I think we should move towards a twenty hour work week

Great Debates
41

I started at 20 hours, but I’d take 30 instead of 40 if that would work.

And everybody keeps ignoring my suggestion that maybe we could supplement small business with savings from unemployment. Is that possible?

I understand that most people could not afford to cut their pay in half, but remember, I want universal health care, so maybe there’s some room for compromise.

Thank you Maastrict, I was hoping you’d chime in. Can you by any chance address the question that Alessan asked in post 13?

I know this is a big change culturally. I do believe that it would lead to a better quality of life for the vast majority of people.

42

It might make less of a difference than you would expect. Here’s an analogy:

Suppose you are at a rock concert and you are standing on your seat. If you sit down, how much will it affect your view? Not by much – if everyone is coerced into sitting down at the same time.

Some percentage of the income you earn by working 40 hours is simply bidding up the price of limited services like real estate or college tuition for your children. Also, a lot of it is spent buying stuff you don’t really need but you feel you must have because everyone else does or because it’s more convenient or because you are used to it.

The current maximum work week of 40 hours was put into effect back in 1938 and the economy did not collapse as a result. Since then, peoples’ productivity has increased by quite a bit due to improvements in technology. So I doubt that a further reduction in hours would be such a big deal for your typical American.

43

Since around a half a dozen times a year I put in an excess of 20 hours in a day, your ideas intrigue me. I knew a guy who got fired for suggesting to the mill manager that we go on a schedule of 4 ten hour days a week. They fired him because as the manager said, “If you’re not working at least 5 ten hour days a week, you’re fucking me.” That wasn’t the only reason, but it didn’t help.

44

I was in charge of a small office and we voted to switch to 4 ten hour days. I loved having 3 day weekends every week, but a ten hour day is very long.

Thanks for all the responses. I’ve enjoyed the discussion.

45

I’m not Maastricht, and she could probably answer much better, but I am Dutch.

There isn’t a way that the Dutch “deal” with the self-employed, as it isn’t part of a plan to get the nation down to 20 hour work weeks. There are transition options where the government assists you as you start up your business, but after that you pretty much just need to work enough to make money to live. If you can’t make ends meet there is specific financial support for the short term for the self-employed, but again, it’s not just a plan to allow people to work half the week and give them money for the rest.

There used to be subsidies for artists who only worked a certain part of the year, but I think those have been cut.

I don’t know why the number for the Netherlands comes out so low in your source. A normal work week here is 40 hours. There are many women who work part-time, probably 16 hours minimum but usually something like 20 hours. That’s not enough to get the country close to an average of 20 hours, or not in any way I can imagine. This report says the average working week is 38.9 hours, the lowest in Europe and compared to the European average of 40.5 hrs. That’s the lowest apart from Norway (who are not in the EU) but nowhere near 20 hours.

So if Alessan were in the Netherlands and he halved his hours and doubled his rates, he would probably lose all his customers and the government would tell him to suck it, just like anywhere else.

46

“Changing the amount of money in circulation does not change the amount of goods and services that we produce.”

It can and does, especially under current conditions of having idled labor resources. If Ben Bernanke printed up a couple thousand and gave it to me I would give him a weeks labor in return. I would then hire a carpenter to build a deck for me. The carpenter would then hire a plumber to plumb a basement bathroom etc etc. All of this “new” wealth created by just one infusion of “new” money. Money summons resources. I am not working (creating wealth) until someone hands over the cash.

47

A lot of people here are referring to a “40 hour workweek” like it’s the present “maximum”. It’s not, it’s just the point at which it is mandated that overtime rates apply. The government thus sets the the de facto standard workweek. I think the Fed Gov should drop it down to 32 hours. Employers can still require 40 hours but they will have to pay for it.

48

This has been my general impression too. There are businesses with managers who just don’t feel like they’re getting value for money if their employees have time and energy to pursue any activities outside of work than eating or sleeping.

