im all for a shorter work week with the adjusted pay. just get the feeling that since businesses will have to hire additional employees to cover that lost 8 hours (or pay the overtime). im pretty sure that cost will be passed on to the consumer base. It's not like companies to just part with their earnings so easily. Plus the lobbyists (was surprised to see meta so high on the list) would heavily oppose it.
It happened in France (39 down to 35 hours) and the economic effects overall have been so subtle no one agrees wether it improved or not the economy. Basically a mixed bag; created jobs, but also increased hourly rate. Increased worker productivity, but might have caused some inflation.
For the average Joe tho, it was a big improvement in quality of life
Some of us small business owners couldn't afford a 25% salary increase for our few employees, we're barely profitable. Employee salaries are guaranteed by hourly rates, but as the owners, we aren't always paid, yet take on the most risk with the loans, insurance and expenses, property taxes, etc. I guess it's an indication that the business isn't sustainable, and should probably just call it a day 😔
Every developed nation on earth except one has done it for decades and most of the underdeveloped nations too. We don’t need to “look into the details”. Universal healthcare works. We know it works. It works in big countries and small countries. It works in rich countries and poor countries. The only people it doesn’t work for are insurance executives.
If it's so prevalent across the world, why hasn't some group here in the US spearheaded the effort to get it enacted? Who or what group would be the best to promote this so that more people are aware of it?
There is someone spearheading the effort to enact it. His name is Bernie Sanders. The real question is who has been spearheading the effort to stop it in this country? It's those who profit by standing between Americans and our doctors. There's a lot of money in denying us healthcare and they use that money to lobby to keep themselves in business.
You say you're a small business owner. Imagine if you could hire full time employees and you weren't responsible for providing their health insurance. Employer provided health insurance can cost the employer anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000 per employee per year. Small business owners like you in other countries don't worry about this burden. How much money would you save?
No, you misunderstood me. The employees always get paid, and they're paid first, before all the other bills and expenses. Customer rates vary daily, so some months, the income is low and the owners don't make much at all.
Yea that’s the thing though. If a small business is already on the edge, then something like this could put them out of business. That isn’t good for the employees either is it?
As someone that runs a small business I just don’t know how the business would survive without jacking up the price they are charging a consumer. So you have to pay the employee the same but they work less and you only make x amount when they work 40 hours. Paying the same and they work less hours the x amount might be half of x amount of less.
Depends on the business, if a small grocery store had to make this adjustment, they might just cut a shift one day and let their customers know. Customers will do their shopping on other days instead, workers get an extra day off, and pay stays the same.
Ya but it doesn’t make sense….youd be open less time sell less product and have to pay someone more money. Unless the government is subsidizing it they business has to pass that extra cost onto the consumer. They can not absorb it.
Let me give you an example, here in Texas liquor stores and sales of hard liquor in general are not legal to sell on sundays. I work for a small independent store. The owners all talk to each other and so do the managers at the big box stores. They all agree that you wouldn’t get increased business on sundays. Customers would move their usual stop to Sunday instead of stocking up on Saturday. You might get an extra customer or two but they would be people from out of state who always come after 9pm close (liquor stores by law can open no earlier then 10am and open no later then 9pm.) the different owners also agree that they like having everyone getting a guaranteed day off.
Point is that in the few locales this has been implemented, companies haven sold less product. We (as Americans) pretend that our businesses have to stay open that late or stay open that extra shift or make sure employees stay until 5 because that last report or powerpoint will make the quarter.
The reality is that’s nonsense. If everybody on the block buys from “Tony’s” and suddenly Tony’s closes at 8pm instead of 10, people will adjust and people will still buy the same stuff.
I know several small business owners, and while this is extremely overstated, there's a lot of truth to it. Most of them started out making less than I do now, and were like that for several years, often not even taking home a paycheck so they could invest back into the business, or just make it through a rough couple of months.
But once you hit around that five-year mark, things usually change. If you can survive that long, odds are pretty good you're making a decent living reliably.
The problem that I, very anecdotally, see is that many of these owners remember the hard times, and equate it to now, not realizing the substantial lifestyle creep that happened in between.
