the point of access socialised healthcare, 28 guaranteed vacation days a year, maternity and paternity leave and we are the nearest politically to the US. All things been equal I'd prefer to live in France or Germany than the US quite frankly.
      - Dewie 12y ago
        There are 50 sovereign countries in Europe.
unimportant 12y ago
You can demand all you want, but if there are no unions or legislations to back your demands, nothing is ever going to happen. Unions, which are most widely found in western Europe accomplish little these days (the negotiated wages for call center workers are barely livable for example). If you're a skilled developer, you can work your way to freelancer / self employed consultant or join one of the companies that offers part time work / 4 day work week (there was a recent article about one in Portland that only does 4 day work weeks). If you're unskilled, you'll always be fucked to varying degrees, as such is life unfortunately. Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive to varying degrees by nature.
- fche 12y ago
  "You can demand all you want ..." Even better, those feeling this way can refuse to work for more time than they'd like. They don't need to force the rest of us.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- chucksmart 12y ago
  Marx (like Freud) established a language of concepts as well as theories. While the initial theories may have failed - we continue to use the language of related concepts in the on going discussion.
- aaronlevin 12y ago
  > Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive to varying degrees by nature. Marx's "theory" was a method of analyzing history by focusing on class conflict as the main driver for history. By applying that analysis to capitalism, he predicted that the proletariat would inevitably come into conflict with the bourgeoisie. Das Kapital was a deep dive into how and why this conflict comes about (both economically and philosophically). As for what happened next, those are "implementation details" which Marx didn't write too much about. We've seen a few implementations (Bolshevism, Stalinism, Cuba, Maoism) and a few modern contradictions (current China, North Korea, etc.) and most have been flawed. However, not every implementation of capitalism has been successful, either. There are plenty of fascist and repressive states that are capitalist. Nazi Germany and Italy during WWII, Argentina during Pinochet, hell, you might even say ISIS is capitalist. So, I'd argue that many implementations of communism have failed in the same way that several implementations of capitalism have failed, but there is a large space for experimentation as there has been with capitalism. For example, democratically planned economies with analytical input is a space that hasn't been explored too well beyond very tiny experiments in sectors within Latin America.
chucksmart 12y ago
Workers should be given an hour or so to sit and listen to some rhetoric about a heavenly next life; it might stimulate their opioid receptors and reduce these pesky demands.
ocelot51 12y ago
Work had, keep advancing your skills and get to the job where you will have more decisions to manage your own time. We are in the Internet Revolution, no one said it was going to be easy.
rdlecler1 12y ago
The author blames the capatalists but the consumer and competition for goods and services are the culprit. If everyone could live where they wanted to, put their kids through good schools, did not have to pay student loans, save for retirement, and could afford vacations all with 30% less money than they make now then they you would see people seeking jobs that allow them to work less hours. When I take a Lyfy and a driver tells me that she has another job and is making extra money for any number of reasons she is not complaining that she is being overworked by Lyft, but that she doesn't make enough money (except for the occasional driver, like the one driving the landrover, that was driving for fun). Similarly, many engineers could pick up and move to Thailand and live like kinds doing some remote work (our designer does this), yet most would do anything to work at places like Google or Apple.
- npe66 12y ago
  "If everyone could live where they wanted to, put their kids through good schools" In the US, the competition for functioning schools and safe neighborhoods is incredibly high due to the Title IV and Fair Housing laws championed by DSA and their political allies. So you either work your fingers to the bone, or your family will be forced to live in the dangerous part of town.
- glesica 12y ago
  The problem is that most jobs that require less work pay much less. You might work, say, 30% less, but you earn 60% less, especially when benefits (if you aren't full time you generally don't get them at all) are accounted for. It doesn't matter if it is possible to make it work, it matters if it is feasible for most people, which it isn't. Don't get sidetracked focusing on outliers. Source: I haven't had a full-time job in several years and I know I'm an outlier (I also know I may pay a steep price for it in a couple decades).
  - monort 12y ago
    You can work full time, but get a 4 months vacation every year. If your employer don't offer unpaid vacation - do it when changing job.
littletimmy 12y ago
I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares. People don't seem to realize that working extremely long hours was the norm in the early 20th century. It was a long sustained effort by labor unions to those hours down from 100 a week to 40 a week. We're regressing fast, but there will be no change in the US because everyone in this country believes they'll be the capitalists one day.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares. Correction: no one who is currently in power cares. But there are plenty of young people who absolutely despise working even 40 hours a week and would do anything to change it.
  - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
    "Anything", of course, that doesn't involve turning out to vote.
    - FatalBaboon 12y ago
      In France, at least, I don't know anybody that thinks voting would change anything. You need a good option to vote well.
      - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
        That's a common mantra, but it's not true. The voter base, especially the voter base for primary elections, has a significant effect on the options that are available. If 100% of young people, or even 100% of all people voted in every election, the available options would be vastly different.
