5 ms·

But I'm not sure what point you're making. If market forces can operate in a world with a 40 hour default work week, they can operate in a world with a 20 hour

But I'm not sure what point you're making. If market forces can operate in a world with a 40 hour default work week, they can operate in a world with a 20 hour work week. At the macroeconomic level, we're talking about tweaking a coefficient. So what? By shortening the work week, we can give many more people an opportunity to engage in dignified work, give them more leisure time, and spur further investment in labor-saving machinery, all in the same stroke.

justinmk 12y ago
That strikes me as a tangent, it raises many questions (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?). The idea of a "work week" is based on the salary model which is based on the idea that companies are magical job fairies that exist to provide jobs. What if I create a product and work on it more than 20 hours? What if I want to sell peanut butter at the local food market on the weekends?
- myelin 12y ago
  In practice, an "X hour work week" means employers are required to pay a multiple of the usual wage for hours worked past X. So you can allow/require employees to work longer, but it'll be cheaper to employ more people for fewer hours.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Which just leads to people having to get multiple jobs, with the added stress and commuting it brings.
- santaclaus 12y ago
  > (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?) I have friends in France who sneak into their academic research labs after hours because of this exact reason (well, not 20 hours, but set max work hours)... seems super silly to me.
  - rewqfdsa 12y ago
    There has to be a mechanism for people who are truly passionate about their work, like artists, scientists, programmers, to follow their passions as far as they want. The danger, of course, is that intra-organization competition pressures people to work longer and longer hours. I'm willing to accept that risk so long as we make a shorter work week the default. We're talking about an unusual case, though. You have to realize the most people hate their jobs. They're not following their passions. They find work tedious, uncomfortable, and frequently demeaning. For these people, the bulk of humanity, a cap on working hours frees them to do something they find much more interesting.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      It most likely frees them to go to their second job, now that their salary has been cut proportionally to the fewer hours worked.
- e12e 12y ago
  This obsession with hours might be the root of the problem. Most businesses have given up trying to measure produced value per worker (and certainly don't reward based on value produced). The 40 hour work week just means that it is expected that you work 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year (give or take, depending on vacation practice/laws) -- in order for the employer to pay you "full benefits". That typically includes ideas about a living wage (not in all parts of the world), and some form of social safety net, such as health care, insurance etc. A 20 hour work week, would just mean that the expected time most need to put in, to get the basic salary/coverage would be cut in half. I don't think a smooth, nor easy transition is possible -- you can look at like doubling hourly wages, or halving all prices, or through some other lens: but I think that we are getting accustomed to thinking of hourly pay, hourly wages/compensation etc is part of the problem. The idea of a work week: that one can work "full time" for one employer doesn't really say that much about how much time one puts in -- it's more about what responsibility that employer have for the employee. And the "norm" of 40 hours is used as a guide to compensate extra for overtime, or to reduce compensation for people that can't or won't work "full time". Maybe the best way forward, if one believes that some form of "fair" distribution is possible under capitalism, is to have all businesses be 100% employee owned. It's not entirely clear why anyone else should benefit directly from being able to pay less for work put in by workers, and pocket the difference. Especially considering that a lot of the capital invested might be borrowed money -- which under fractional reserve banking is just money made up out of thin air and given to those that need it the least.
  - tbrownaw 12y ago
    I'd think a better solution (that requiring full employee ownership) would be to remove as much of the per-employee cost as possible. Make health insurance not tied to employment. (It could be universal coverage handled by the government, it could be what we're half trying where everyone buys their own. As long as it's not thru the employer, it doesn't matter for this.) Make things like FMLA leave not depend on working enough hours. Remove the caps that some payroll taxes have. Some per-employee costs are unavoidable. If my team has 10 people instead of 5 people, and they're all available at different times, that's a cost. The work has to be divided differently, I have to remember more interpersonal crap, there will be communication delays, etc. But as much as possible should either be handled by Someone Else or made dependent linearly on hours or pay, rather than being tied to employment as a boolean or to a threshold number of hours or amount of pay.

justinmk 12y ago

That strikes me as a tangent, it raises many questions (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?). The idea of a "work week" is based on the salary model which is based on the idea that companies are magical job fairies that exist to provide jobs. What if I create a product and work on it more than 20 hours? What if I want to sell peanut butter at the local food market on the weekends?

myelin 12y ago
In practice, an "X hour work week" means employers are required to pay a multiple of the usual wage for hours worked past X. So you can allow/require employees to work longer, but it'll be cheaper to employ more people for fewer hours.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Which just leads to people having to get multiple jobs, with the added stress and commuting it brings.
santaclaus 12y ago
> (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?) I have friends in France who sneak into their academic research labs after hours because of this exact reason (well, not 20 hours, but set max work hours)... seems super silly to me.
- rewqfdsa 12y ago
  There has to be a mechanism for people who are truly passionate about their work, like artists, scientists, programmers, to follow their passions as far as they want. The danger, of course, is that intra-organization competition pressures people to work longer and longer hours. I'm willing to accept that risk so long as we make a shorter work week the default. We're talking about an unusual case, though. You have to realize the most people hate their jobs. They're not following their passions. They find work tedious, uncomfortable, and frequently demeaning. For these people, the bulk of humanity, a cap on working hours frees them to do something they find much more interesting.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    It most likely frees them to go to their second job, now that their salary has been cut proportionally to the fewer hours worked.
e12e 12y ago
This obsession with hours might be the root of the problem. Most businesses have given up trying to measure produced value per worker (and certainly don't reward based on value produced). The 40 hour work week just means that it is expected that you work 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year (give or take, depending on vacation practice/laws) -- in order for the employer to pay you "full benefits". That typically includes ideas about a living wage (not in all parts of the world), and some form of social safety net, such as health care, insurance etc. A 20 hour work week, would just mean that the expected time most need to put in, to get the basic salary/coverage would be cut in half. I don't think a smooth, nor easy transition is possible -- you can look at like doubling hourly wages, or halving all prices, or through some other lens: but I think that we are getting accustomed to thinking of hourly pay, hourly wages/compensation etc is part of the problem. The idea of a work week: that one can work "full time" for one employer doesn't really say that much about how much time one puts in -- it's more about what responsibility that employer have for the employee. And the "norm" of 40 hours is used as a guide to compensate extra for overtime, or to reduce compensation for people that can't or won't work "full time". Maybe the best way forward, if one believes that some form of "fair" distribution is possible under capitalism, is to have all businesses be 100% employee owned. It's not entirely clear why anyone else should benefit directly from being able to pay less for work put in by workers, and pocket the difference. Especially considering that a lot of the capital invested might be borrowed money -- which under fractional reserve banking is just money made up out of thin air and given to those that need it the least.
- tbrownaw 12y ago
  I'd think a better solution (that requiring full employee ownership) would be to remove as much of the per-employee cost as possible. Make health insurance not tied to employment. (It could be universal coverage handled by the government, it could be what we're half trying where everyone buys their own. As long as it's not thru the employer, it doesn't matter for this.) Make things like FMLA leave not depend on working enough hours. Remove the caps that some payroll taxes have. Some per-employee costs are unavoidable. If my team has 10 people instead of 5 people, and they're all available at different times, that's a cost. The work has to be divided differently, I have to remember more interpersonal crap, there will be communication delays, etc. But as much as possible should either be handled by Someone Else or made dependent linearly on hours or pay, rather than being tied to employment as a boolean or to a threshold number of hours or amount of pay.