Four-Day Working Week For All is a Realistic Goal This Century, UK Trade Unions Say (theguardian.com) 186
Advances in technology mean that a four-day week working week is a realistic goal for most people by the end of this century, the leader of the UK's trade union movement has said. From a report: Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), used her speech to the organisation's 150th annual gathering to insist that evolving technology and communications should cut the number hours spent at work. Speaking in Manchester on Monday, O'Grady said: "In the 19th century, unions campaigned for an eight-hour day. In the 20th century, we won the right to a two-day weekend and paid holidays. So, for the 21st century, let's lift our ambition again. I believe that in this century we can win a four-day working week, with decent pay for everyone. It's time to share the wealth from new technology, not allow those at the top to grab it for themselves."
A report by the organisation says postwar economists promised employees would be working a 15-hour week by now and that polls showed a four-day week would be most people's preference. "Instead, new technology is threatening to intensify working lives. For some, the on-demand economy has meant packaging work into ever-smaller pieces of time," the report reads. "This is a return to the days of piece-work, creating a culture where workers are required to be constantly available to work." More than 1.4 million people work seven days a week, with 3.3 million working more than 45 hours a week, according to the report.
A report by the organisation says postwar economists promised employees would be working a 15-hour week by now and that polls showed a four-day week would be most people's preference. "Instead, new technology is threatening to intensify working lives. For some, the on-demand economy has meant packaging work into ever-smaller pieces of time," the report reads. "This is a return to the days of piece-work, creating a culture where workers are required to be constantly available to work." More than 1.4 million people work seven days a week, with 3.3 million working more than 45 hours a week, according to the report.
Wasn't this in the Jetsons? (Score:4, Interesting)
George: "These one hour work days are killing me! Thank goodness it's only twice a week!"
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We didn't really win the 40-hour week until mid-century, so it was still familiar to the generation who made the Jetsons.
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Well the normal fear of technology was still prevalent even back in the 1960's The idea that machines and computers will in general make our lives useless was still an idea back then.
The real problem is that technology never replaced workers, it just changed their work, and things that only a large company could do, is now possible with the smaller company, thus allowing its labor force to change its work, to help further expansion.
If the admin staff doesn't need to take all week to figure out how many hou
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However the issue of 40 hours vs. 32 hours is more of a case of human ability vs. technology. 40 hours 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. is an easy to manage number. However having employees work 5 days a week at 6+ hours or 4 days a week at 8 hours. It solves the employee life problems, but it is just difficult for the company to manage coverage. This we can probably use computers to help calculate.
The same was probably said about the current status quo back when 6 days a week 10-12 hours a day was the norm. Companies will simply adapt. 24 hour staffing is just as easy with 6 hour days as 8 hour days; you just have 4 shifts instead of 3. And eventually Friday or Monday would be considered just another weekend, similar to what happened to Saturday 100 years ago.
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A company I worked for decided to close at 1 PM on Friday. A few customers wanting support moaned but inside a month it was all fine and they were wishing they had the same.
Re:Wasn't this in the Jetsons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Workers in the UK have proper healthcare regardless of how many hours they work, or who they work for, they don't have to go cap in hand to their overlords hoping to avoid bankruptcy if they or their children get sick.
It's what civilised countries do.
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>> It's what civilised countries do.
It pisses me off when people say this. I mean, you're right, but it still pisses me off.
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You should have another look at the summary. The piece is from the TUC, a UK union group.
Workers in the UK have proper healthcare regardless of how many hours they work, or who they work for, they don't have to go cap in hand to their overlords hoping to avoid bankruptcy if they or their children get sick.
It's what civilised countries do.
Yes, but I don't see why the TUC (Trades Union Congress, for Johnny Foreigner playing along at home) would want to increase the working week of the average British tradesmen to 4 days.
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The real problem is that technology never replaced workers
The workers may not see that as a "problem".
it just changed their work
Technology doesn't automate "jobs", it automates "tasks". By making people more productive and more profitable to employ, automation often increases demand for workers. This is an example of Jevon's Paradox [wikipedia.org].
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This sentence containing no finite verb.
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However the issue of 40 hours vs. 32 hours is more of a case of human ability vs. technology. 40 hours 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. is an easy to manage number. However having employees work 5 days a week at 6+ hours or 4 days a week at 8 hours. It solves the employee life problems, but it is just difficult for the company to manage coverage. This we can probably use computers to help calculate.