    - cauterized 12y ago
      What makes you so certain? Have you run a candidate on a 30-hour/wk legislation platform and communicated that fact to 18-30 y/os via media they actually pay attention to, and measured how that affected voting rates?
lmg643 12y ago
life would be awesome with a 3-day weekend, every weekend. time to make it happen.
- pyrrhotech 12y ago
  this is the better idea. With commutes, it doesn't make much sense for me to spend less than 8 hours a day in the office if it takes me a bit over an hour each way just to get there, but the 4 day work week is very appealing. Tree House has already implemented it
- ryan90 12y ago
  Personally I'd be bored out of my mind. I already can't wait to get back to work every monday.
  - gress 12y ago
    What do you do at the weekend?
- gress 12y ago
  For 2 years when I was consulting, I worked a 4 day week, but I chose Wednesday as my extra day off. Nobody else had a long weekend, so it wasn't that great for me to always have one, but with a mid-week break I never worked more than 2 days in a row, which meant I was always fresh and productive and enjoyed both work and leisure time more.
mparramon 12y ago
"Today, proletarianized white-collar workers are required to work 50-60 hours a week." This sounds barbaric to the ears of an European salaryman.
- dijit 12y ago
  definitely, I work 45 hours a week an I'm already drained, I can't imagine working more.. work to live, don't live to work.
  - robhack 12y ago
    European here, 35 hours and I'm drained. I'm thinking about negotiating fewer hours when I have more seniority.
    - 67726e 12y ago
      I wonder though how many of those increased hours go into actual work. I'm sure some amount does, but how much time do you think the typical European office workers spends on a Reddit or Facebook as opposed to an American one. As an American, I've worked at a "good" company in terms of expectations of hours and "bad" where one would want to come early and stay late (and make it known on the team chat) if only for appearances. I can say anecdotally that my amount of time slacking off increased with my time spent in-office at the second company, and from walking by, it seemed the case with others as well. Honestly, what with software being salaried and exempted from any overtime, what incentive do I really have to kick out an extra couple hours a day?
- savanaly 12y ago
  It's also not confirmed by my experience as an American white collar worker.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    Did you seriously just provide anecdotal evidence to counter a statistic?
mc32 12y ago
Has it only been capitalists who follow this trend, or have more or less all systems followed these patterns? Are there large economies which follow other systems, be they communist, socialist, kleptolists, or any other types able to bring forth a workers' paradise? The one thing I sympathize with is the steamrolling of the low wage worker where some of those jobs are such that they don't have regular hours and can't get a full forty hours in order to skirt some labor laws and in order to maximize flexibility for the commercial concerns. On the other hand I'd totally welcome the dsausa and any other parties to set up companies based on their philosophy and show others how things are done. Bring on that 32hour workweek without virtually being on call and somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done. The work week would be shorter for everyone. The more productive workers are already carrying a couple of their workshy colleagues. For those dangerous idiots with negative productivity, they'd individually have less time to screw things up. Why would a shorter work week make the sum of those things any different? Everything should be about the same with a slightly higher overhead for HR.
err4nt 12y ago
"Fast-forward 77 years and we are still appalled by capital’s insistence on limiting the free time of workers" WTF does this even mean? Are they lumping all 'business endeavours' into one personified beast that has desires, and is in oppositon to the very parts which make up the whole? If I tell a worker: "Ill give you $300 to update this website" and he does a good job, and then I say: "I will give you $2000/week if you can keep the updates coming" isn't he free to say 'No'? Work can't limit your free time, you ALWAYS have the power to pick who you sell your time to, how on earth could a business ever limit the time you don't sell to them?
- cauterized 12y ago
  Because unemployment is high, finding a new job is tough, living without one while you look eats your savings if you have any, and it's extremely unlikely that the next employer would be any better. If your boss frowns and accuses you of not being a team player because you leave the office before 7, if you have a family to support, and you're not in a high-demand profession, well, do you have that much of a choice? Even if you're not risking a firing, you're probably risking your next raise or promotion. The incentives aren't nearly as well balanced as you suggest.
  - err4nt 12y ago
    Finding a new job is a simple as creating one! Find something you do that provides value to others and market it. No boss, no hours, no office. Who is holding you back (but you?)
    - cauterized 12y ago
      And yet, just like the guy looking for a new job and unable to find one, you have to find someone to pay you for the work. Except now you have to do it constantly instead of once every few years. For most people, that's not an improvement. Even if all skills were suitable for freelancing (which they're not), not everyone is cut out to freelance. It's high risk, the income is uneven, you have to pay unemployment insurance but are ineligible to receive it, and you have to market yourself (which is difficult and eats up your time) and do collections (which also eats up a lot of time and is too often unsuccessful). You also take a hit on self-employment taxes. In the US you're also screwed on healthcare, which is a big deal if you have a family. It's very easy to end up working longer days as a freelancer and taking home significantly less pay than a full time employee would for the same type of work.
jqm 12y ago