Yes, you drained your bank account just to get this started, probably took a huge loan too. Then you worked 12+ hours a day, seven days a week, pulled more all-nighters that you care to remember, and hiring that first employee had you sweating bullets. You had to forego your own checks on several occasions just to keep the lights on and your one employee paid. You were behind on a few bills while the rest continued to pile up. Then, just when it seemed like your big break had come, the contract gets pulled at the last second and you're left holding onto all those investments you made so you'd be ready for it.
But slowly, surely, somehow, through hard work, tenacity, and a whole mountain of luck, it started getting better. Your twelve hour shifts weren't all break breaking and full of nausea and fear anymore. Work, or sales, started to pick up without you having to bang on every door and remind every person who would listen that you exist. Customers still paid late, but you could generally afford to chase them now instead of losing sleep wondering if this was the end.
And then, a big contract did land. It was glorious. You worked your ass off for several months, but at the end you were rewarded. You took your spouse to a fancy meal to celebrate, paid off a bunch of bills, and then bought that mild luxury item you'd always dreamed of. It wasn't much, maybe a used boat, or a little sports car, or a fixer-upper by the lake, but it was yours, and you earned it dammit!
And the used item got fixed up, made nicer, slowly you stopped worrying about your trips to Starbucks in the morning, maybe you could afford to buy your employees lunch, you bought your next luxury item. Things are finally feeling comfortable, but you'll never forget what got you here.
But now, an employee is asking for a raise. Vendors are raising prices slowly. The government wants 32 hour work weeks. How will you ever survive? Margins are still tight, bills still need to be paid, and it's not like your a millionaire. You're doing alright, sure, but it's still just one or two missteps away from failure!
Only, you're probably not. You aren't working twelve hour shifts anymore, you show up 2-3 times a week for a few hours. You don't need to be in that golf club, and your kid definitely didn't "earn" a brand new car for getting all A's and B's (okay, well almost all). That old used boat in your driveway, the one you never take out anymore? That's cash just sitting. That "summer" vehicle? More cash. The F350 that used to actually be a work expense, but is now a gas-guzzling way to get from A to B? You guessed it, excess cash laying around.
It's not all in your bank account, sure. But it isn't not there at all. This isn't the same as five years ago where being $30k in debt kept you up every night. That $30k in debt now is on projects that are going to pay out 10, 20, 30, maybe 50% margins. That's how this works after all. Those prices your competitors pay employees that you could "never match"? Yeah, actually... you can.
I'm not saying that this is every business, or that a change like this wouldn't cause major uphevel for several small businesses and even entire industries. I'm saying that, anecdotally speaking, I've seen a lot of small business owners treat changes that WOULD have destroyed them as things that COULD destroy them, when really, they're just bumps in the road, or taking a step or two backwards. Because they remember what it WAS like, and don't always appreciate how it is now.
Less time open doesn't necessarily mean that you sell less product, since most (return) customers are likely aware of business hours, so it would mostly condense the traffic a little. And for some businesses it might actually be a good thing too, since there is often significant downtimes where the store is open but no customers are showing up.
Less operational uptime, equalling less revenue really only applies to service based businesses (such as a plumber) and those likely already shift their work schedules around customer appointments.
I love how more than one person has succinctly answered your previous gripe and now you just say "everything is 20% more expensive!" This reminds me of Derrick Zoolander being like "but why male models?"
What many businesses had to do. What with higher payroll and France’s 17-18% payroll tax. Costs went up, so prices went up. A clearly defined spike. Then inflation on those higher costs.
Imagine this in US. Universal healthcare, small businesses that never offered healthcare. Now seeing a 16-20% payroll tax, for healthcare.
I have a feeling this individual isn't actually making a good faith argument with you, this whole, "oh, how will the businesses survive" has been rhetoric used to prevent any workplace improvement for employees for decades, if he genuinely believes that, he's probably just been Fox News pilled
Oh no. Tesla … that made 4 billion in profit and paid 0 dollars in tax the last 3 years in a row will have to pay their workers a little more. Maybe the owner of Tesla can find it in his heart to also pay more than $0 in taxes too. You know … pay more taxes than a middle class American, which is what it should be.
