Its productivity that counts, with better equipment and organisation you can get more done in less time.
If the law aha maximum 35 hour limit the corporations would spend more on training, equipment etc. AND lets not forget all that extra time would probably create jobs in the leisure industry.
work - i need the money !
odd but true - my book from mensa ( i am too fick to join ) says don’t work too much, what is the point of working if you have no fun, honest, thats a book from ‘smart’ people.
To get a broader perspective on the issue raised by the OP, I suggest a recent book (Published by Norton in 2001). It is called “White-Collar Sweatshop” - The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America, by Jill Andresky Fraser. A good eye-openner on what is going on beneath the surface. Chapter 2 addresses the work week hours. The last chapter (10) offers some possible solutions.
…if you can find the time. snort
“Ha ha you snorted. The curse of the engineer”
– The Great Wally (from Dilbert)
As was previously mentioned, there is such a thing as a 9/80 schedule. I worked 3 years at a company that followed that plan.
For those who don’t know what it is: You work Mon-Thurs 9 hour days. You then work every other Friday for 8 hours. So in a 2 week pay period you’ve worked 80 hours. (the pay period runs from noon on Friday to 11:59 on the next Friday or something like that, someone I’m sure can correct me!)
It was a wonderful schedule to work with. Sure, I worked the same number of hours as anyone else, and quite frankly since I’m salaried I often worked more. But having a day off during the week was OUTSTANDING. I was able to get appointments out of the way without missing work, and was able to run errands on a day when businesses were not nearly as crowded. (grocery shopping at 10am on a Friday is a GREAT time to go)
So while I didn’t actually have any extra time, necessarily, I felt much more productive when I could get my errands done on a Friday and still have 2 weekend days to enjoy. It was a tough decision to leave that kind of a schedule.
I’m going to second the theory that before we start thinking about lowering the work week from 40 to 35 hours, we need to first deal with getting lots of us BACK DOWN to 40 hour weeks. It’s tough to crack the belief that you’re a better, more dedicated employee if you work late all the time. If we could get it to be OK to leave at 5:00 because the work is done, then I’d be happy. As it is, I’ve been called a “slacker” before for leaving ON TIME after working a full 8 hour day. Sheesh!
Finally… my Master’s thesis becomes useful.
I wrote my MA thesis on ‘The Drive for 35’, a series of strikes by the British Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (mainly the AEU) with the stated aim of reducing the working week from 39 hours to 35. In most cases, there was partial success, with the contracted week dropping mainly to 37.
In general, there can be seen to be 2 elements to the shorter workking week battle. In the post-war period, it was a way of back-dooring pay rises, especially in the face of mandated pay restraint - a shorter working week with the same hours worked would lead to more hours at the overtime premium. But high inflation in the 1970’s, combined with the mass unemployment of the 1980’s led to a shift in union outlooks. Shorter working hours were seen as beneficial in 2 ways - first they could not be eaten away by inflation like an boost to the weekly wage, and secondly they would lead to higher employment (spreading the work) again leading to higher union membership.
The job spreading argument always struck me as somewhat specious, especially when seeing that in their negotiations with employers, the unions stressed that productivity would rise, allowing the same work to be done in the shorter time. Despite the employers resistance, everyone I spoke to in 2 cases studies, both of very large British engineering firms, from personnel managers to union stewards to individual workers, loved the shorter week, and it became apparent that more work was being done in the time.
The only firms I heard about where there were problems were the ones who simply chopped 25 minutes of the length of each day. In one case I saw the bus schedule serving the plant wasn’t altered, so the workers just simply stood waiting for the bus for 25 minutes longer. One of my case studies went to 4 1/2 day weeks, lengthening the average day. The other, which showed the greatest success, went to a 9 days out of 10 work period, with each employee receiving every other Friday or Monday off.
Obviously there is a limit below which hours cannot be reduced without reducing production, and different jobs have different requirements. But in engineering it appears that there is no cost to management of reducing the week from 39 to 37 hours, and I would guess 35 would not be any different.