I'm guessing the company in the article that limited bathroom breaks to 6 minutes probably did so not out of desire for control, but because there had been abuse, and so in typical bureaucratic fashion, they made an unreasonable policy. Corporations in the US are generally not great places to spend the day. That being said, US workers are in my experience, quite often spoiled, self entitled and lazy. So that is two problems, both of which prevent us from realizing maximum benefit as a society. But I think the big gains for corporations right now may not be in squeezing the last percent from their workforce but in the simple elimination of nonsense work, nonwork, useless meetings, job making, resume padding and all the other counterproductive junk that makes up much of the business day. That's the low hanging fruit right now.
mohamedattahri 12y ago
15 years ago, a french socialist government passed a law that shortened work weeks from 40h to 35h. The result was a giant mess, the institutionalization of extra-hours, and absolutely no effect on unemployment. I don't see how working less solves the real problem here: how to improve wealth distribution.
- wazoox 12y ago
  It was made in such a way that it maximized productivity (at a steep price for factory workers), but it created a huge boom in employment. It had lots of bad sides, yes, because of all of the trade-offs that came with it. But a steep decline of the work-week is necessary at some point.
- nshepperd 12y ago
  According to the source I found (and posted above), the issue was that instead of actually working less, people ended up putting in unpaid overtime out of the office? (And having to check their work email at home, etc, which is definitely awful for health)
- conradfr 12y ago
  False, it's estimated to have effectively created around 400/500k jobs from a target of 700k, and is credited to a boom for the tourism industry (three days week-end). Of course there have been short and long term, good and bad side effects.
  - mohamedattahri 12y ago
    Numbers of jobs created range from 100k to 500k depending on the source. You can see how this subject remains controversial to this day. The other important thing to factor in, is the general evolution of the unemployment rate in France since the introduction of the law. It makes it really easy to see that it the effect was limited, both in influence and over time.
lettergram 12y ago
Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power. When I read phrases such as: "As technology has boosted productivity into astronomic levels, we have not seen any shortening of the workweek or even a relaxing of the lunch break in fact we have seen just the opposite." Of course not, the technology enables our work to be magnified. The company wants us to continue working to the same extent because they get more "bang-for-their-buck" I would also like to say, I recently accepted a job paying about 20% less simply because I would be able to work slightly more relaxed. Ironically, it was a bank, as opposed to Google, Apple, Twitter, etc. As my friends all went and worked at those places, I noticed they had to work 50 - 60 hours a week pretty regularly. Instead I chose to take a job where the work would have a larger impact on the company (i.e. I had more weight because I was more technical), and I could work less because I could out perform their expectations. Selecting my job in such a way is me selling my skill set for less money, but more time. Usually people want to always maximize income, and because I am working on side projects I indeed feel I am maximizing income. However, the author seems to ignore this simple fact of life. Working less might be better for some people, it may even be better for the company... but there is no way in hell people are going to EVER want less in life. If this seems to be the case, then you likely don't see the full picture (i.e. perhaps they value freedom over money).
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power. I'm not sure this is true, at least for the millennial generation and later. Most people I know who work a lot do so because they don't have any other choice, except maybe "move back in with parents and become a waiter at some diner."
  - jeremyt 12y ago
    I couldn't disagree more. Most people I know work so much because either 1) they have a very high paying but high demanding job or 2) they overconsume and have to make the money to pay off the debt that they've created with their overconsumption. For the former (my friends at Google, well-funded startups, and in finance, etc.) I'm afraid I'm not going to shed any tears for them. For the latter, most people I know are neck deep in auto loans, mortgages, credit card debt, etc. Up until this year, I would be hard-pressed to name a friend who had a car that was older than mine. My group of friends roundly poked fun at me when I furnished my new apartment with nice craigslist furniture. To address your point directly, for most people, finding a cheaper apartment is an alternative to "moving back in with parents". I'm currently living in a 450 ft.² studio apartment in a small town in Tennessee for $400/month. I'm quite sure this is affordable to anyone who isn't making minimum wage, and probably them too. Making minimum wage? Get a roommate. I've had roommates my whole life. No, people choose to work a lot because they're living a lifestyle that is more than they can afford.
nshepperd 12y ago
A much less awful non-marxist take on the subject: http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy-shorter-work-week-78891 http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy... IIRC, a related issue that came up on HN a while ago is unpaid overtime. As any employee programmers surely know, giving employers unpaid overtime when projects are behind schedule is especially bad, because it creates moral hazard (incentives to set excessively tight schedules). But everyone does it, because it's expected (if you won't do it, they'll hire someone who will, right?). Regulation -- punishing employers who accept unpaid overtime, and somehow widely enforcing these rules -- is one of very few approaches that seem theoretically able to make any difference to this situation.
- themartorana 12y ago
  "...this experiment owes its intellectual roots to the industrial organization of cereal baron W.K. Kellogg, who replaced the rotating eight-hour shift schedule at his plant in Michigan with six-hours periods, resulting in an explosion in hiring and lowered production costs." In Sweden, this is a no-brainer. In the US, for salaried workers, it's an interesting possibility. For factory workers? They were probably only paid for 6 hours, given a 36 hour work week to avoid "full time" status so paying for benefits could be avoided, etc. I wouldn't be so fast to praise US businesses for lowering hours in the work week - there was an explosion of this practice after the ACA passed, so employers could avoid paying for healthcare.