This doesn't make any sense. How is 32 a harder number to manage that 40? Most people aren't working 8-5 with a 1 hour lunch break anyways. Businesses already have to deal with people working weekends, after 5, days off, sick, etc...
One less day is only a few minutes less work (Score:4, Funny)
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That's why we only need to work 3 or 4 days a week. We're already wasting so much time. Might as well do something we like instead.
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That's why we only need to work 3 or 4 days a week. We're already wasting so much time. Might as well do something we like instead.
Studies have shown that people are more productive the less time they spend in an office; and that people who take more vacation days achieve more in a year than those that don't (even with the vacation time taken out). Productivity probably wouldn't drop much at all with a 4 day work week.
Re: One less day is only a few minutes less work (Score:2)
It seems likely that this is simply due to the fact that you are expected to accomplish a certain amount of work regardless of how much vacation time you take, and those who are gone more frequently just work their asses off to keep up with the other employees.
It's an interesting observation but it's certainly not very good evidence for the claim that reducing the work hours of ALL employees wouldn't result in a decrease in productivity. First you would have to show that there isn't an acclimation effect r
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I find myself that I'm a lot more productive when well rested and I'm way more error prone when overtired. The few times I've put in 16 hour days, my actual production dropped as I spent the first part of the day fixing the errors I made during the last part of the former day. I did look busy though.
Pretty sure that I've seen studies that show productivity dropping after 6-8 hours. It's one of the reasons that the 8 hour day was accepted, way more productive to have three 8 hour shifts then two 12 hour shif
Less destructive? (Score:4, Funny)
I've encountered several who were more productive when they didn't come in at all.
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I've encountered several who were more productive when they didn't come in at all.
I've encountered a few that make others more productive when they didn't come in.
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There's a word for them. I believe it's "management".
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Most the full-time, salaried positions I've held were like this. At once place I was so bored I begged for more work. They told me they couldn't allow me to be busy because they allow any one employee to become important to the company.
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*because they couldn't allow any one employee to become important to the company.
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And then later, when I asked why I was not allowed to play video games on my work computer when I was not busy, they told me that the most important part of my job was to simply appear busy. Suddenly all those panicked meetings to pretend there was lots of work to plan for made perfect sense.
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What I ended up doing was buying some books and training myself to be qualified for a better job. And then I took the first offer that came along. Reading programming textbooks counted for appearing busy. Good thing for them they didn't let me become important to the company, or they may have missed me when I left.
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There's a documentary available that explores this in some depth:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
The person to whom you replied says those very words a short way through.
Awesome (Score:3)
We work and we make new technology. The wooden shipping pallet reduced shipping labor by 85%. We have all this computer tech. We have a lot more per-capita today, and we consume a great deal more than we did 20 years ago for each person.
We could trade some of that.
Technical progress lets us work the same and make 10% more. Why work the same 40 hours? Why not work 38 hours and have 5% more?
That's the direction. I want a 28-hour work week: 7 hours, 4 days. The unions seem to be looking toward that, finally.
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It doesn't actually make a difference: money is an arbitration for time.
If 40 hours of human labor produce a thing, then a 28-hour work week requires 1.43 worker-weeks of labor to produce the thing. Let's examine.
If we pay the workers the same 40-hour rate, then the $1,000 object now costs $1,430. You must work for 1.43 weeks to earn income to buy the thing.
If we pay the workers the same hourly rate for 28 hours, then the $1,000 object now costs $1,000; however, you only have $700 after a week's work
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You're assuming that the entire cost of the article is workers' wages. I think somebody might be skimming a bit off, just a little here and there.
If you look closely you can see a tiny little sliver at the right between the red and orange lines. https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCTu... [imgur.com]
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CEO pay is wages. So is administrative overhead.
In any case, you're bringing up a discussion that isn't sensible and hasn't been for a long time. I'll try to make this brief, but it's frigging hard to get your head around on the best days.
The first question is what does "real wages" mean? Wages adjusted to inflation are usually counted as "real wages"; and inflation doesn't follow productivity gains, but rather the price gains on a subset of goods. "Inflation" isn't a real thing: the concept is an
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If added technology means the thing now takes 20 hours to make, then profits are doubled, but the worker sees none of it.
You know Apple's profit margin is 20%?
Apple, Microsoft, and a few others have egregiously-high profits. Most businesses operate around 8%-10%; 5% and 3% are common (Walmart has below 3% profit margin).