(An interesting minor case of this arose at my work just today. A manager, speaking about the new employee performance review process said words to the effect “We will expect and require most staff to be graded in the ‘exceeding expectations’ category”)

49

Only if he only gives the money to you. If he gives it to everyone, then the carpenter will get twice as many calls and will double his rates. Monetary policy makes a large difference in the short and medium terms, but in the long run can not produce a richer society.
You can only consume what is produced, this is true for both individuals and society. If you cut your work hours in half you either have to produce twice as much per hour or consume half as much. I believe that most people would be happy consuming somewhat less, but cutting everyone’s living standards in half would make most people miserable. Universal healthcare or a universal income from the government does not change this in anyway. In order to give things of value to people it first has to take things of value from other people. There is no net gain produced.

50

Hey, if the company wanted you to have a life, there’d have been one in that packet you got when you came to work here.

51

What would be the effect of that move on the economy and the unemployment rate?

52

I can’t cite sources, but there does seem to be, here in the UK, a drift towards part time working. This is encouraged by state subsidies that allow part time workers to claim some benefits to compensate for the lower wage. This explains the paradox of rising employment within what was a shrinking economy.

Two women of my acquaintance, both wives and mothers, have recently taken part time jobs because that fits their lifestyle - childcare, school, etc etc. I don’t know the details of their finances, but they don’t appear to be much worse off than before.

One downside, recently reported in the media, is that many of these workers are not earning enough to pay National Insurance. This is a compulsory tax, and paying it for 30 years entitles a citizen to claim the state pension. It only kicks in if you earn more than £109 per week. Not paying sufficient contributions results in a reduced, or no pension (although other benefits can be claimed). NI is also paid by the employer, so this is an incentive for some, like Asda Walmart and others to ‘encourage’ employees to go part time.

It is also worth mentioning that for many people who work a nominal 40 hour week, overtime, if paid at all, is paid at the standard rate. Time-and-a-half and double-time are fast becoming things of the past.

53

Well do you agree that BAD monetary policy can produce a poorer society in the long run?

54

I definitely think in today’s society people work too much, especially anyone who consistently works more than 40 hours. If you like your job and it’s not much of a burden, great, but I still don’t see how you wouldn’t rather have more recreational time. For instance, I’m a programmer and I generally like it, but even if programmer were my life’s greatest passion, I’d rather work less and have more time to pursue my own passion projects. And, hell, if you have family, don’t you want to spend a little more time with them too? Even though I think we should work less, I don’t think that 20 hours is feesible, but something in the 32-36 hour range ought to be feasible.

First, in general, people are less productive per hour past a certain point, and it can drop off quickly. So, the idea that cutting your hours by, say 10-20% means a 10-20% reduction in productivity isn’t a reasonable expectation. Further, by having more time to rest and spend with family or on personal projects helps to increase productivity. So, just throwing some numbers out for the same of example, if someone were to cut their hours to 85%, maybe their total production only drops by 10%, so they could still reasonably demand 90% of their pay.

Second, one of the driving factors behind people working more and more hours is that, even if people are less productive in those extra hours, it’s still cheaper than an extra body because of benefits and other costs associated with maintaining staff. So, for example, a company may actually be more productive if they had 3 people each working 40 hours, than 2 each working 60, they still get more bang for their buck with the latter, especially if they’re salaried. But this is something we can work to fix. If health insurance is decoupled from employment and other benefits, that helps to reduce the added cost. Similarly, it might be possible to have tax incentives or some other sort of program after that to encourage more people at a more reasonable number. This would ultimately be better for the economy if we could replace a few 60-hour people with more 40-hour people because it would reduce unemployment and improve productivity.