  - sayhar 12y ago
    Factory workers were paid salary in the US until much later than you'd expect.
  - Gifford 12y ago
    Full time "benefits" (vs part-time hours) didn't exist in 19th Century USA wen Kellog practice changed.
- Consultant32452 12y ago
  This isn't true at all. I am fairly "in demand" in my local development circles. There are a few companies that regularly call me up or email me when they need some work done. In the last year I've worked over 40 hours 3 times, none over 50. Most weeks I work between 35-40. Do good work and set appropriate boundaries.
dreamdu5t 12y ago
And if I want to work 60 hours a week, who are you to tell me I cannot? Capitalists don't force anyone to work 40 hours per week. The fact that I will and you won't is what pressures you into working to compete for the resources we both want. This article is devoid of economics (no surprise it's Marxist)
- asgard1024 12y ago
  You can, but then your employer will be forced to pay extra by law (at least that's how the labor code in my, small European country, is). Or you can be self-employed and then the labor code won't apply. (If you still don't like it, you must be from Mars or something. I don't know anyone who would hate to get the extra money, and in fact, I don't know anyone here who would want to work longer hours than 40.)
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    And are there more laws to force you to not simply self-incorporate and contract to your real employer? In the US, that's not supposed to happen, but it does and going against it later means filling against your ex-employer when talking to the IRS.
beejiu 12y ago
Where I work there a few people who arrive an hour early, leave an hour late and work through lunch. I think it's fair to say they are the least productive members of the team in terms of the work they do. I doubt management sees it in the same way.
- sombremesa 12y ago
  Strangely even technically competent managers seem to favor presence and subservience over actual results, at least for lower-level engineers at bigger companies. Thankfully at least the senior engineers will be in your corner if you know what you're doing. It's also common to see brilliant engineers "broken" after going through job after job with the same ridiculous politics and the meaninglessness of exerting anything but the minimal effort.
  - themartorana 12y ago
    I would argue that many managers may not trust that every employee would be more productive remotely. I can tell you from my personal experience that many people are less productive from home - whether there are more distractions, it's easier to be lazy, etc... I don't know. If I'm paying for a person's productive power, working from home even part time is ok only if that person is equally or more productive at home as they are at work (on average). If their remote productivity is weak, then I would most certainly value their physical presence. (Not everyone who fits this bill needs to be fired, either. It takes a certain amount of personal discipline to work remotely, and not everyone has that ability. That doesn't always mean the person isn't a valuable team member.)
    - sombremesa 12y ago
      I think it is important to be physically present at least some of the time, as a team building exercise if nothing else. The kind of presence I am talking about is presence only of body and not of mind, the kind that is valued in Japanese culture where what you do at work is not nearly as important as how much time you spend there.
    - 12y ago
diydsp 12y ago
I just read the article on In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas and made a connection to this one. It led me to wonder if a working population with more time on its hands would look like these college campuses...
archiceo 12y ago
1. For the knowledge worker, employment should be measured in results (not time). I have achieved work-life balance by predetermining what I will deliver and when. My manager has buy off and he consequently doesn't care what hours I work. 2. I fundamentally reject the principals of this article. If you feel oppressed by trading your products or services for a wage then please feel free to never take in a wage. In America you are responsible for how much you work and how much you earn.
Jemaclus 12y ago
I recently went to Peru for a trip. We stayed at what a really, really nice hotel. It was kind of jarring, because in the Sacred Valley, you could look across the street and see the hovels where the locals lived -- brick houses with no windows or insulation, no heat or air conditioning, and sometimes even no doors. But my hotel had nice sheets, windows, heat, air conditioning, Wi-fi, and really, really nice food. We got to the hotel after sundown, and it's so remote that you can't really leave. Fortunately, they had a restaurant. The waitress there was a young woman, mid-twenties. She was extremely nice and helpful, though her grasp on English was tenuous. By the time we finished our meal at approximately 10:30pm, we were ready to go to bed. She waved goodbye and say "See you in the morning!" We were up bright and early at 7:30am, and we went to get breakfast. Sure enough, the waitress was there. Needless to say, after an extremely long day of sight-seeing, we returned to the hotel and the girl was still there and served us dinner. Long story short, this woman was working 16 hour days, and she was happy to do it. The job she had was one of the nicest, cushiest jobs you could get in her region -- by far. I didn't ask, but if I had to guess, I'd say she sends most of that money home to her family so that their extreme poverty won't be quite so bad. I spend a lot of my time reading Hacker News and other non-work related websites. I can justify it -- my happiness is important -- but I'm loathe to say that I work too much at 40 hours a week, especially when I know what conditions are like in Peru and other third-world countries. I get it. I understand the argument for shorter work weeks, and I agree wholeheartedly. But my sympathies go out to this nice waitress in Peru before they go out to Joe Brogrammer who "works" 50 hour weeks or Sarah Hedgefundmanager who has 6 minutes of bathroom time a day. Then again, maybe I'm just a monster with no grasp on how hard life really is. :)

