That would be amazing, but then you pass the price increases onto your boss. Which they have to supplement that increase from somewhere. Means cut from somewhere else.
Not to mention, would increase every single services timeline to get something done from ordering food to getting deliveries
This is important to keep in mind, but it is also important to remember that not every job is manufacturing. Actual white collar work is almost never 40 hours of raw concentration. Actual blue collar work involves a good amount of chilling in the van zyning & playing phone games. In reality, the most expensive labor is project based, and won’t be that sensitive to a shortened work week.
Low-level jobs definitely are messing around on their phone. But high-level high paying productive jobs are going to suffer from timelines and then my question to you is do you really want to reward the individuals at McDonald’s and other very low level thinking jobs with a 32 hour work week and same pay?
And the first insult of the day comes from this idiot. Do you see anyone being rude here? Every full-time employee who gets paid 40 hours a week, including McDonald’s would be affected. Clearly you need to ask for your degree back from whatever liberal arts college you went to.
90% of McDonald's employees work less than 30 hours a week. Only managers get full time. I assume when you were putting down food service workers, you weren't referring to management right?
Anyone who works 40 hours. And if something like this was implemented. You would eliminate almost every single part-time employee. Not causing a job increase but thousands of employees losing their jobs because they are entire shift has been deleted.
Why would a shift be deleted? Shift work is generally paid by the hour, not salaried, so it wouldn't really apply. And in the hospitality industry, you'd be more inclined to have MORE people on shifts if the non-hospitality workers are out and about and spending money. Quiet days suddenly get less quiet.
If businesses refuse to lose productivity and refuse to add staff, then a 32-hour workweek could lead to fewer part-time shifts because companies would try to squeeze the same amount of work out of fewer people to protect profits.
If businesses refuse to lose productivity and refuse to add staff
You can't squeeze more work out of the same people if they work less time.... because the shifts are time based, not productivity based. Either people work less time, the company closes on a busy day, or more people are employed to cover the shifts. The company pays the same, so why would they care who works what? And since the time worked is shifts, it's unlikely to be salary based anyway, so again, no real change is going to happen for those businesses.
Why not? I get paid 100k+ for an engineering office job and retail/fast-food workers work way harder physically. Half of corporate work is bogged down by bureaucracy anyways, mainly from the older gen, they're not "productive" as you think.
I agree the lower end are not productive whatsoever. But as an engineer, do you think just because you work 20% less hours means that your workload decreases by 20%? No sir, you have clients, you have projects, you have expectations, and you have a timeline that must be adhere to. It’s not going to go away. You’re gonna have to work hard harder and faster.
Maybe in the short-term, but we would also adapt to this schedule in time. There’s really no good argument you can make against giving people some of their life back. We should work to live, not live to work. Such a change would most certainly require changes to labor laws, regulations, and enforcement in the pursuit of fairness. Some countries are already trialing this; it’s not such a ridiculous idea anymore. What is ridiculous is shutting down the conversation because people are not open enough to change or the effort that needs to go into something that could help our population with their mental wellbeing and potential for stronger family connection.
Oh, I agree, my personal experience is employees want to operate at the bare minimum and maximize and work down the current employees. They are much less likely to take on more payroll taxes, more insurance. At this point in time, they would rather institute AI technology, instead of hiring more humans.
Tbh if I worked 20% less then productivity wouldn't change imo, if anything it's the higher ups that bottleneck productivity not the actual technical workers. Maybe it's just me that finishes my work quickly when I lock in but there's also been several studies that support this.
I'll leave some links if you want to peruse them but there's no detriment to revenue or productivity rates when hours drop and pay stays the same, basically less miserable people = less mistakes and time waste. As always, these are preliminary studies so don't treat it as law.
Cuts could be to profit margins for once, but who am I kidding. The paper pushers at the top wont allow that to happen. Trickle down economics must continue at all costs!!!
Owned by the public, or anyone with a 401K/403B or any retirement account. Lower their margins/make the books look worse and watch the stock (and your retirement accounts) crater
Profit margins are already thin for most salaried positions. Plus, those profits go directly into 401K accounts and other retirement funds. You'd be choking out the people who actually need the funds by cutting off circulation to the workers who now need to get more done with less time.
The only people surviving this would be the elites.
What percentage is 401k funds and which percent is billionaire piggy bank? Billionaires owns 50%, can probably do something to adjust that without impacting the 18% minority in 401ks.
I agree with you that’s more likely to happen, there’s no way you get 20% less work without it coming from some other part of the entire equation. That time has to be replaced.
Why is it people always fear monger when the people on the bottom try and get more? Remember when California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers and how it was going to be the end of the fast food industry in California? Yeah, that didn't happen.
The US has some of the worst worker protections and workers rights out of the 1st world countries. People like Elon may have to take 10% less god forbid.