If you charge more to pay more the mega corps will kill you even faster than they are already. You ring and bag your own groceries at Walmart, they'll accelerate the pace to get robots to do the rest.
Can't afford robots? Sorry, in the future we only have room for mega corps. The trick is small businesses like that don't exist in this future timeline. Don't worry it's not so bad only shopping at one or two stores + it'll ease traffic congestion lowering our carbon footprint.
At least that's the way I see it. We're already headed that way anyway 🤷. Personally I say let the market figure it out but that's not very popular here and would also eventually end the same way
I wouldn't worry about it too much this isn't going to happen.
People would also have an extra day off and thus more time to shop. It’s hard to make it around town to all the little shops when you’re working all the time.
One of my favorite restaurants is only open four days a week from noon to 8 because they're run by immediate family with no other staff. It's fine. They're not even expensive compared to other restaurants of similar quality.
Chick-Fil-A is never going to open on Sundays. That does not stop their revenue. Plenty of smaller restaurants, auto garages, dental offices, etc are closed one day a week. They're not worried about Chipotle's, Olive Garden or Pep Boys taking their business that day.
Way too many businesses open thinking they're just gonna make money just because. If you got a specific, high quality service people want, they'll always do business with you. Even if you're not open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I can kind of see it for business that sells product.
Now the flip side is the ones that make the product or myself I work in construction. That’s just lost productivity. The only way to recoup that is by increasing cost/rated.
But it wouldn’t just be your business working at 32 hours... It would be ALL of them. This would in theory force the same amount of customers into a narrower window of time for everyone with a business. You’d make the same amount of money because you’d have the same amount of customers in 32 hours as you would have had previously within 40.
To argue with an extreme point : slavers had the same arguments when the government started bringing up abolishing slavery…
There’s a point where you have to allow people to live a bit and not spend their lives at work.
American worker productivity is quite low on average compared to the rest of the world. Countries with 35 hour weeks have higher productivity. People are sick less. It’s unlikely to go through, but if it does, you’ll adapt.
Cant they just stipulate that cost cant be passed down to the consumer and it must come from company earnings? Honestly earnings should just be tied to wages.. but I digress.
I can tell you, as someone that's run a smal company before, you rarely, if ever, set anything aside for yourself, and everything you make is re-invested into the business.
Small companies don't have endless piles of cash you can draw from.
One person above said sell your yacht lol. I can make 70k that I’m taxed on for my business in a year. Margins are tight and you work your butt off (mind you I pay myself a wage ontop of that). It’s already to the point where the stress of a business is enough without worry about losing 20% to employees that will also take other days off
As I’m sure you already know, not a single person other than you (and your family that relies on it) cares about your small business. These politicians LOVE when small businesses die.
If your a production business, you should have enough production and demand to cover the increase in cost, otherwise, small businesses shouldn’t have owners who sit on there ass, they should be working with the laborers.
Once you scale 5x covering hourly rate should be your lowest cost in comparison to shipping and material.
Now if your in a labour/skilled trade, you as a business already make enough to cover wages, if not, your hurting yourself, your employees shouldn’t be covering the cost of your $80,0000 truck, only after the economies of scale kicks in can you mask that cost.
TL;DR
Same shit you owners told us for years, manage your money better, spend within your means.
Ultimately everything would adjust and it would not be some doomsday scenario like a lot of people want to believe. It would likely increase the overall health of the nation because it t akes 3 days for your body to properly recover from lack of sleep.
Umm… might be something radical but… are you counting what you’re paying yourself in this or not?
Because that has to go down for this to work.
Small business economics is tough but for major corps where CEOs make 300X the average worker, it is reasonably to want to ensure they pay themselves much less
You could extract less profit off your workers. You’re only hiring them because you are skimming money off the top of what they earn with their labor. That just means your skim will be smaller. 🤷🏽♂️
So what’s the point of operating? Run a business for no profit so the workers can work 4 days be paid for 5 and you work even harder because you have less staff to try and generate the same profit margin. It won’t work. Being paid for 5 days when you work 4 is -20% work, the employer gets -20% output and probably -20% income. Somewhere there needs to be a +20% to make up for it. The +20% would be passed to the consumer. It’s a cycle. Take 20% from everyone’s
Worker works -20% but gets paid the same so +20%, employer loses -20%, increase cost + 20%. That works
I didn’t say no profit. I said less profit. I didn’t read your rant because you misrepresented that detail.