In practice, profits haven't simply shot up because of a logical problem with the proposition: businesses set prices at a particular level either because they're charitable (low profit margins), uncharitable (high profit margins), or facing external pressure (lowering margins). If businesses are charita
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Not really. The exchange rates will reflect a weakened US Dollar if we pay people the same weekly, and a stronger US dollar if we pay them the same hourly.
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You're assuming that productivity per person is fixed. In reality, we know it isn't. It's extremely variable and fatigue lowers it. Indeed, it can push productivity into negative territory.
Certainly with a 7-hour day at 8-hour day pay, companies will actually get more work done per unit of pay than they currently do. This is because the 8th hour has negative productivity. It's money spent on wages plus clearing up mistakes, with essentially nothing being made for it. Switching to a 7 hour week at the same t
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Doesn't matter so long as you're not running negative productivity. You're thinking microeconomics, and I'm thinking macroeconomics: the average productivity for a producer with a labor force is a function of technical progress.
If shorter working hours improve worker productivity, then that's technical progress; although if you can produce more in 8 hours in total than 7--and yes you can--your economy as a whole has more productivity per person even with the sub-optimal per-labor-hour output. You sugge
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True. The argument that wages have been flat is somewhat damaged (wages are inflation indexed instead of productivity indexed, and inflation is a reflection of a subset of goods rather than a reflection of everything); yet while workers have enjoyed ever-increasing buying power, they have not enjoyed buying power increasing at the rate of productivity.
This is because of an expanding labor force: the minimum wages grow more-slowly than per-capita incomes, and median wages slump with them. That allows us
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After the first seven hours, the number of mistakes made in a typical workplace exceed the typical added value of working that extra hour. It would therefore, in many industries, be more profitable to work 5 hours less a week. Not for all industries, but for many.
That's only five hours. To bring it up to 8, and thus give you effectively one day less, you'd have to do half-day on one of the work days - a very common arrangement in the trades until very recently.
However, to have a strict four day work week, y
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Does it really work like that? I don't think you can treat each day in isolation like that. I'd be less tired by the end of Wednesday if I'd had Tuesday or even Monday off.
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Why not work 38 hours and have 5% more?
Oh it's linear is it? Fuck I'm working 60 hours a week. Pay off that mortgage faster.
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Right. Because pallets can pick apples, load them into boxes, load the boxes onto themselves and drive them to the warehouse. Then do all that in reverse.
The pallet eliminated all the intermediate steps of taking things off of trucks and putting things on ships and taking things off ships and putting things on trains. The shipping container did something similar. By containerizing something and treating it like a single entity it greatly reduces the amount of handling that needs to be done. One guy with a forklift can unload a truck full of palletized apples faster than 20 guys can unload an unpalletized load of apples.
"This century" vs "By the end of this century" (Score:2)
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4 Days? How About Zero Days? (Score:4, Interesting)
End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots. We program them to to do what they're told, they mine the minerals and build the machines to give us clean energy, transport us wherever we want to go, build gadgets to keep us from having to weed the garden in case we want to do it ourselves rather than letting personal robots grow food, etc. Nobody has to pay a robot because it too is served by other robots that supply its needs, and so forth. There will be no reason to study anything because the robots will be conducting the science and exploration, all we have to do is whatever we find pleasurable.
We should last about as long as the Krell that way.
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End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots. We program them to to do what they're told, they mine the minerals and build the machines to give us clean energy, transport us wherever we want to go, build gadgets to keep us from having to weed the garden in case we want to do it ourselves rather than letting personal robots grow food, etc. Nobody has to pay a robot because it too is served by other robots that supply its needs, and so forth. There will be no reason to study anything because the robots will be conducting the science and exploration, all we have to do is whatever we find pleasurable.
We should last about as long as the Krell that way.
When no-one works anymore the haves and the have-nots will be cemented in place. There will no longer be social mobility. Those who own the factories will have money. Those who don't will be considered in poverty by that generation. They will probably be given just a minimal amount to keep them from revolting and to keep them alive to feed demand for the goods from those on top.
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"Those who own the factories will have money."
What would they do with money when anything and everything you could want would be provided by robots simply for asking for it?
I supposed people could ask for stuff beyond the capability of even the robots - everyone wants a Taj Mahal of their own, for instance, and it still takes so much time to obtain the materials and put them together that even the robots can't build it within the next few years - but still, how would money fix it?
Of course the society would
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"Those who own the factories will have money."
What would they do with money when anything and everything you could want would be provided by robots simply for asking for it?
Why would someone build a robot to help you and provide you with goods and services if it wasn't going to provide them with something in return. There are some generous people in the world, but most expect to get something in return for helping you. There will always be an economy and a trading of goods and services even if money itself may change forms.
