Two Hundred UK Companies Sign Up For Permanent Four-day Working Week (theguardian.com) 76
AmiMoJo shares a report: Two hundred UK companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees with no loss of pay, in the latest landmark in the campaign to reinvent Britain's working week. Together the companies employ more than 5,000 people, with charities, marketing and technology firms among the best-represented, according to the latest update from the 4 Day Week Foundation. Proponents of the four-day week say that the five-day pattern is a hangover from an earlier economic age.
Joe Ryle, the foundation's campaign director, said that the "9-5, five-day working week was invented 100 years ago and is no longer fit for purpose. We are long overdue an update." With "50% more free time, a four-day week gives people the freedom to live happier, more fulfilling lives," he continued. "As hundreds of British companies and one local council have already shown, a four-day week with no loss of pay can be a win-win for both workers and employers."
Joe Ryle, the foundation's campaign director, said that the "9-5, five-day working week was invented 100 years ago and is no longer fit for purpose. We are long overdue an update." With "50% more free time, a four-day week gives people the freedom to live happier, more fulfilling lives," he continued. "As hundreds of British companies and one local council have already shown, a four-day week with no loss of pay can be a win-win for both workers and employers."
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Oh yeah that will certainly trickle down to you any day now
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Oh yeah that will certainly trickle down to you any day now
It already has. Median income in the US is something like 30% higher than in the UK.
Unfortunately, that's just cash income I found with 30 seconds of searching. For a real comparison, we'd want to compare after-tax income, adjust for purchasing power, and include the value of company and government supplied benefits. That's a much harder comparison. It would also be enlightening to compare industry by industry, job by job. If anyone has that comparison handy, do share.
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Any theory about why US life expectancy is so much lower than the rest of the developed world?
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Simple: To keep retirement cost down!
Jokes aside, that may be a real factor why the US has somewhat higher productivity. They just let people die earlier after retirement and if somebody gets seriously sick, they let them die fast. (simplified)
Lets do an half-assed estimation: US life expectancy is 79.40. Life expectancy in the UK is 82.06. Average retirement age seems to be about the same at about 64 years. That would mean an US person spends 15.4 years retired, while an UK person spends 18 years retired.
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To live unhappily and die early... is this the new American dream?
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It has always been a dream, not a reality. It works by telling people they have options they do not actually have and by the use of invalid examples. Essentially a Big Lie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie).
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Any theory about why US life expectancy is so much lower than the rest of the developed world?
No, not really. Some stories I've heard are (a) Americans have much more chronic disease (e.g. obesity and diabetes) due to lifestyle choices than the rest of the world and (b) we count infant mortality differently (we count more births as live births rather than stillbirths which drives down life expectancy). I don't know for sure how true either of these is and how much they matter. If anyone has any data, do share.
To bring this back on topic, the lifestyle diseases are linked to stress and work can cause
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I don't think there would be a strong case for assuming working a 32-hour week would affect life expectancy
Really? It seems rather obvious that resulting increased happiness would lead to a longer life. Why don't you try pulling some evidence out of your butt to gainsay that?
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I don't think there would be a strong case for assuming working a 32-hour week would affect life expectancy
Really? It seems rather obvious that resulting increased happiness would lead to a longer life. Why don't you try pulling some evidence out of your butt to gainsay that?
I could ask the same. What makes you think that's obvious?
Here's some factors going the other way. First, some people get a lot of satisfaction from working. I personally values the social interactions in a workplace. Finally, no matter what anyone wishes for, people working fewer hours are (eventually) going to get paid less than those working more hours. I don't have any data handy but I'd be surprised if having more money doesn't lead to some level of improved health.
Your turn.
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And members of Congress will still keep drinking on the job.
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And charging the taxpayers for the drinks
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I couldn't easily find the answer -
are these companies (and charities) adopting a four 8 hour work day "week" or a four 10 hour work day "week"?
If not cutting pay, I have to assume the work days will be 10 hour days, but clarity on this basic element of the story would go a long way towards helping understand what's being done.
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I couldn't easily find the answer - are these companies (and charities) adopting a four 8 hour work day "week" or a four 10 hour work day "week"?