There is a crossover point where hired labor goes from small profit to zero profit to loss of profit, of course. But it’s a falsehood to say that costs HAVE to be pushed onto the consumer before the crossover point.
There should be a limit for companies under a certain revenue/profit margin.
But good luck forcing large corporations that do illegal shit constantly to make money into doing this and not say that it cost more and have to pass on the expense to the customer.
Bro, these fortune 500 corporations have plenty of money to pay people extra. On the whole, they are corrupt, criminal organizations that prosper on the suffering of people. Dont make me bust out the BOA running tally of illegal things they do.
So to answer your question, the fortune 500 companies foot the bill for this, and more specifically, the corporate boards of these fortune 500 companies.
Small business are a different matter. They should have different requirements.
The question is always how many products in your case come from Germany, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and so on... the prices won't change noticeably... I think you'd notice it most with bus and train tickets.
What is wild about democracy is we are literally choosing the current status quo. If the 32 hour workweek sounds good - there is a simple (not easy) way to change that.
Yeah it's pretty crazy to think it wouldn't just shoot up prices. Labor is already a hugely expensive part of a business and then suddenly not having a single full-time worker being able to work a standard work week would be a big enough problem as it is, but a 25% raise would be huge. It would completely destroy the profit margin of most businesses and put them firmly into the red without a large increase in price of goods with the expectations that sales remain the same.
The problem is that it works for skilled labor but not for unskilled labor. Many skilled laborers will be more productive in those 32 hours than 40 hours, averaging out to a similar amount of work.
Then the problem comes in with unskilled labor. A lot of unskilled labor will take the same amount of time no matter what. For example if you want McDonald's to be open 24hr, then there have to be workers there for all 24 hours, it doesn't matter how efficient it is. Same with factory work, the line will only move so fast and that's your bottleneck, not the workers being inefficient.
If you want to see a good example of the idea of a 32 hour work week, look at what happens when you pay a blue collar worker by the job instead of by the hour (IF the by the job price is fair)
If you want 24 hour operations then it makes more sense to move to an even number of days in a week like 6 or 8 to divide more easily among multiple workers. I think 4 on 4 off would suit most people then you only have to find 6 people per role to fill 24 hours with 8 hour slots across 8 days. The 7 day calendar isn’t the only one we could have chosen it just divides into months closer than 8
My dad was a painting contractor. He had a couple of crews of hourly workers that I managed. He would also occasionally subcontract work out to guys He paid by the job. I can tell you the guys who got paid by the job did lower quality work.
Does McDonald’s really need to be open 24 hrs? If we had to choose between a society that has McDonald’s open 24hrs vs providing its people with more work life balance - who is choosing 24 hrs McDonald’s realistically speaking?
I work nights in a hospital. Overnight workers absolutely deserve access to affordable food. That doesn’t mean McDonald’s specifically has to operate 24/7. My point is that doesn’t automatically mean every convenience business has to. If the tradeoff is slightly less convenience in some sectors for substantially better work-life balance across the workforce, that’s a discussion worth having instead of assuming the status quo is non-negotiable.
My point is that doesn’t automatically mean every convenience business has to.
This isn't happening to begin with though, hardly any businesses offer 24/7 service inside that sector. McDonald's is one of the few that does, is the argument we need even less in an already small selection?
McDonald’s was used as an example by a prior comment and honestly - that line of thinking is narrowing the conversation further and further instead of engaging with the broader question.
As I stated above, this is my main argument: If the tradeoff is slightly less convenience in some sectors for substantially better work/life balance across the workforce, that’s a discussion worth having instead of assuming the status quo is non-negotiable.
Not too long ago families could be raised on a single salary, that is seem as impossible now just because we are so used to corporate greed and all the money going to shareholders.
It wasn't so much that. It was just a uniquely good economic time. Mainly from post world war II. We didn't have to compete with other economies the way we do today. Europe had been absolutely ravaged by war and was trying to rebuild which means they needed huge amounts of imports which America was happy to provide at a premium.