150 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

>We are usually so overworked, or constantly worrying about when we will work next, that we really have very little time to fight back or even to enjoy ourselves. Bug or feature?

loup-vaillant 12y ago
Feature, obviously. Your boss wouldn't want a pesky union in his company.
chillingeffect 12y ago
Strange attractor. It's not the we can't enjoy ourselves, it's that the exhaustion of work affects the kind of enjoyment we seek. Instead of going for a nice, long empty walk for free, we feel we have to spend $30 at the movies. Or we don't have enough time to cook, so we spend $50 on a restaurant. Both of these activities keep the "economy" flowing, by constantly moving money out of our hands. I don't believe us working hard enough to ensure that we can only entertain ourselves by spending money is a diabolical plan. But I think the evil part is when we're influenced to think that we need to spend all that money on ourselves...
- Roboprog 12y ago
  The tone in the article that your employer wants you exhausted is a bit weird. Sure, there are probably a few megalomaniacs that want unchallenged world domination, but most employers are simply ordinary people who want more money by you doing more work. Exhaustion might be a very real effect, but I don't think it is usually a goal of an employer.

happyscrappy 12y ago

It is always surprising that HN falls for this Marxist claptrap. Globalization, and the consequent lifting from poverty of hundreds of millions, is responsible for the slight flattening of wages in the West. Not that we shouldn't always strive for better but has there ever been a successful implementation of Marxist ideals no matter how small? Brook Farm?

littletimmy 12y ago
The world is not split into Stalinistan and Reaganland. There is a happy middleground that is currently in place in Western Europe, a place which coincidentally has the highest quality of life in the world.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Yes and they are Capitalists. The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is why a tiny Nordic country is usually used.
  - ginko 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index Didn't know that Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Germany are tiny Nordic countries and not part of Europe.
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    > The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is why a tiny Nordic country is usually used. Perhaps if you average all of Europe which is a couple of dozen countries however against specific large countries (say the UK, France, Germany) then I'd say it's not that clear cut. Indeed look at the US, the disparity between the poorest state and wealthiest state is as great as the disparity between European countries. The US is materially more wealthy (largely by want of having the worlds largest currency and the PPP boost that gets you) however the UK (for example) has shorter working hours, better social welfare system, free at the point of access socialised healthcare, 28 guaranteed vacation days a year, maternity and paternity leave and we are the nearest politically to the US. All things been equal I'd prefer to live in France or Germany than the US quite frankly.
    - Dewie 12y ago
      There are 50 sovereign countries in Europe.

unimportant 12y ago

You can demand all you want, but if there are no unions or legislations to back your demands, nothing is ever going to happen. Unions, which are most widely found in western Europe accomplish little these days (the negotiated wages for call center workers are barely livable for example). If you're a skilled developer, you can work your way to freelancer / self employed consultant or join one of the companies that offers part time work / 4 day work week (there was a recent article about one in Portland that only does 4 day work weeks). If you're unskilled, you'll always be fucked to varying degrees, as such is life unfortunately. Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive to varying degrees by nature.

fche 12y ago
"You can demand all you want ..." Even better, those feeling this way can refuse to work for more time than they'd like. They don't need to force the rest of us.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
chucksmart 12y ago
Marx (like Freud) established a language of concepts as well as theories. While the initial theories may have failed - we continue to use the language of related concepts in the on going discussion.
aaronlevin 12y ago
> Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive to varying degrees by nature. Marx's "theory" was a method of analyzing history by focusing on class conflict as the main driver for history. By applying that analysis to capitalism, he predicted that the proletariat would inevitably come into conflict with the bourgeoisie. Das Kapital was a deep dive into how and why this conflict comes about (both economically and philosophically). As for what happened next, those are "implementation details" which Marx didn't write too much about. We've seen a few implementations (Bolshevism, Stalinism, Cuba, Maoism) and a few modern contradictions (current China, North Korea, etc.) and most have been flawed. However, not every implementation of capitalism has been successful, either. There are plenty of fascist and repressive states that are capitalist. Nazi Germany and Italy during WWII, Argentina during Pinochet, hell, you might even say ISIS is capitalist. So, I'd argue that many implementations of communism have failed in the same way that several implementations of capitalism have failed, but there is a large space for experimentation as there has been with capitalism. For example, democratically planned economies with analytical input is a space that hasn't been explored too well beyond very tiny experiments in sectors within Latin America.

chucksmart 12y ago

Workers should be given an hour or so to sit and listen to some rhetoric about a heavenly next life; it might stimulate their opioid receptors and reduce these pesky demands.

ocelot51 12y ago

Work had, keep advancing your skills and get to the job where you will have more decisions to manage your own time. We are in the Internet Revolution, no one said it was going to be easy.

rdlecler1 12y ago

The author blames the capatalists but the consumer and competition for goods and services are the culprit. If everyone could live where they wanted to, put their kids through good schools, did not have to pay student loans, save for retirement, and could afford vacations all with 30% less money than they make now then they you would see people seeking jobs that allow them to work less hours. When I take a Lyfy and a driver tells me that she has another job and is making extra money for any number of reasons she is not complaining that she is being overworked by Lyft, but that she doesn't make enough money (except for the occasional driver, like the one driving the landrover, that was driving for fun). Similarly, many engineers could pick up and move to Thailand and live like kinds doing some remote work (our designer does this), yet most would do anything to work at places like Google or Apple.

npe66 12y ago
"If everyone could live where they wanted to, put their kids through good schools" In the US, the competition for functioning schools and safe neighborhoods is incredibly high due to the Title IV and Fair Housing laws championed by DSA and their political allies. So you either work your fingers to the bone, or your family will be forced to live in the dangerous part of town.
glesica 12y ago
The problem is that most jobs that require less work pay much less. You might work, say, 30% less, but you earn 60% less, especially when benefits (if you aren't full time you generally don't get them at all) are accounted for. It doesn't matter if it is possible to make it work, it matters if it is feasible for most people, which it isn't. Don't get sidetracked focusing on outliers. Source: I haven't had a full-time job in several years and I know I'm an outlier (I also know I may pay a steep price for it in a couple decades).
- monort 12y ago
  You can work full time, but get a 4 months vacation every year. If your employer don't offer unpaid vacation - do it when changing job.

littletimmy 12y ago

I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares. People don't seem to realize that working extremely long hours was the norm in the early 20th century. It was a long sustained effort by labor unions to those hours down from 100 a week to 40 a week. We're regressing fast, but there will be no change in the US because everyone in this country believes they'll be the capitalists one day.

