Companies hate it

Post #319,762 by jay 1/8/10 11:22:22 AM Reply	Companies hate it Companies hate the idea of a shorter work week for a bunch of reasons, both rational and irrational. There are rational cost reasons. The paperwork, training and other overhead costs are mostly fixed per employee. Communication costs trying to coordinate between employees can go up geometrically for complex projects. There are also a lot of irrational reasons having to do with making everybody work harder and the desire to make it look like everybody is overworked. Getting back to the original discussion of employment and wages. The idea I have always liked is essentially a universal work program. The government would guarantee employment at some mediocre wage for everybody. It would have it's own set of issue to work out, but it would have advantages in terms of flexibility and reliability. The reliability is the key one, a lot of the reason that employers can abuse employees is that quitting is a huge risk. If there was a fallback job that people knew they could live off, even if poorly, it would be much harder for managers to abuse employees. ATL cops were told to work and get paid a 4 day week. They now have to go to court on their days off without pay for testimony. That is actually a different problem and relates to the weakness of the laws that enforce pay and hours worked. A lot of employees are pressed into working overtime, often without pay. The average American now works well over 40 hours a week. Jay
Post #319,766 by Another Scott 1/8/10 11:49:53 AM Reply	Good points and a good idea. The "8 hour day" was passed in the US in 1916, but apparently didn't become a nation-wide rule until 1938. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamson_Act http://en.wikipedia....bor_Standards_Act The economy has changed an awful lot since those days... In a way it's unfortunate that 8 divides into 24 evenly. There are several ways to reduce hours and thereby enable more positions, but all of the choices seem to be less natural: 6 or 7 hours x 5 days? 5 hours x 6 days? 10 hours x 3 days? Since manufacturing isn't as big a part of the economy as it was, the concern about having 3 shifts a day shouldn't be as large. The last two choices makes some sense - Have the business day be 10 hours but the work week be 6 days: and run 2x5 hour shifts for 6 days, or 1x10 hour shift with 2 3 day per week teams. The 5 hour day might also support the ideas that some have of keeping kids in school 6 days a week. Since some hospitals run 12 hour shifts, there are obviously ways that the system could be tweaked for certain circumstances. Presumably someone has already looked into this... Some say that since the work-week is already effectively 33 hours, we might as well make it official: http://open.salon.co...k_the_time_is_now Cheers, Scott.
Post #319,771 by folkert 1/8/10 2:37:06 PM Reply	Don't qualify for benefits if you don't work 32 hours.
Post #319,772 by drook 1/8/10 2:44:32 PM Reply	Obviously that's the big change the Govt. would have to make They'd have to redefine "full-time employee" to mean something less than 40 hours. -- Drew
Post #319,775 by beepster 1/8/10 6:55:44 PM Reply	And this would change things how? as you say...mfg isn't important anymore and there are a boatload of salary folks that would kill to only work 40 hours. I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
Post #319,777 by Another Scott 1/8/10 7:24:52 PM Reply	RCP? I freely admit that I sometimes miss the nuance in your all-too-brief posts, but I really tried to be clear here. Since manufacturing isn't as big a part of the economy as it was, [...] =/= as you say...mfg isn't important anymore [...] As to how it would help: There are close to 20M people in the US who aren't working, or aren't working as much as they want/need. I think you'll find that there are many more, larger, boatloads of people like that than white-collar people who have to work 80 hours a week. Shifting to a 30 hour week would enable more people to be employed (to get the same [or increasing] amounts of work done). But I guess since history tells us that the 40 hour week destroyed the US economy, well then ... :-/ Cheers, Scott.
Post #319,780 by beepster 1/8/10 7:52:13 PM Reply	and it worked so well in France http://www.dissentma...icle/?article=936 that they abandoned it. I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
Post #319,783 by Another Scott 1/8/10 8:44:09 PM Reply	Hmmm. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7522659.stm (~9 months after the Dissent article): France's parliament has passed a law which effectively ends the country's compulsory 35-hour working week. The new law will allow companies to strike individual deals with unions on working hours and overtime. [...] Unions say the new measures will mainly affect smaller and medium-sized firms. "In the big companies, no-one wants to renegotiate the 35 hours and reopen Pandora's Box," said Philippe Jaeger, of managers' union CFE-CGC. It still seems to be sticking around, or at least unions have to agree to new arrangements. Maybe its an argument for increased unionization in the US? The French labor market is quite different from the US - as you well know. ;-) I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from their experience. One could easily argue that a 5 hour reduction in the work week wasn't enough to substantially reduce unemployment there... My $0.02, FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #319,802 by jay 1/9/10 12:54:54 PM Reply	Re: Good points and a good idea. For a lot of jobs, I would like to get away from the idea of fixed hours of work anyway. Put in a base line, say 1 - 4 Monday thru Thursday, so that you know when you can schedule meetings and see other people, and then let people put in the rest of the hours whenever they want. For jobs that do require a fixed schedule, 6 hour shifts for 5 days a week would be the way to go for most. But I would leave it open for companies that wanted to do other organizations, up to 10 hours a day. Anything over 10 hours a day should require over time pay. I would probably ban hospitals from running their stupid long shifts. Tired doctors and nurses are one of the more common sources of errors. Jay

Welcome to IWETHEY!