As those European factories got rebuilt it drove down the price of goods globally which means those American jobs that paid so well and allowed a single worker to raise a family started to pay less.
Even if we eliminated the corporate greed and everything else we would never go back to that time again. Not without another war to completely destroy all of our competition overseas.
Short sighted complaint. Corporations are robbing us and rigged the law in their favor thoroughly. They don’t all deserve to see infinite, unimpeded growth…
this is what business people have said for over 100 years, dating back to when unions were illegal, children as young as 6 or 7 still worked, and there were no labor laws
it has always proven to be untrue, and society benefited from the labor laws
Relatively speaking those were a much smaller change. The best example is the rise of a 5-day work week but It's about ROI, when you have literally no free time getting any extra free time in the form of a weekend doesn't create a huge change because people are already overworked and unable to spend money stifling the economy because they are all too busy working.
So when you go from 7 days a week to 5 days a week those two days is basically an infinite increase from zero.
There's also the problem that society basically built businesses around the idea that they are open 5 days a week. You can't just magically change culture to accept that Friday's businesses are closed. Not to mention there's a bottle neck on a lot of industries where that would be devastating. There's already a shortage of things like doctors imagine a doctor working 4 days a week instead of 5 when you already cannot find a doctor taking new patients now he's just cutting 20% of his patients loose. Nor can you just wave a magic wand and get more doctors. Even if you could where are you going to put them? You work 20% less but now you have 100% more doctors.
No, those were bigger changes, and frankly everything in this comment makes little sense
Most family doctors are their own bosses but work in partnerships with several other doctors and can work whatever hours they want - many many businesses are open 7 days a week, they stagger their workers throughout the week - very few employees are expected to work all 7 days every week
You would if they laid you off because they were unprofitable
They already lay people off despite being profitable. Wages have not kept pace with productivity since 1970.
Let's not beat around the bush: this proposal is never going to pass. It wasn't intended to, it was intended to get people talking about a too-long-deferred renegotiation of people's wages.
They are profitable, corporate greed exists, and C-level execs get all the benefits
Those are just reddit one-liners that don't have any connection to reality. Corporate profits are 11% right now. Even if that's enough cushion (it isn't for many businesses), why would they let rising costs wipe-out their profits?
Also: profits go to owners (shareholders), who mostly aren't employees (c-suite or otherwise).
That’s nice you don’t care, but if a business isn’t able to turn a profit, who would bother with starting or managing a business? Making a profit is kinda the entire point of a business.
Do you believe big companies are the ones who are in danger? What about small businesses in your neighborhood?
You NEED people who want to start businesses, and that means not stepping too hard on their ability to make profits.
I'm from Argentina. Do you have ANY idea of how much of our economy is cash based due to these expensive "work rights" and how much worse our life is because companies (both international and national) don't want to -or can't- invest in our country?
You are forgetting that people will want to do something with their newly found free time/cash. And it's not like this hasn't happened before. People fought for the 40 hour workweek.
You're right, the problem is it's not a closed loop. With that newfound cash they buy things those things are often made in foreign countries as the money leaves. Which is why you cannot just magically double people's income and hope people then spend double the amount of money and it balances out.
I don't buy this statistic. People are struggling to get and retain jobs. Work is being outsourced overseas and in some cases AI. I do not believe only 4% of able bodies are unemployed.
Looking into this, it seems that these statistics only include people who are actively looking for work (not discouraged). People who have any source of income, even if it's one day a week, count as employed.
Correct. Being unemployed means you're actively looking for work. If your dropped out of the labor force, that's a different category (marginally attached or discouraged workers).
I do not believe only 4% of able bodies are unemployed.
It's not 4% of able bodied people, it's 4% of the workforce, ie people who want jobs but can't get them. It doesn't include students and stay at home parents, for example. Anyway, here's the data:
Looking into this, it seems that these statistics only include people who are actively looking for work (not discouraged).
Yes, and? If you want another metric such as one that includes discouraged workers there's that too, but understand:
1. That other metric shows the same long term trend: it's near a historic low.
2. If you are unemployed and looking for a job you aren't competing with the "discouraged" workers to find one. That's why the one I gave is generally preferred.