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares. Correction: no one who is currently in power cares. But there are plenty of young people who absolutely despise working even 40 hours a week and would do anything to change it.
- TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  "Anything", of course, that doesn't involve turning out to vote.
  - FatalBaboon 12y ago
    In France, at least, I don't know anybody that thinks voting would change anything. You need a good option to vote well.
    - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
      That's a common mantra, but it's not true. The voter base, especially the voter base for primary elections, has a significant effect on the options that are available. If 100% of young people, or even 100% of all people voted in every election, the available options would be vastly different.
  - cauterized 12y ago
    What makes you so certain? Have you run a candidate on a 30-hour/wk legislation platform and communicated that fact to 18-30 y/os via media they actually pay attention to, and measured how that affected voting rates?

lmg643 12y ago

life would be awesome with a 3-day weekend, every weekend. time to make it happen.

pyrrhotech 12y ago
this is the better idea. With commutes, it doesn't make much sense for me to spend less than 8 hours a day in the office if it takes me a bit over an hour each way just to get there, but the 4 day work week is very appealing. Tree House has already implemented it
ryan90 12y ago
Personally I'd be bored out of my mind. I already can't wait to get back to work every monday.
- gress 12y ago
  What do you do at the weekend?
gress 12y ago
For 2 years when I was consulting, I worked a 4 day week, but I chose Wednesday as my extra day off. Nobody else had a long weekend, so it wasn't that great for me to always have one, but with a mid-week break I never worked more than 2 days in a row, which meant I was always fresh and productive and enjoyed both work and leisure time more.

mparramon 12y ago

"Today, proletarianized white-collar workers are required to work 50-60 hours a week." This sounds barbaric to the ears of an European salaryman.

dijit 12y ago
definitely, I work 45 hours a week an I'm already drained, I can't imagine working more.. work to live, don't live to work.
- robhack 12y ago
  European here, 35 hours and I'm drained. I'm thinking about negotiating fewer hours when I have more seniority.
  - 67726e 12y ago
    I wonder though how many of those increased hours go into actual work. I'm sure some amount does, but how much time do you think the typical European office workers spends on a Reddit or Facebook as opposed to an American one. As an American, I've worked at a "good" company in terms of expectations of hours and "bad" where one would want to come early and stay late (and make it known on the team chat) if only for appearances. I can say anecdotally that my amount of time slacking off increased with my time spent in-office at the second company, and from walking by, it seemed the case with others as well. Honestly, what with software being salaried and exempted from any overtime, what incentive do I really have to kick out an extra couple hours a day?
savanaly 12y ago
It's also not confirmed by my experience as an American white collar worker.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  Did you seriously just provide anecdotal evidence to counter a statistic?

mc32 12y ago

Has it only been capitalists who follow this trend, or have more or less all systems followed these patterns? Are there large economies which follow other systems, be they communist, socialist, kleptolists, or any other types able to bring forth a workers' paradise? The one thing I sympathize with is the steamrolling of the low wage worker where some of those jobs are such that they don't have regular hours and can't get a full forty hours in order to skirt some labor laws and in order to maximize flexibility for the commercial concerns. On the other hand I'd totally welcome the dsausa and any other parties to set up companies based on their philosophy and show others how things are done. Bring on that 32hour workweek without virtually being on call and somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done. The work week would be shorter for everyone. The more productive workers are already carrying a couple of their workshy colleagues. For those dangerous idiots with negative productivity, they'd individually have less time to screw things up. Why would a shorter work week make the sum of those things any different? Everything should be about the same with a slightly higher overhead for HR.

err4nt 12y ago

"Fast-forward 77 years and we are still appalled by capital’s insistence on limiting the free time of workers" WTF does this even mean? Are they lumping all 'business endeavours' into one personified beast that has desires, and is in oppositon to the very parts which make up the whole? If I tell a worker: "Ill give you $300 to update this website" and he does a good job, and then I say: "I will give you $2000/week if you can keep the updates coming" isn't he free to say 'No'? Work can't limit your free time, you ALWAYS have the power to pick who you sell your time to, how on earth could a business ever limit the time you don't sell to them?

cauterized 12y ago
Because unemployment is high, finding a new job is tough, living without one while you look eats your savings if you have any, and it's extremely unlikely that the next employer would be any better. If your boss frowns and accuses you of not being a team player because you leave the office before 7, if you have a family to support, and you're not in a high-demand profession, well, do you have that much of a choice? Even if you're not risking a firing, you're probably risking your next raise or promotion. The incentives aren't nearly as well balanced as you suggest.
- err4nt 12y ago
  Finding a new job is a simple as creating one! Find something you do that provides value to others and market it. No boss, no hours, no office. Who is holding you back (but you?)
  - cauterized 12y ago
    And yet, just like the guy looking for a new job and unable to find one, you have to find someone to pay you for the work. Except now you have to do it constantly instead of once every few years. For most people, that's not an improvement. Even if all skills were suitable for freelancing (which they're not), not everyone is cut out to freelance. It's high risk, the income is uneven, you have to pay unemployment insurance but are ineligible to receive it, and you have to market yourself (which is difficult and eats up your time) and do collections (which also eats up a lot of time and is too often unsuccessful). You also take a hit on self-employment taxes. In the US you're also screwed on healthcare, which is a big deal if you have a family. It's very easy to end up working longer days as a freelancer and taking home significantly less pay than a full time employee would for the same type of work.