If not cutting pay, I have to assume the work days will be 10 hour days, but clarity on this basic element of the story would go a long way towards helping understand what's being done.
I once worked at a place that was doing the 4 10 hour days - years ago, Two issues came up. first is that it was a 24 hour day because of the business. So there was some overlap between the shifts, plus juggling for weekends.
The second part was while working 10 hour 4 days was not too bad when you were on first shift, the third shift was a nightmare. You would start at 11PM, get off at 7 in the morning, and then have to wait until you were ready to fall asleep, and since you had 2 hours less in your non
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That has not so much with a 4 day work week as it does that night shifts are horrible in every way.
Night shifts are bad, and no doubt. But damn, that two hours less a day for "life" seemed to make it worse.
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Do you people have a reading problem? These companies found that having people work 4 days at 8h per day produces the same or better output as having them work 5 days at 8h. Which is entirely expected for mental work. This is really old science and there is zero doubt that it is valid. It is just morons like you that are in denial.
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Almost like paying low wages lets low quality labor.
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uh, have you ever watched construction crews building a house? My experience is that they are drunk, lazy, can't accurately read the blueprints and the elevations.
Construction was my wife's industry, and she concurred somewhat.
But she knew who was good, and who was as you described. The best companies were the ones who paid well, and expected performance. Cheap ones got cheap workers.
She employed people who were top notch, and they were paid very well. Everyone in her company was, including her. Their payroll was something that would cause the cheapo companies to shit themselves. But less callback, less problems, less delays and late work.
The interesting th
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That is really the most ignorant comment you can make. No, it is not lazy to work the hours that give you peak absolute productivity. It is _smart_. Working more is dumb. The Science is very solid on this.
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That is really the most ignorant comment you can make. No, it is not lazy to work the hours that give you peak absolute productivity. It is _smart_. Working more is dumb. The Science is very solid on this.
Of course, And yes, you are correct - I am ignorant. An asshole as well - Deal with it.
I have no doubt at all that a person is more and more productive the less they work, until the time they are putting in so little time they cannot complete their task, because they cannot complete it in the time they are working.
The problem with your science is that it really bears no resemblance to an actual workplace.
Query me this to help with my ignorance. I'll make the math simple. 90 people given a spectrum
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You really do not understand how this works, do you? Well, you are in good company. But your ignorance does damage.
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You really do not understand how this works, do you? Well, you are in good company. But your ignorance does damage.
I know, right? Your answer shows me all I need to know.
Need some Rando on Slashdot to give me the lecture on human nature.
Here's the problem. Some people that makes stuff happen don't care about the rush to indolence. So you'll be worried about how many hours you work a week comforting yourself that somehow you will make as much as if you worked the evilz 40 hours.
Meanwhile people who are not damaged by work will eat your lunch.
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You forgot to mention that a) a lot of Americans, with unions minimal anymore, are working more, and answering calls from their bosses all day and all night and on weekends.
b) any by typing 'typical vacation time in the UK', I see that by *LAW* emp;oyees are REQUIRED to be given 28.5 DAYS a year.
America? If you manage to work more than three years, well, hopefully you'll get 15 instead of 10.
It'll be interesting to see where this goes.... (Score:3)
I don't see this happening in the US anytime soon....hell, more and more they're enforcing "Return to Office"....which seems a bit of a regression to me at this point.
In light of that, I don't see them cutting the workweek down any.
Re:It'll be interesting to see where this goes.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's been extensively tested for several years in the UK. Productivity goes up, with few downsides for many businesses. Obviously some types of business benefit from being open 5 days a week, but even those can have staff having alternate days off.
It's basically better for everyone, proven time and time again.
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Indeed. But there are too many irrational people and too many asshole "virtue-signalers", that cannot deal with the facts of the matter. And hence they invent and push lies.
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My guess is that the idea that per-worker productivity per wall-clock time (not productivity per hour worked) peaks at a certain point is too complicated for many people. After all, they work more, right? Wrong. Quality and throughput drops and accidents and errors and sick-time increase. The number by Ford, incidentally, is that for a manual worker. I think the one for a mental worker was 6 hours per day on a 5 day week, which probably translates roughly to 4 days at 8h and would explain what these UK comp
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Rational people will not do that. If you have too many assholes with no life, yes, that can be a problem.