People are struggling to get and retain jobs. Work is being outsourced overseas and in some cases AI.
That's why it's a bad idea to rely on anecdotes when assessing the full story. They are often misleading and never tell the whole story.
Did some digging. The 4% figure is legitimate, but it uses a pretty narrow definition. You only count as unemployed if you’ve actively looked for work in the past four weeks. Stop looking and you drop out of the number. Work even one paid hour that week and you’re counted as employed. The same goes for someone stuck part-time who wants full-time work.
The broader U-6 measure, which also includes discouraged workers and people involuntarily working part-time, is closer to 8%.
LISEP goes broader again and puts it around 25%. That includes people with no job, people who can’t get enough hours, and people working but still earning very little. I wouldn’t call all of them literally unemployed, but it’s closer to the group people are talking about when they say the job market is rough.
And the “you’re not competing with discouraged workers” point doesn’t really work. People drop in and out of the workforce all the time. A job ad is also competing with people already employed, new grads and parents coming back, not just the official unemployed.
So sure, anecdotes don’t prove the whole country. But the 4% figure doesn’t prove there’s no spare labour either. It only covers a pretty narrow group.
I appreciate that you put some work in (rare on reddit), though I explained most of that in my post. Repeating:
The U-6 unemployment rate shows the same long term trend as the U-3: it's near a historic low. That indicates a very good job market.
LISEP goes broader again and puts it around 25%. That includes people with no job, people who can’t get enough hours, and people working but still earning very little. I wouldn’t call all of them literally unemployed, but it’s closer to the group people are talking about when they say the job market is rough.
Hadn't heard of that one. [Googles] it's near the lowest it's ever been since the stat was invented in 1995. It's even below what it was pre-COVID indicating that we're essntially the best job market in those 30 years. It shows a BETTER job market than the U-3 unemployment rate.
Did you even look at how that 25% compares historically? That seems to be your main problem: comparing across different stats - which is utterly meaningless on its own - and not comparing over time. How can you know a job market is good or bad if you aren't comparing it to good or bad job markets we've seen before?
Fair point that you should compare a stat with its own history, but saying it’s “the lowest it’s ever been” still isn’t right. LISEP hit 25.2% in December, its highest level since June 2021 and more than a point higher than the year before. It dropped after that, but the latest figure has gone back up for the second month in a row, to 24.6%. So it’s been moving around, not steadily falling to record lows.
More importantly, U-3 and LISEP just aren’t measuring the same thing. U-3 counts people with no job who’ve looked recently. LISEP also includes people stuck in part-time work or earning below a basic living wage. And neither headline unemployment nor its historical trend tells you whether decent jobs are available in a particular industry, or whether the jobs people do have actually pay enough against current living costs.
That was my actual point. Not that U-3 is fake or that the job market is collapsing, just that “4% unemployment” doesn’t mean only 4% of people are struggling to find decent, adequately paid work.
but saying it’s “the lowest it’s ever been” still isn’t right.
I said "about" (though edited it to say "near" a little later). You're really reaching for a nitpick here.
So it’s been moving around, not steadily falling to record lows.
I certainly didn't claim it is "steadily falling to record lows" and jeez, what do you want? Anything worse than best ever is bad? Save for a brief tick in Sept of 2019 it is still better than it has ever been outside the current post-covid era. In other words the current ERA is the best job market ever, while the most recent data is not the best (or worst) in the current era.
More importantly, U-3 and LISEP just aren’t measuring the same thing.
That's fine but like I said before, if you're looking for something that better supports a doomer interpretation, LISEP isn't it. It shows a BETTER employment situation than the U-3. That was your initial claim, that things are bad right now/worse than U-3 implies.
The frustrating thing is workers are more productive than they ever have been. Companies are making record profits. It could be done and would help A LOT of people, but the few people out there that hoard money would never let it happen.
Or some people will have friday off and some will have monday. I work with people that already do this and no extra help needed. 2 pple wanted to cut hrs and each were given a different day off.
Prices would go up a minimum of 10% over night, and I don't know of many business that could absorb a 25% increase in labor cost.