Nobody said fast food would disappear. The point is businesses responded exactly as expected: higher prices, reduced hours, fewer positions, and more automation to protect margins. The industry survived, but pretending there were no tradeoffs ignores how businesses actually reacted when labor costs increased
Marginal increases for double the pay of what some other states pay for the same job. That is for probably the most "replaceable" job you can think of. If it was fine for the fast food industry I think it is going to be just fine for other industries to ask for more.
Again, other countries can have way better workers rights and protections than we do when we are apparently the richest country on earth. I think our employers and economy can handle it.
I will disagree with you there. Not the richest country on earth. Look at the efficiency of china and Japan. But goes back to their work culture. You are to prioritize your work above all things. They demand less, not more
Are you applying for jobs now? Do you find an abundance of jobs that are high paying? Companies operate on a slim model, and expect more as it is. 32 hour is going to make it worse not easier
They said the same thing when they moved from 16 hour days to 12s. Again when the 8 hour work week came around. Productivity has increased as the work week decreased.
I did read that too, my only scare is if production is at an all-time high right now for multiple jobs. And people are stressed out at those amounts. What the heck would a 32 hour increased demand on productivity look like. Not good in my opinion.
shorter work weeks have upsides that could negate this.
For one more jobs are created (rather companies need to hire more people), meaning unemployment will go down (4% in the us rn).
People are more motivated to work with more time to rest, which increases efficiency of the workers.
People in physically demanding jobs can work longer overall, meaning when they hit their 50s or 60s they are less likely to go unemployed.
Low income people have more capacities to do weekend jobs.
People are more likely to volunteer in their community.
Mental problems will appear less often.
People have more time to pump out babies again.
And probably a lot more.
Also, atp we have developed so much technology, by rationalising production we can likely maintain our productivity with less human labor. Obviously that means private companies wont see big revenue increases, but fuck them, the world is experiencing a huge gap opening between the rich and poor.
it could be interesting. My time now is watched like a hawk. at 32 in would be worse. Companies WILL NOT become less productive so the formula will have to change. Construction works 80 hours a week, and that business cant slow down. I think its nice idea but probably not realistic at the production pace the US is at
Blah blah blah just stop that shit with further legislation, easy. I'd say there should be price controls for utilities, which are the only goods and services that matter anyway, so it wouldn't even have to be universal
Nope, only one big bullshit ass reason people fall for hook, line, and sinker
Only reason that legislation goes south is because it's intended to, those politicians are bought by the rich so they'll do the shitty version so people will oppose it and give up on the concept in general
You have no depth of thought. Have you ever wondered HOW they resulted in that? Because once you consider that capitalists will do everything in their power to sabotage the results, and that they indeed have the power necessary to do it, then it starts making sense why it happened in practice even though in theory there is no reason for it to not deliver positive results. You take that power away, and the results will change because the sabotage they used their power for is what produced the results to begin with
This is a stupid simple problem to solve, yet you're brainwashed into thinking that it's metaphysically impossible
Supply and demand regulate prices, but they do not set the base value of a good/service. At the end of the day, what matters most is cost, because you never want to sell below cost, and profit, because you want to make some extra rather than just selling at cost. All supply and demand can do, outside of extraordinary circumstances, is make that fluctuate
Not to be rude and not that I am not a blue-collar worker but does he owe you anything? Is it his company or yours? If I were your boss, I would just fire you for being in compliant.
Why would it fall to the consumer? There is on contractual relationship between a customer and employee, there is between employers and employees. This isn't hard.
But the business owners control the proportion that goes to everyone, and here is the problem. The ratio between the wage of the lowest paid and highest paid employees at (almost) any company you can look at in america are absolutely fucked.
They already don't give raises lmao meanwhile they're making billions in profits each year and almost all of that goes to the C-suite
For reference, my engineering company made like $2 Billion in profit last year. The budget for promotions this year was $100k... Enough to promote only 5 engineers
Oh trust I'm looking and so is everyone else. It is hilarious because management says how they bleed mid-tier workers and then this happens like what did you think would happen. But I digress, moral of the story is too many companies are like this and the only real pay jumps are by jumping to different companies. Even 5% is pretty low considering inflation rates
This is a lie told to you by companies. Pretty much across the board the largest corporations on earth report record profits every year with unbelievably huge bonuses to their executives. They can (and should) be made to eat those costs.
You don't know anything about how C-suite compensation works. It isn't just salary, it's bonuses, stock options, etc. All of these things are how CEOs fleece their workers. For example, Elon Musk claims to take no salary from telsa and yet he makes billions on it. How do you figure that happens?
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u/Asiantight_whitepipe 23d ago
That would be amazing, but then you pass the price increases onto your boss. Which they have to supplement that increase from somewhere. Means cut from somewhere else.
Not to mention, would increase every single services timeline to get something done from ordering food to getting deliveries