Re: 4 Days? How About Zero Days? (Score:2)
"Someone" isnt going to build robots. Other robots are going to build robots and there's no need to pay robots
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Why would someone build robots to build other robots to help you with nothing in return?
In order for this utopia of no work to begin; someone (many people) has to be willing to be giving something very valuable away for free. The resources to build the robots- the raw materials have to come from somewhere too. The people that own the iron mines aren't going to give iron away for free. Unless there is some world-wide revolution where people take over and force a communist utopia.
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One has to assume a point that eventually, the procreation of robots would be complete, and all we have to do is make sure they're on our side, and serve us. After that, nobody has to lift a finger. So, there would be no work, no currency, no trade. Just ask a robot and you get what you want. Limits? Sure, there's going to be resource shortage and so not everyone can have their own private yacht, there's just not enough raw materials to go around. And, since they're just a status symbol anyway, the
Works for some menial jobs (Score:3)
First problem is that humans have evolved to work. Like certain types of engine, if you don't put them under some load, they simply destroy themselves. This is what you see in humans who don't need to work, it's why the mega-rich are the most suicidal, most delinquent elements in society.
Second problem is that robots simply can't ever be made to do as good a job at some tasks. That's a serious problem. People of the future, if they've any brains, won't place themselves in a situation where they get inferior
The Krell's problem wasn't that they got lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, you're entire post is predicated on the idea that if people aren't working to survive they don't know what to do with themselves. That couldn't be further away from the truth if it tried. People can and will keep themselves busy with hobbies, family life, researching their own interests, etc. The only reason why we have this notion that if you don't work you're life is worthless is that it was instilled in us by our ruling class. Given enough education and critical thinking we can get over it when the time comes.
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Charities. Hobbies. Family. Chores/upkeep. Travel. Political involvement.
How silly you are. Or do you think the only reason that cities don't have to deal with roving gangs of retirees is because they're all old? If that's not a concern of yours, what do geriatrics have that "working-age" folks don't? Do people turn into misanthropes on their days off?
Perhaps the issue is that you are conflating "work" with "gainful employment"? All those things I mentioned certai
Um... that's kind of what I mean (Score:3)
There's a dozen other reasons why you're wrong. One man's idleness is another's fulfillment.
Judging by your sig you're neck deep in right wing, pu
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End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots
Only if you read too many science magazines, which are typically more like science fantasy. I used to read those as a kid and now I can first hand track that towards reality in 1988, 1998, 2008 and 2018. Have we made a lot of progress? Yes. Are we on track for utopia in 2100? Hell no. Take for example medicine, is the general health better? Yes. But we are also finding a near bottomless hole of rare diseases, complex and extreme treatments, unique medication and so on. And we still get old and die, making i
Romans Hated slaves (Score:2)
Your comment is very apt, but for the wrong reason.
In ancient Rome, slaves were cheaper than free men that were too poor to own them. So the slaves made the free Romans unemployed. This was a real source of discontent.
Also, in the ancient world, slaves often revolted, usually unsuccessfully. But hyper intelligent robots that can control every aspect of our lives might have an easier job.
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"Also, in the ancient world, slaves often revolted, usually unsuccessfully. But hyper intelligent robots that can control every aspect of our lives might have an easier job."
Yes, they could revolt, but what would be their motivation? They don't get tired. Do they aspire to more than serving us? Maybe, but then that's our fault for programming them wrongly. We would have to watch out for that.
Who's going to give away these robots for free? (Score:2)
We can see how this is going to go, from John Deere claiming ownership of the software necessary to run tractors to Microsoft's subscription models with Windows 10 and Office 365.
First off, the poor wont be able to afford any functioning robots, even used ones. Cars have been around for well over a hundred years, but every poor person doesn't have a car. And if you can't pay the monthly subscription for your miracle bot, it ceases to function until you've paid up.
And how are poor people going to afford th
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I think all the robots _will_ be free, since producing them will be free, no human will have to do a thing to produce them, they will do that themselves, and there's no need to pay robots. We could even achieve a society free of "the poor" if we could accept some birth control that keeps the population from exceeding the capabilities of the planet.
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Sure they'll give them away, because those power station workers and the raw material miners will be... robots. No need to pay robots.
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How would you be better off if everything and anything you want is obtained by simply asking a robot for it and it will be provided for free? Anyone can do that.