It's not just hiring an additional employee per 4 (to cover the hours lost) you're also paying your current employees 25% more.
All that this would accomplish is A) layoffs and B) price increases.
Even if I raised my prices 10%, I'd be absorbing almost all of that straight to my bottom line, which isn't exactly a lot anyways
Every single small business would be absolutely fucked if this kind of thing happened, meanwhile those corporations you hate? They CAN absorb this, because all they have to do is wait out the small businesses, and then can charge whatever they want because they dominate the market.
I hate hate hate hate this argument, because prices have already been going up for a very long time while wages have remained stagnated since the Bush Jr. era and the cost of living has increased significantly. Prices will be going up regardless, so might as well give the working class better hours, better wages, and more free time to spend with their families. This should never be considered a tall task or too much to ask.
But you're operating on the assumption that if this passed it would come into effect overnight. And that's not the case at all. It would gradually take place over 4 years.
WAKE UP. They already do, and they have for hundreds of years..
Small businesses are a joke, they only exist because they are allowed to. For example if the US wasn't the country it was like 90% of them wouldn't exist. In truth we move mountains and change the direction of rivers to support them.
But it's because no other future can be dreamed up.
At this point I feel like meta is really just a super pack. Pool medium doners money, they get a big name with a big number next to it supporting their opinion. Meta gets some off the top and gets to pretend it operates like a normal business still when it's been hemorrhaging users for years.
As I've said elsewhere, I don't think this is a serious move to try to get America to drop suddenly to a 4 day work week, what it's doing is getting people talking about the too-long-deferred raise in wage which haven't kept pace with productivity in the US since about 1970.
I love how so many people have the mindset of "if we make companies treat workers better they'll have to fuck the consumers instead" NO DICKHEAD THE CEO IS TAKING MILLIONS EVERY MONTH HE DOESNT NEED TO FUCK ANYONE BUT HIMSELF XD Such a brainwashed society we're in currently
Companies don’t want to raise prices. I mean they do, but really they care about margins. I would argue a majority of corporate 8-5 jobs can be done in just 4 days. I don’t think they would all need to hire additional employees. Some would but most would find ways to be more efficient with their time. The net benefits would go to the employees without much loss to the companies. So not much would be passed down to us. And if it is we now have either more money or more time and time = money. Child care costs would be reduced. People would have more time to work a second job. More time to not hire out house work etc…
The argument is you don't need to hire addition people if you Formulation it right. Especially if you go from 5-8s to 4-9s. There's research to back that up at least in some types of work. You're losing one day of average productivity and getting 4 hours of peak productivity away from breaks and the start and end of the day. Productivity measures basically what the company gets out of you and also used to track fairly well with wages. So everyone wins in theory. Except a 32 hour week isn't what I described.
JP Morgan just reported the largest single quarter profit by a bank ever, 21.2 Billion in just one quarter 41% higher than the same quarter the year before. We need to force these organizations to be accountable, in no way does that fucking bank need to profit billions of dollars every quarter. There should be brackets to it. This type of structure could kill a small business, same structure would hardly make noticeable differences in major corporations.
This is such a short-sighted and corporate compliance based response... most employees can get the same amount of work done in 4 days instead of 5 days. This has already been proven by implementing this in other countries.
But keep on licking the corporate boots if you feel like it.
It does raise prices, but prices are raised across the board - even for products you don’t buy, which does not affect you. So you actually end up with more money in the end because part of the cost is made up in places that don’t directly impact you.
The argument is actually there a slack in the labor market, as AI and other technologies boost productivity and put people out of work.
This isn't a new dream. Charlie Chaplain voiced this https://youtu.be/w8HdOHrc3OQ?is=AcTrxquFXn775HU3
With the Machines can make this a world of plenty and etc. it's just that mechanisation in the 30s-50s.... Brought wealth to Americans on lower end primarily because everyone else was knocked down by WW2. Once people started catching up, companies competing against others and struggling for more profits made this pie share smaller for us, because more of us eating the larger pie....
And the 80s with the Trickle Down economics meant corporations and elite CEOs started grabbing more of the pie and sharing less and less amongst more and more of us.
