To be perfectly blunt: Should the US have a legally mandatory 40 hr. week/8 hour day?
In Europe (and I presume most other modern industrialized nations) they have reasonable limitations on work hours. Don’t worry, they’ll have to pay you just as much. And to be blunt again, corporations will still be disgustingly rich.
I know the 40/8 idea was prevalent in the early labor struggles of the United States.
(In case you don’t know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed unanimously in 1948 (including the United States) . The USSR and Saudi Arabia abstained.)
No way. I work in an industry that’s predicated on working hard with few breaks for a few months, then having significant time off. I like my job, I don’t mind working more than 40 hours a week at it some weeks, and I don’t want the government interfering in this way.
40 hours is mandated by law. What is mandated for most hourly jobs is time and a half for anything more than that. Our office, for example, schedules people for 37.5 hours per week. Lots of positions are exempt, and those people, like me, work a lot more than 40 hours. (if you include time at the SDMB as “work.”)
I don’t think 35 to 40 hours a week is too onerous. However, I wouldn’t mind 3 day weekends as the norm. How about 4 ten hour days as the new norm?
Absolutely not. That would be an absurd restriction on personal freedom.
I generally work at least a 60 hour week because, despite being an employee, I own part of the company I work for and I have an incentive to see it succeed. If I’m especially productive sometimes I will work a 40-hour week, or less, but usually I get sidetracked by enough bullshit that it takes 60 hours to actually get everything done.
I certainly have not given up the “right” to rest and leisure - I can always quit this job and find another one that is less demanding. I just choose not to.
Some people probably don’t like the idea of having to compete in the job market with people who choose to work more than 40 hours a week. The solution to their problem is to stop being a bunch of lazy shits, not impose limits on how other people can conduct their business.
And I really don’t give a shit what they do in Europe. If you think it’s that much better you are welcome to move to Europe yourself, or start a business in the US that follows European labor practices. See how well you do.
My cursory research indicates you are incorrect in any case. Some European countries have a mandatory 48-hour workweek, according to Wikipedia: Working time - Wikipedia But this is not at all universal among “major industrialized countries” - Japan and Korea have no national limits, and tend to work longer hours than US workers. Let’s not even mention China.
In my experience the issue of a work week exceeding 40 hours tends to be mostly in the professional fields (paid a salary rather than hourly). The idea seems to be that as an employee with benefits you are expected to work longer and harder because your success is tied to the success of the company. In practice, other than the few lucky early Microsoft or Amazon employees, this is just a load of crap and I never got anything but an early heart-attack out of my 60-80 hour weeks as a computer programmer.
That being said, I could have said no. On the rare occassion I was ‘forced’ into unpaid overtime I could have quit (excessive unpaid overtime is a reason accepted for collecting unemployment - because I’ve done it).
In principle I agree with a reduced work-week. In fact, many studies show that over-all output actually increases with a reduced work-week. So, 30 hours may turn out to be equivalent to 40 hours in the end (just a number picked at random for example).
In practice, in these very tough economic times, I think it would be a very hard law to get passed as many people (right or wrong) feel our ‘American work ethic’ is one of the few things that is keeping our economy together.
IN the US the 40 work week has been the law sence before I was in High School. The 8 hour work day is the law in some states, Calif for one.
Why the 40 not the 60 or 80 hour work week. It is important for my employeer to successful and I work hard to help that. But it is my job, it suports my life, it is not my life. I need time for my wife, children, grandchildren, and volunteer work.
Studies show that from 8 hours to 10 the quality of work drops off noticeably from zero to 8. After 10 hours the work is practically worthless. Overtime does not pay in work quality. But longer hours eliminates paying for more secretarial work. parking place and numerous other business costs including unemployment and healthcare.
The work week should be 35 hours to get more people working.
Sorry but you are wrong if you think this applies to all workers.