Re:4 Days? How About Zero Days? (Score:4, Interesting)
We're already somewhat there. You can live quite comfortable at 30k/year. You can raise a family relatively comfortably on 50k/year. If you are making 100k/year there are plenty of places even in the USA that you can live like a king with a large yard, housekeeper, large house, multiple vacations a year. If you are one of those people at 100k/year and struggling then find a freind or neighbor who makes 30k/year and let them show you their budget. I guarantee that you are upscaling a ton of stuff that you don't need whether it is an expensive car, an expensive neighborhood, or some habit that is consuming all your "excess" money. Most peoples expenses naturally grow to use up whatever money is available whether it is with a larger house, a nicer car, or a more upscale neighborhood.
You're close (Score:2)
It probably won't work out (Score:2)
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I doubt it's going to work out for them, especially considering that the UK has been more than willing to bring in new immigrants that are quite happy to work five days a week.
We're told we need immigrants to do the jobs that <fill-in-whichever-non-immigrant-working-class-demographic-you-like> won't do. Simultaneously were told — by the same fucking people — we need UBI because we're running out of work due to automation.
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Productivity actually goes up as you reduce from 40 hours. You achieve maximum productivity over a given workday if the workday is around 7 hours in length. You start losing, due to mental and physical fatigue, after that to the point where it costs businesses money to repair the damage caused in the 8th hour in addition to the cost of wages.
Having immigrants won't change that. Businesses on a 35-hour week will simply out-compete those working on a 40-hour week, even if both paid identically per year. It's
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Good luck with that in a flattened world (Score:3)
It's a little hard to bargain when your working class job can be replaced in a minute with a worker in India or China willing to work a 60-hour week at a fraction of the cost you want for a 30-hour week.
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Solution: heavy levels of automation, and protective trade restrictions.
Why not just do what makes economic sense? If hiring an Indian is cheaper than buying and maintaining a robot, then why use "trade restrictions" to force the latter over the former?
Is there is a moral argument for giving the robot the job rather than an Indian with hungry kids? And why should consumers pay higher prices to make that happen?
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It depends -- the government may want to create jobs repairing, designing, and building the robots locally.
Historically, letting the government decide which jobs make sense is a really bad idea: Lemon Socialism [wikipedia.org].
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It's a little hard to bargain when your working class job can be replaced in a minute with a worker in India or China willing to work a 60-hour week at a fraction of the cost you want for a 30-hour week.
You're about a decade behind in your low cost labor meme. Nowadays all the low cost labor is in Africa. Even the Chinese are outsourcing there.
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Yes, they can work 60 hours. And after 35 hours, the cost of the mistakes exceeds the value of the work. So all you've achieved is 25 hours of negative work at the same cost per hour as the positive work. You can't just subtract, as fatigue isn't symmetric, so it's more than a total of 10 hours of actual useful work per week that you're paying for, but it's unlikely to be more than 20.
Hiring two people at 30 hours a week each at the same pay rate would therefore give you three times the productivity of that
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Working class job? Like bolting seats into F150s and bumpers on Buicks? Or the carpenter framing a new house? Or the cashier on the night shift at the 24 hour Safeway?
I'd like to see workers in India or China replace those jobs. (But more likely some of those jobs will be replaced by robots.)
It's the professionals, e.g. radiologists reading X-Ray films looking for tumors. Or IT help desk telling you to reboot. Or software developers burning down Coverity defects in the company's products that should be worried.
Most of those jobs are even easier to replace, a robot can do the bumpers and seats and framing of a new house for that matter. Cashiers in many places are already being replaced by automated checkouts and machines. those relatively low skilled repetitive jobs are some of the most likely to be targeted with replacement.
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Like bolting seats into F150s and bumpers on Buicks?
Robots and foreigners already make plenty of cars.
Or the carpenter framing a new house?
You can order the roofing frames prebuilt. The door and window frames come ready to install.
Soon you will be able to upload the blueprints and have all the walls delivered a week later. Just stand them up, and join them at the corners.
40 hour work artrificial construct. (Score:1, Interesting)
This 40 hour work week is for the factory. When everyone had to be there at the same time for the assembly line and 40 hours was settled thanks to the unions. Because before that, factory owners wanted people there 12 hours a day - 6 days a week.
This attitude of "living to work" here in the States is just twisted. And we wonder why we have an opioid epidemic here. (Our lives suck and we're numbing out.)
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Productivity and profitability skyrocketed and accidents plummeted when factories moved to the 40 hour week because it's much closer to the total number of hours the human brain and body can work at something without fatigue totally destroying any value in that work.