Third, working fewer hours saves individuals, businesses, and the government money, if it’s implemented correctly. By this, I mean, how we can organize our days. I wouldn’t recommend reducing hours and going to 5x7 for 35 hours, I’d suggest something more like 4x9 or 4x8.5 or so. Using myself as an example, as I work 4x9, it means that’s one whole extra day I don’t have to commute. So it saves me the gas and wear and tear on my car, it saves me the time I’d spend commuting, roughly 70 minutes. For a business, if they spread out people’s days off, they can not only get more productivity, but they can also get more people in less space since they only need to provide space for 80% of their employees. It helps the government by increasing the tax base, and if the days off are spread out, it could help save on transportation infrastructure as it would reduce the necessary traffic bandwidth.
So, really, when you look at it, I think we could reduce our hours some, and between increased productivity, we’d not need to take the hit in salary that it would seem to imply, and what hit there is would probably be largely offset by the savings and extra freetime.

55

If companies would get their thumbs out of their collective arses and realize that there are a hell of a lot of jobs that can be done by 100% telecommuting that would save a fuctwad of gas and wear and tear on vehicles. I blame the current educational system and sloppy parenting for people not being able to stay on track and actually work when they are supposed to be without someone lurking over their shoulder watching. I was actually more productive when out of the office and at home even with mining for asteroids on the other computer than I was in the office with all the people wandering by trying to talk to me, random meetings that I had no reason to attend and a million other random interruptions. Saved on taking sick days as well, I could slop around in my jammies with the headcold from hell with no worry about contaminating my workplace with death-germs and trying to look functional when I could work and look like death warmed over.

56

I think you missed the point. If there are idle resources (unemployed people) it’s not that the carpenter will double his rates. It’s that there will be two carpenters, instead of one.

57

People are too married to their schedules right now because that’s what they’re used to. There’s no reason the world economy can’t run perfectly fine with the standard workweek being 20 hours, or 30, or anywhere in between. On the same principle, its completely arbitrary that a work day is 8 hours and not 7, or 10, or 5.

Things can and should be scaled down to match an ideal amount of working hours per week. It would be difficult to break people out of their habits, but there’s no reason why we can’t work less, make less, but have things cost less. For most people on the 9-5 grind, you don’t have time to do anything in the morning, and by the time you get home, you’re tired and need a few hours to unwind.

58

For most jobs I’ve had in the past few years, there is little to no reason for me to ever go to the office. Most of my team and my clients are scattered all over the world. Sometimes I do need face to face meetings. But most of my work is done via phone, email or WebEx.

I don’t think the problem is that people work too many or too few hours. I think the problem is that we don’t have a good method of tracking productivity for people whose job doesn’t involve cranking out widgets.

I think you’re probably in the wrong field. Most programmers I meet seem to have this mentality of working on code until all wee hours of the morning. I don’t know how many times I’d be like “where’s So-and-so” only to hear “oh he was working until 5am last night on some procedure”. Well why the fuck did he work a 16 hour day and not come into work instead of 2 normal 8 hour ones?

The fundamental problem with arbitrarily cutting the work week is that an airplane doesn’t travel any faster with two pilots.

59

So, how is life in Lake Woebegon? :slight_smile:

One of my favorite management papers (not online last I looked) studied overtime and found that because of burnout and tiredness if you are doing anything non-robotic by around hour 50 - 60 you are making so many mistakes that your actual output is really about 40 hours of work. Maybe short term you can do it, but not long term on the average.
I certainly saw this effect in real life. We all stayed until 9 pm but nobody got anything useful done - but it looked to the management like we cared. The project was still a disaster, and I split about the time I was going to fall apart.

60

Yes and no. We’ve stumbled onto where we are by trial and error, but we didn’t just draw numbers out of a hat. People are going to vary, but in general, most people are going to be willing to put “X” number of hours in at work in order to have “Y” lifestyle. You can’t just fiddle with “X” and not affect “Y”. They are not independent variables.

I think people are going to be more geared towards attaining “Y” lifestyle than anything else, and if they can do so by working less than “X”, great, but if they have to work more than “X”, then chances are they’ll do it.

Bottom line (pun intended): One shoe is not going to fit all, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to design only one shoe.