However, a sanely implemented 4-day-work-week scheme actually forbids that via your work contract and it may even be the law. For example, here where I live, your work-time gets allocated to an employer (or several, I currently have 4) in percent. You are very much _not_ allowed to work more than 100% for other people by law. (If you are self-employed, you may work as much as you like and for higher-up m
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BBC article (Score:2)
The BBC covered the four-day workweek [bbc.com] and found it was mostly positive, but not for every type of job:
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Let's say you're staffing something that has 20 desks, and you want that fully staffed 9-5 all year round. For round number simplicity, let's assume exactly 52 weeks per year (364 days) and assume 4 weeks paid leave, 10 days of public holidays, and a further week off per person for personal/medica
Re: It'll be interesting to see where this goes... (Score:2)
If you want the desks staffed 9-5, that's 8 hours of coverage - aren't workers doing 4x ten hour days? What are those desk workers going to do for those extra 2 hours/day they aren't staffing their desk? Are you going to increase coverage hours, but cut headcount working any given day as you shuffle workers to work different days to cover Mon -> Fri...
I don't think each of those 5,000 workers in 200 businesses and charities suddenly will get an effective 25% hourly pay raise, since they'll only be workin
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It's been extensively tested for several years in the UK. Productivity goes up, with few downsides for many businesses. Obviously some types of business benefit from being open 5 days a week, but even those can have staff having alternate days off.
It's basically better for everyone, proven time and time again.
I've seen some data, but do you have the citations that 100 percent of all jobs can utilize a workforce that only works 32 hours a week?
There's the problem. I need to see that a 32 hour workweek for every employee will be the nirvana the cherry picked businesses employees claim. Regardless, I will work the hours I damn well please, and my experience has been that I was more productive than my co-workers who couldn't be troubled. I even made them look more productive by finishing their work when it was ne
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no one is saying 100% of businesses. See, " ... for many businesses" in the comment you quoted.
They just act like it.
Who gets paid more? A person doing the same job but is only needed for 32 hours a week, or the one who needs to be there 40 hours a week?
That will need answered before the heaven of 32 hour workweeks take effect?
Point is, don't be surprised if the 40 hour a week person ends up making at least 20 percent more after everything shakes out. You can bet that people getting paid 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work are gonna love it, for a while, but those who work 40 can demand th
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I've seen some data, but do you have the citations that 100 percent of all jobs can utilize a workforce that only works 32 hours a week?
Prior to the 40-hour work week, everyone in the U.S. worked 80 to 100 hour weeks. For 49 years, there was general resistance to lowing it to 40 hours. And I imagine the arguments were similar. The key was when the entire country went to 40-hour work weeks as a whole 123 years after the first significant suggestion of doing so.
We're already 85 years into the 40-hour work week. With all the automation and massive productivity gains during that time, it is well past time to adjust it again. We're not even talk
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I've seen some data, but do you have the citations that 100 percent of all jobs can utilize a workforce that only works 32 hours a week?
Prior to the 40-hour work week, everyone in the U.S. worked 80 to 100 hour weeks. For 49 years, there was general resistance to lowing it to 40 hours. And I imagine the arguments were similar. The key was when the entire country went to 40-hour work weeks as a whole 123 years after the first significant suggestion of doing so.
We're already 85 years into the 40-hour work week. With all the automation and massive productivity gains during that time, it is well past time to adjust it again. We're not even talking about the massive changes from the last reduction, but a small one by comparison. The world survived the 40-80 hour cut last time, and it will survive a modest 8 hour cut now.
And it will make a lot less competition for me, since I will work the hours I say I'll work. Maybe a disgruntled 32 hour employee will bust a cap in my ass, so I can't make them look lame.
So are you down for the 4 hour week?
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And it will make a lot less competition for me, since I will work the hours I say I'll work. Maybe a disgruntled 32 hour employee will bust a cap in my ass, so I can't make them look lame.
Unless you're paid by the hour, you're a chump.