jqm 12y ago

I'm guessing the company in the article that limited bathroom breaks to 6 minutes probably did so not out of desire for control, but because there had been abuse, and so in typical bureaucratic fashion, they made an unreasonable policy. Corporations in the US are generally not great places to spend the day. That being said, US workers are in my experience, quite often spoiled, self entitled and lazy. So that is two problems, both of which prevent us from realizing maximum benefit as a society. But I think the big gains for corporations right now may not be in squeezing the last percent from their workforce but in the simple elimination of nonsense work, nonwork, useless meetings, job making, resume padding and all the other counterproductive junk that makes up much of the business day. That's the low hanging fruit right now.

mohamedattahri 12y ago

15 years ago, a french socialist government passed a law that shortened work weeks from 40h to 35h. The result was a giant mess, the institutionalization of extra-hours, and absolutely no effect on unemployment. I don't see how working less solves the real problem here: how to improve wealth distribution.

wazoox 12y ago
It was made in such a way that it maximized productivity (at a steep price for factory workers), but it created a huge boom in employment. It had lots of bad sides, yes, because of all of the trade-offs that came with it. But a steep decline of the work-week is necessary at some point.
nshepperd 12y ago
According to the source I found (and posted above), the issue was that instead of actually working less, people ended up putting in unpaid overtime out of the office? (And having to check their work email at home, etc, which is definitely awful for health)
conradfr 12y ago
False, it's estimated to have effectively created around 400/500k jobs from a target of 700k, and is credited to a boom for the tourism industry (three days week-end). Of course there have been short and long term, good and bad side effects.
- mohamedattahri 12y ago
  Numbers of jobs created range from 100k to 500k depending on the source. You can see how this subject remains controversial to this day. The other important thing to factor in, is the general evolution of the unemployment rate in France since the introduction of the law. It makes it really easy to see that it the effect was limited, both in influence and over time.

lettergram 12y ago

Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power. When I read phrases such as: "As technology has boosted productivity into astronomic levels, we have not seen any shortening of the workweek or even a relaxing of the lunch break in fact we have seen just the opposite." Of course not, the technology enables our work to be magnified. The company wants us to continue working to the same extent because they get more "bang-for-their-buck" I would also like to say, I recently accepted a job paying about 20% less simply because I would be able to work slightly more relaxed. Ironically, it was a bank, as opposed to Google, Apple, Twitter, etc. As my friends all went and worked at those places, I noticed they had to work 50 - 60 hours a week pretty regularly. Instead I chose to take a job where the work would have a larger impact on the company (i.e. I had more weight because I was more technical), and I could work less because I could out perform their expectations. Selecting my job in such a way is me selling my skill set for less money, but more time. Usually people want to always maximize income, and because I am working on side projects I indeed feel I am maximizing income. However, the author seems to ignore this simple fact of life. Working less might be better for some people, it may even be better for the company... but there is no way in hell people are going to EVER want less in life. If this seems to be the case, then you likely don't see the full picture (i.e. perhaps they value freedom over money).

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power. I'm not sure this is true, at least for the millennial generation and later. Most people I know who work a lot do so because they don't have any other choice, except maybe "move back in with parents and become a waiter at some diner."
- jeremyt 12y ago
  I couldn't disagree more. Most people I know work so much because either 1) they have a very high paying but high demanding job or 2) they overconsume and have to make the money to pay off the debt that they've created with their overconsumption. For the former (my friends at Google, well-funded startups, and in finance, etc.) I'm afraid I'm not going to shed any tears for them. For the latter, most people I know are neck deep in auto loans, mortgages, credit card debt, etc. Up until this year, I would be hard-pressed to name a friend who had a car that was older than mine. My group of friends roundly poked fun at me when I furnished my new apartment with nice craigslist furniture. To address your point directly, for most people, finding a cheaper apartment is an alternative to "moving back in with parents". I'm currently living in a 450 ft.² studio apartment in a small town in Tennessee for $400/month. I'm quite sure this is affordable to anyone who isn't making minimum wage, and probably them too. Making minimum wage? Get a roommate. I've had roommates my whole life. No, people choose to work a lot because they're living a lifestyle that is more than they can afford.

nshepperd 12y ago

A much less awful non-marxist take on the subject: http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy-shorter-work-week-78891 http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy... IIRC, a related issue that came up on HN a while ago is unpaid overtime. As any employee programmers surely know, giving employers unpaid overtime when projects are behind schedule is especially bad, because it creates moral hazard (incentives to set excessively tight schedules). But everyone does it, because it's expected (if you won't do it, they'll hire someone who will, right?). Regulation -- punishing employers who accept unpaid overtime, and somehow widely enforcing these rules -- is one of very few approaches that seem theoretically able to make any difference to this situation.