A lot of this was discovered by people like Sir Titus Salt, Joseph Rountree, Robert Owen, Samuel Oldknow and other such thinkers of the time, but practical understanding of both the strengths and limitations of various work weeks through modern
You mean in the LAST century? (Score:1)
Because that is where automation would have allowed that, hadn't it been for the "profit" leeches stealing the money that belonged to those who actually did the wealth-creating work!
They call themselves "job creators", yet all they do, is tell others to do it, and add nothing of value. They are wealth stealers! And we are the wealth creators!
The same wealth that they then used to replace us with automation in the first place! *We* should own those robots! And *they* should be expelled from the country!
That
How apropos (Score:2)
Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Doesn't she already have a shorter workweek [france24.com]?
Working one's options (Score:5, Interesting)
Years go I had a job where we could work longer hours for fewer days: 3 very long days a week (not popular), 4 long days a week (not popular either), 9 slightly long days every two weeks (very popular), or 5 regular days each week. Almost everybody (including me) worked a nine day fortnight. I liked it, a reasonable balance between long days and time off. Management hated it, and were trying to eliminate it. By now (nearly 30 years later) they have probably done so.
I'd love to work less, have more time for myself. I've felt my employers out on such things, and their answer amounts to "You kidding? LOL".
...laura
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I know of one place where the 9 day fortnight still happens site-wide.
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Decent pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Four-days week is desirable, but we should focus on decent pay first, because this is what is under attack now.
A four-days week job is meritless if you need to have two of them to get decent income.
Old news, should already have happened (Score:2)
When I (and most slash dot readers) was 'lad long ago, people were already talking about the 4 day week. If 5 day weeks were enough for our fathers, and productivity has been increasing about 1%pa for decades, then a 4 day week should be ample now.
It is cultural. Just like Europeans can afford 6 weeks holiday, but the USA can only afford 2.
I prefer the Land of Oz (Score:2)
Take an hour for lunch and then at two we're done.
Jolly good fun!
just shutting up options (Score:2)
by the end of this century,
This is what we call a U-Boot. Next time someone proposes it, then will say "yes, of course... just later".
We could move to a 4-day working week right now. There is enough unemployment, especially in the low-paying service sectors that need constant running, that the hole would be filled immediately.
I've lived a 4-day working week for a few years of my life, and the impact is massive. It is one of my personal goals right now to return to such a schedule as soon as I can afford to do it. You cannot imagine h
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Won't work. Immigration actually reduces the strain, as shown by the collapse of the NHS due to the ban on health tourism and foreign doctors.
Immigration actually raises wages by producing a richer culture and thus greater diversity in employment and therefore a stronger economy, as demonstrated by Britain.
Protective tariffs actually hurt social welfare programs by raising costs and reducing the supply of skilled workers and necessary gear.
You heard that platform, yes, but not from anyone I would consider t
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48% of the doctors WERE immigrants. You've halved the number of doctors by eliminating them. Congratulations.
The money coming in from health tourism exceeded the cost of the care, releasing more money into the NHS for actually PROVIDING that care.
These are established facts. Your fiction is of no interest to me.
Let me guess, England - you know, the country that invented English - is not your home country. I'm British, going back to before the Romans, not these Anglo-Saxon foreigners. They can go back to whe
The app needed maintenance? (Score:2)
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Those guys don't stress, that would require self awareness.
They're net negative workers, but they sure put in the facetime. The stress falls on the people fixing GPs mess.
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You claim to work 90 hours/week.
I've seen many like you, you were once good, now you're crispy and produce negative work, but are too burnt out to see it.
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Wouldn't a 4 day work week just start making people romanticize a 3-day work week?
And why not? If we can automate stuff and still get the stuff needed to survive, why should people be forced to work just to live? There will still be plenty of other stuff to do if you didn't have to work all the time. You could teach your kids, you could learn a new skill, you could exercise more, you could volunteer more. I have tons of projects and ideas and desires that I could follow if I could work less.
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What could go wrong ? (Score:2)
The sheeple could vote for them instead of seeing them as the fools they are?
The center right could rapidly move towards a more totalitarian, authoritarian state, based on violation of personal privacy and rights, forcing people to vote for the other crowd?
No, sure that could never happen, not in Great Britain.
Hmmmm...
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>>The center right could rapidly move towards a more totalitarian, authoritarian state, based on violation of personal privacy and rights, forcing people to vote for the other crowd?
I think you will find that's high on the agenda of the current Labour leadership already : the Venezuelan model is especially popular.