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And it will make a lot less competition for me, since I will work the hours I say I'll work. Maybe a disgruntled 32 hour employee will bust a cap in my ass, so I can't make them look lame.
Unless you're paid by the hour, you're a chump.
I'm paid by the tasking now. I put in the work to get the task done, do it proficiently, on time, and get the check.
Several hundred dollars per hour, on average.
There is a whole different world out there, where people who are professionals do what is needed, do it well, and are well compensated for it. In addition to the money, I am supplied with clothing and swag. High quality meals and an office with awesome views.
I'm a professional. If in your judgement, that makes me a chump, then I'm a chump an
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And some of these claims do not make mathematical sense. A lot of industries have X amounts of Y things that take Z amount of time to perform. Cut the hours by 20 percent, and you get 20 percent less Z, there for 20 percent less X of Y.
Perhaps the math is an over-simplified model. For example, you assume a constant rate. But the rate is unlikely to be constant. Even on an assembly line where machine settings control the rate, you have to take defects and line stoppages into account. Well rested and enthusiastic workers will tend to less stoppages and a lower defect rate. It CAN be enough that even with a constant line speed, a 4 day week can have a higher effective production rate than a 5 day week.
The math gets more complicated for whit
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And some of these claims do not make mathematical sense. A lot of industries have X amounts of Y things that take Z amount of time to perform. Cut the hours by 20 percent, and you get 20 percent less Z, there for 20 percent less X of Y.
Perhaps the math is an over-simplified model.
One of the great mysteries of life is that the people who know in here are not starting their own businesses, perhaps even believe that at 20 hours per week, the employees would all be extra well rested and enthusiastic. You guys would revolutionize employment, and simultaneously put the stoopids who don't understand how soul crushing 40 hours a week is out of business. No more soul crushing. After all, I'm one of the stoopids, and it even angers some who are tired of my noting things like after working 32
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Sounds like what the bosses said about the 40 hour work week in the early 20th century.
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Sounds like what the bosses said about the 40 hour work week in the early 20th century.
20th Century? The whole thing started much longer ago. If we look at the history of the work week and hours per day worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] It is a tad complicated.
One thing stands out, the 888 movement. Or as Samuel Parnell simply stated in 1840: "There are twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves." They kinda talked funny back
It is a competitive advantage for UK (Score:2)
It'll be interesting to see the results/metrics from this.
I don't see this happening in the US anytime soon....hell, more and more they're enforcing "Return to Office"....which seems a bit of a regression to me at this point.
In light of that, I don't see them cutting the workweek down any.
Given that the UK competes for global talent, this will do wonders for any tech, biotech, research companies that sign on and are dependent on scarce international talent. If you're an awesome software engineer from India whose entire family is in India...you could take a job offer in London or get one in Silicon Valley for the biggest names in your field for 2-3x the pay and a LOT more sunshine!!!...you could move to Austin and get even more sunshine...or if American accents irk you, find a job in Austra
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American lifestyle is legendary
Maybe compared to India, but otherwise ChatGPT doesn't fully agree: https://chatgpt.com/share/6798... [chatgpt.com]
America:
- Work tends to dominate life for many Americans
- The car is king
- Homes are generally larger
- Meal times are often quicker and more functional
- Healthcare is largely privatized, costs can be high
- Higher education is often expensive
- Life tends to be fast-paced and consumer-driven
- Environmentalism is growing
- Friendliness and openness are common
US compared to other developed nations (Score:2)
American lifestyle is legendary
Maybe compared to India, but otherwise ChatGPT doesn't fully agree: https://chatgpt.com/share/6798... [chatgpt.com]
OK, you're from a wealthy nation? How about move to the USA and you'll get the best shot of financing your project and getting the VC support you need with the least complications? ...not to mention access to a world-class talent pool, and if you move to our big 3 tech cities, you'll have more people qualified to support you in every step of your journey than anywhere else in the world. Why do you think so many people start their companies in the USA? Why do you think so many American entrepreneurs move
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American lifestyle is legendary
Maybe compared to India, but otherwise ChatGPT doesn't fully agree: https://chatgpt.com/share/6798... [chatgpt.com]
for someone with a vision of starting a company.