themartorana 12y ago
"...this experiment owes its intellectual roots to the industrial organization of cereal baron W.K. Kellogg, who replaced the rotating eight-hour shift schedule at his plant in Michigan with six-hours periods, resulting in an explosion in hiring and lowered production costs." In Sweden, this is a no-brainer. In the US, for salaried workers, it's an interesting possibility. For factory workers? They were probably only paid for 6 hours, given a 36 hour work week to avoid "full time" status so paying for benefits could be avoided, etc. I wouldn't be so fast to praise US businesses for lowering hours in the work week - there was an explosion of this practice after the ACA passed, so employers could avoid paying for healthcare.
- sayhar 12y ago
  Factory workers were paid salary in the US until much later than you'd expect.
- Gifford 12y ago
  Full time "benefits" (vs part-time hours) didn't exist in 19th Century USA wen Kellog practice changed.
Consultant32452 12y ago
This isn't true at all. I am fairly "in demand" in my local development circles. There are a few companies that regularly call me up or email me when they need some work done. In the last year I've worked over 40 hours 3 times, none over 50. Most weeks I work between 35-40. Do good work and set appropriate boundaries.

dreamdu5t 12y ago

And if I want to work 60 hours a week, who are you to tell me I cannot? Capitalists don't force anyone to work 40 hours per week. The fact that I will and you won't is what pressures you into working to compete for the resources we both want. This article is devoid of economics (no surprise it's Marxist)

asgard1024 12y ago
You can, but then your employer will be forced to pay extra by law (at least that's how the labor code in my, small European country, is). Or you can be self-employed and then the labor code won't apply. (If you still don't like it, you must be from Mars or something. I don't know anyone who would hate to get the extra money, and in fact, I don't know anyone here who would want to work longer hours than 40.)
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  And are there more laws to force you to not simply self-incorporate and contract to your real employer? In the US, that's not supposed to happen, but it does and going against it later means filling against your ex-employer when talking to the IRS.

beejiu 12y ago

Where I work there a few people who arrive an hour early, leave an hour late and work through lunch. I think it's fair to say they are the least productive members of the team in terms of the work they do. I doubt management sees it in the same way.

sombremesa 12y ago
Strangely even technically competent managers seem to favor presence and subservience over actual results, at least for lower-level engineers at bigger companies. Thankfully at least the senior engineers will be in your corner if you know what you're doing. It's also common to see brilliant engineers "broken" after going through job after job with the same ridiculous politics and the meaninglessness of exerting anything but the minimal effort.
- themartorana 12y ago
  I would argue that many managers may not trust that every employee would be more productive remotely. I can tell you from my personal experience that many people are less productive from home - whether there are more distractions, it's easier to be lazy, etc... I don't know. If I'm paying for a person's productive power, working from home even part time is ok only if that person is equally or more productive at home as they are at work (on average). If their remote productivity is weak, then I would most certainly value their physical presence. (Not everyone who fits this bill needs to be fired, either. It takes a certain amount of personal discipline to work remotely, and not everyone has that ability. That doesn't always mean the person isn't a valuable team member.)
  - sombremesa 12y ago
    I think it is important to be physically present at least some of the time, as a team building exercise if nothing else. The kind of presence I am talking about is presence only of body and not of mind, the kind that is valued in Japanese culture where what you do at work is not nearly as important as how much time you spend there.
  - 12y ago

diydsp 12y ago

I just read the article on In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas and made a connection to this one. It led me to wonder if a working population with more time on its hands would look like these college campuses...

archiceo 12y ago

1. For the knowledge worker, employment should be measured in results (not time). I have achieved work-life balance by predetermining what I will deliver and when. My manager has buy off and he consequently doesn't care what hours I work. 2. I fundamentally reject the principals of this article. If you feel oppressed by trading your products or services for a wage then please feel free to never take in a wage. In America you are responsible for how much you work and how much you earn.

Jemaclus 12y ago

I recently went to Peru for a trip. We stayed at what a really, really nice hotel. It was kind of jarring, because in the Sacred Valley, you could look across the street and see the hovels where the locals lived -- brick houses with no windows or insulation, no heat or air conditioning, and sometimes even no doors. But my hotel had nice sheets, windows, heat, air conditioning, Wi-fi, and really, really nice food. We got to the hotel after sundown, and it's so remote that you can't really leave. Fortunately, they had a restaurant. The waitress there was a young woman, mid-twenties. She was extremely nice and helpful, though her grasp on English was tenuous. By the time we finished our meal at approximately 10:30pm, we were ready to go to bed. She waved goodbye and say "See you in the morning!" We were up bright and early at 7:30am, and we went to get breakfast. Sure enough, the waitress was there. Needless to say, after an extremely long day of sight-seeing, we returned to the hotel and the girl was still there and served us dinner. Long story short, this woman was working 16 hour days, and she was happy to do it. The job she had was one of the nicest, cushiest jobs you could get in her region -- by far. I didn't ask, but if I had to guess, I'd say she sends most of that money home to her family so that their extreme poverty won't be quite so bad. I spend a lot of my time reading Hacker News and other non-work related websites. I can justify it -- my happiness is important -- but I'm loathe to say that I work too much at 40 hours a week, especially when I know what conditions are like in Peru and other third-world countries. I get it. I understand the argument for shorter work weeks, and I agree wholeheartedly. But my sympathies go out to this nice waitress in Peru before they go out to Joe Brogrammer who "works" 50 hour weeks or Sarah Hedgefundmanager who has 6 minutes of bathroom time a day. Then again, maybe I'm just a monster with no grasp on how hard life really is. :)