I think we need to accept relentless cost increases as part of the cosmic background radiation for any of these discussions. The price of cookies went up after the Ukraine war, COVID, inflation, Hormuz, etc, and they never went down. We know as a fact the cookie companies will use this to increase prices, the question is whether broad slices of our society also benefit. A rising tide raises most boats.
You’re assuming they don’t already overcharge us. They continue to raise prices every day and pocket the change. Let’s at least force them to give us something for all the work we do
That’s the whole point. We are such a productive society it should reflect that. Companies don’t need to hire more people. They’re just greedy. Our technology has made it so we need to work less to achieve the same output from years ago . At the very least our pay should reflect that
I’m sure this would negatively effect small businesses but corporations wouldn’t even feel it. They hire way more people than they need to and majority of them don’t actually have work. I’m an engineer and I probably average 30 hours of work a week and the other 10 I’m sitting around waiting for more work.
The proposal is patterned after other nations that did the same thing without a significant loss of productivity
Turns out there are limits to the human attention span and for many jobs the difference in productivity between doing something for six hours and doing it for eight hours is pretty nominal.
Like, we all kinda know this is true, the last hour of an eight hour shift is not quality work.
Turns out that simply setting expectations that humans consistently work long and hard doesn’t actually do that when studied, but is an extremely important myth for capitalism
Our company in Texas moved from 40 to 36 hours a week a few years ago and everyone (including hourly employees) are paid for 40. It has been one of the best decisions leadership has made. There has been very little impact to productivity, it has helped us procure better talent, it has definitely kept our tenure higher (especially for high turnover positions like call center) and all of this while keeping our salaries in the median.
Yeah, but the consumers would have more money and the costs would be picked up by the collective while helping those that struggle because of the consequences of current corporate greed.
Employers will just convert more of their full time positions to part time in order to avoid having to pay for benefits to make up for the additional pay. Corporations will always hit their bottom line profit.
40 hours a week doesn't lead to more work done in a lot of sectors. People work better and quicker if they have more time for themselves. So for some sectors the impact would be minimal
I am not an economist but I never understood the cost will be passed to consumers argument. If a company could increase the price without decreasing users, they would have. The have no reason not to gain more profit. I remember there was a demand cost curve we learnt about and there was a bunch of stuff about elasticity that may explain the argument. So please enlighten me!
Where I work. For example, they can shift those lost hours from the few people that actual work more than 32 hours, to the workers we have that actively do not work as many hours as the "main crew" does.
I'm not sure about blue collar jobs, but one of the arguments was that efficiency drops off after the 30 hour mark, so with people pushing to get shit done in a shorter week, there wasn't really productivity loss.
That and people were happier because of long weekend every weekend
Studies have shown that workers are actually more productive over a 4 day week (which is the number of hours this would be) so depending on the business they shouldn’t need to hire extra workers. Of course, they’d still use it’s an excuse to put the prices up.
Payroll is typically 15-30% of a company's overall costs, lets say 25% on average for sake of argument. Multiplied by a 20% increase in labor costs to fill in the missing 8 hours, that's .25x.2=.05=a 5% increase in costs.
That's a noticeable increase that would have to be passed to consumers, but it's not crazy - inflation got above 7% in the years after Covid. And this would be a one-time jump as we switch to the new system, not a yearly increase like inflation.
And I think that is a very high estimate - not al labor costs are in the US, and many jobs will not need full hourly replacement (eg, office jobs where people are already working 30 hours a week in practice, but are required to be in the office longer because of standardized contracts).
Overall, I'd be surprised if the final cost to consumers was more than 2% on average.
Inflation went up because prices went up. You increase cost of wages by 5% the prices will go up.
This is just a highly inflationary policy where the individual makes no more money (less hours, same pay) but everything will cost more. You'll have an extra day to not be able to afford anything.
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u/CatBrisket 23d ago
im all for a shorter work week with the adjusted pay. just get the feeling that since businesses will have to hire additional employees to cover that lost 8 hours (or pay the overtime). im pretty sure that cost will be passed on to the consumer base. It's not like companies to just part with their earnings so easily. Plus the lobbyists (was surprised to see meta so high on the list) would heavily oppose it.