You were talking about how a 4 day workweek is a competitive advantage for the UK vs the American lifestyle. So I was thinking you were talking about employees.
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The US work environment is deeply irrational and deeply stuck in a "slaveholder mindset". Oh, and look, that does damage.
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It'll be interesting to see the results/metrics from this.
I don't see this happening in the US anytime soon....hell, more and more they're enforcing "Return to Office"....which seems a bit of a regression to me at this point.
In light of that, I don't see them cutting the workweek down any.
Only on Slashdot to they believe that all business can be run form StarBucks or your bedroom.
And here's the kicker. A lot of us, myself included, will work the hours we damn well please.
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It's basically impossible to do this in the US because we're not socialist (ie. we're dumb).
If you have to pay for all your employees' benefits then you want to get as many work hours as possible. And the cheaper the labor the more true that is because the higher the overhead is as a ratio of that employee's expense. If a lot of benefits (health, etc) are covered by the state then you want the opposite - you want only the high quality hours as much as possible. If that means hiring 2-3 people to cover th
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I for one, do NOT want to be socialist....I've not seen it work so well in places that have tried this.
We have our problems for sure....it sucks, but it sucks less than anywhere else in the world I've observed to date.
But, everyone is entitled to their opinions.
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need cut the hours for full time down and add an X (Score:1)
need cut the hours for full time down and add an X2 OT level.
But in the USA will need a lot more unions to get that.
Management failures (Score:2)
Most people move into management for the money. This is a mistake, since very few people can do the job well. It seems like a nonsense job and should probably be renamed "Organizer" instead of "Manager" since that is really what you do, organize people and fit stuff into budgets. But in my view, it is also where most of the problems with products and projects originate. Bad code comes from hasty deadlines and feature creep more than bad programmers.
Don't blame the kitties (Score:1)
Any society that succeeds is soon awash in parasites. As Nietzsche said, their variety and abundance is amazing... in nature as well as in human affairs. We have all heard about "welfare queens," but other parasites include bureaucrats, priests, lawyers, psychotherapists, unions, the military-industrial complex, and most people involved with education. Many of these parasites are quite well paid in contrast to the "welfare queens."
Maybe we need a general law against parasitic behavior.
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Did you feel the same way when the country switched from working 7 days a week down to 5?
Most of what we do at jobs is nonsense (Score:2)
A year before the release of the movie Office Space, Michel Houellebecq wrote Whatever, a book about the emptiness of modern life (how very French, but they did get a head start on the rest of us with their Revolution). In it, he observes that 90% of what we do at office jobs is unnecessary: meetings, trainings, pro forma emails, make-work, etc. This was symbolized by TPS reports in the movie that was likely influenced by the book. So instead of worrying about the length of the working day, maybe we should
Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot of reputable publicly available information online, and we tend to just ignore it. One of these useful status is labor force participation rate [stlouisfed.org]. (The same data could be found for the UK, but it'll be similar due to similarities in demographics.) Due to the baby boom, and their kids (the millennials) both being in the labor pool at the same time, the peak in workers was the 20 years in the 1990 to 2010 timeframe. That would have been the time to reduce the work week. Instead we created new below-minimum-wage industries, like Uber and Amazon delivery drivers to soak up the excess labor and pay them almost nothing.
Now we're in a period of time where the baby boomers are retiring at a significantly faster rate than people are graduating from high school, and there's also a big political push (in both the US an the UK) to reduce immigration. Furthermore we're in the midst of a de-globalization which is forcing western countries to expend large amounts of skilled trades on rebuilding domestic infrastructure and production capacity.
So this is literally the worst possible time to reduce the length of the work week. Doing so will directly drive more supply-side inflation. It's a bad idea. But we're in no shortage of bad ideas these days. (Like putting tariffs on countries who have similar worker rights, pay, and environmental laws to us, and therefore aren't undercutting our industries on price.)
Sounds impressive (Score:2)
I'd like (Score:3)
to still work 5 days, but cut a few hours off of each day so I could commute with very little traffic in the 'off' times.