As has already been mentioned, a 40 hour work week only applies to those paid on an hourly basis. Salaried employees can be required to work an unlimited number of hours every week. Most states limit how many salaried employees a business can have to avoid abuse with this, ususally requiring a one day off in seven days for salaried employees. The rules vary by state.
Shit, I’m still unemployed! When I DO get a new full time job, I plan to get a part time job too just to make up the money I didn’t have the chance to make for two years!
As far as the alleged leisurely work schedules that others are used to in other places, aren’t their paycheck deductions a lot more? Upwards of 30 - 40%? If so, I’ll stay with the 40 hour week / 21% deduction.
I, for one, prefer that the government stay out of this.
I do not feel overburdened by a 40 hour week. I get paid for all the hours I work. Why not let me and my employer come to these mutually agreeable terms of employment?
Actually, now that I’ve thought about it, I can’t see anyone really following it.
Take teacher contracts. We’re contracted for xyz hours a week, 123 times a year. Yeah. In order to prevent you getting fired or written up, you take your work home and have a 60 to 80 hour workweek.
However, all work done over 40 hours a week should be compensated at time and a half.
This won’t raise salaries* but it would be wonderful to have an apples-to-apples comparison between job offers for $/hour. If an employer lies and says…no more than 50 hours a week when it is actually 70 then he will have to pay the employee for those hours.
I once took a job and lasted 2 weeks before I literally walked out the door. Employer said 50 hours MAX per week. When I started, 70 hours was expected. That is fraud damnit!
Say I will pay an employee $50K a year but want him to work 60 hours. This means 70 hours of pay (20 hours overtime * 1.5). This is $13.74 per hour which I will have to disclose. On the other hand another employer offers 40K and says 45 hours max and hasn't lied...it really is 45 hours then the /hour is $16.19 which he would disclose. This makes it easier to compare jobs and mostly immunizes you from employers being untruthful about hours expected to be worked. If the 45 per hour work week guy lied…my salary would go up as the expected hours goes up.
I think 40/8 is fine, but there should be more vacation time. Also, there should be NO repercussions for not working more than that. Our forefathers got brained with crowbars by corporate-hired thugs over this, and I’ll be damned if I will support any attempts by exploitative fuckwits and their bootlicking supporters to piss all over their sacrifices.
I made out just fine in my Silicon Valley job, and I was neither early nor lucky. There are lots of people doing the same today.
As for the OP, many companies have instituted 4-day work weeks, often at the request of the employees, with a longer day, but 3 days off a week instead of 2. It’s very popular. I don’t like the idea of the government micro managing this sort of stuff, especially at the federal level.
I want to see a law where “exempt” employees are compensated at least straight-time for every single hour over 40 per week, with brutal crackdowns on employers which disobey that law. It is exceedingly common in the Engineering field for unscrupulous or even outright evil managers to deliberately force exempt professional employees to work large parts of, or even entire projects, on unpaid overtime. Where I work the average Engineer probably works at least 1 full day of unpaid overtime on average, every week of the year. In fact the only times overtime is paid is 1) if the manager is facing a mass walkout from his projects of the employees (it has happened), or 2) the person is an in-firm consultant who has unique abilities and can pick and choose what they want to work on.
It has become slightly better, at my old job you were expected to work at least 16 unpaid hours every week of the year, and “donate” any holidays which became “inconvenient.” There was the infamous “Codemas” where an entire project team working on oil-related software had to work from 8:00am to nearly midnight on both Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day - completely uncompensated. At least one employee was told to walk away from non-refundable plane tickets to see relatives or else they would be fired on the spot. It became noteworthy because the coders put very lengthy, ornate, and even termination-worthy rants in the comments in the code (which was delivered to a client), and there was no way to track who did what when because we had no revision control.
That defeats the whole point of being exempt. I don’t want to be punching a clock and worrying if I take a minute longer for my lunch break. Sounds to me like you need to find a better employer rather than forcing your particular ideas onto every employer in the country.
