https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/what-young-people-would-give-up-for-a-4-day-workweek.html
From remote work to high pay, here's what young workers are willing to sacrifice in exchange for a 4-day workweek
No, I don't want to work longer hours. I can literally accomplish the same amount in 4 days as I do in a 5 day work week. What is this obsession with always being more productive anyway? We have improved efficiency and production like 300% (probably more) since the early 1900s, and we are still expected to be wage slaves. That's dog shit corporate bullshit propaganda.
Tbf the working conditions and life conditions have improved enormously since the tge early 1900s. Just remember that the early 1900s was still a Victorian era hellscape in regards to working conditions, with child labor, no rights whatsoever, no protections, 18 hours work days until you dropped dead at 40 if you were lucky.
That being said, the issue is that in many cases production has gone up by 300% since the 90s, with no meaningful change in working conditions, just a reduction in personnel. A change is needed and this 4 day work week movement is a good thing.
The extra productivity just increased profits for the company and raise the stock price for investors. The ability to use less manpower increased profits and stock shares. Slowing pay and benefits advancements for the workers increased profits for the company and shareholders.
Companies don't take the view of all we need to do is break even every year it's about making more and more money every year. The actual people who put the work in to make those profits mean nothing to upper management and the shareholders they are all replaceable.
If the stock market and mega corporations were gone and there were only small regional privately owned companies you would see a huge difference in workers lives.
Right. It's about incentives. I'm not going to work harder for more hours, but offer me more money or less hours and let's talk.
I used to think the same thing. But it turns out, we've all been convinced into being wage slaves our entire lives for jobs that don't really matter.
Funny enough, the least skilled jobs that we found out are the most important during the pandemic are the ones nobody wants to pay well for.
What's even more ironic is that we've been convinced to do all of this while destroying the planet and every ecosystem on it.
One day we'll wake up and be old, and realize we spent our entire life working instead of doing the things that are actually important in life.
You know, that, or the climate will break down, not sure which one will happen first since climate breakdown is happening faster every year.
Speak for yourself. I work as an electrician at a hydropower plant. I suppose you could debate whether my job role matters or not, but if you like that your kettle, TV, phone and everything else that requires electricity works, then I think you'd be hard pushed.
I do agree strongly that some of the worst paid jobs are the most valuable. One of the best things to come out of the pandemic was a big push for unionism and I hope it stays that way.
Unfortunately in our current society, we need to work. I quite like the idea of not being destitute when I reach retirement age. I'd love to spend all my time following my passions but I need to be realistic.
The climate problem is interesting. Some countries are moving towards being CO2 neutral. I hope that others will follow them and it won't be too late.
Speak for yourself.
I'm an aerospace engineer, and my role is critical to the success of our project. Actually, I haven't worked a professional job where that wasn't the case. You're not going to change my mind about how our society is structured. We've all been duped into participating in a system that is pushing us to extinction, and it's insane
I could argue that we'd get by without planes. There are many much more environmentally friendly modes of travel.
Now you tell me how we get by without electricity, especially from sources that are environmentally friendly.
Your being facetious and not arguing in good faith.
We could get by in our modern lives with very little impact to the average persons life with no planes.
I am absolutely not willing to make any sacrifices. We deserve the four day work week. Full stop
I'm willing to sacrifice in-office work in favor of WFH. That should save the corpos money on renting office space that they can then pass on as increased wages as well.
Oh wait...
Other sacrifices that Gen Z and millennial employees say they’d make in exchange for a four-day workweek include working longer hours (48%), changing jobs or companies (35%), working weekends or evenings (27%) and even taking a pay cut (13%).
If people can be as productive with a four-day workweek (and other surveys and studies have shown this to be the case), there should be no need for workers to sacrifice anything.
Realistically, employers should be the ones sacrificing to keep productive staff happy, including giving them a four-hour workweek with no strings attached.
Tbh if we got a four day work week we would have more time to think about and advocate for the things we want anyway. A pay cut would be temporary.
four-hour workweek
Now we're getting somewhere!
After all, a typical office employee only does 15 minutes of real actual work.
If people are as productive in 4 days as they are in 5 days, I don't see how the employer would be sacrificing anything at all. They would just be saving a day of office lighting bills.
The employer will see that you "could" be doing more work, since you accomplish everything in 4 hours. "You don't have enough work to occupy your time", they'd say in my country.
That's why people act busy. Because when you're efficient, you get punished with more work.
This is true. My company has afternoons off in the summer (4.5 day work weeks). Basically they acknowledge that no one is doing anything after lunch on a Friday.
The same amount of actual work gets done. It's actually more efficient because no one is coming up with useless meetings and busywork.
The "sacrifice" is number of total man hours going down. Nevermind that the remaining hours are vastly superior to the ones you lose, that's a number that's smaller, and unless that's "how much we're paying", numbers being smaller is a bad thing, mmkay?
Since when did we have to "give anything up" to get a four-day work week?
We simply need to take the four-day work week by force.
Despite the popular belief that younger generations are champions of remote work, one-third of Gen Z and millennial workers say they'd be willing to work fully in-person if it meant shaving a day off of their workweek.
[. . .]
Other sacrifices that Gen Z and millennial employees say they'd make in exchange for a four-day workweek include working longer hours (48%), changing jobs or companies (35%), working weekends or evenings (27%) and even taking a pay cut (13%)
Translation:
Fuckin based honestly. I thought they would ask for less compromise, but if they're gonna go for the gut we'd better just tell them how it is. Less hours are proven to make better working happier more productive and cooperative employees. They're just potentially less compliant.
Hey, studies show 8/4 wouldn't appreciably lower productivity. Why the fuck should I give my employer anything else?
Yeah, that's not any kind of improvement, that's just moving your hours around. People can do that now. Shouldn't need to. The 40 hour workweek is way out of date, 32 hours is barely catching up to where we should be by now.
Absolutely. I also find 8 hours to be more than long enough. The days with overtime are actually fucking thievery as the rest of the day goes down the drain due to exaustion. I would prefer 5*6h to be honest, especially with remote work. It is very likely that i will do this in the future but right now i do not want to take the loss of money.
I have worked 10 hour days, I was not 25% more productive than I was over an 8 hour day. There is only so much work I can get done during a day. After a while, I get mentally tired and it gets harder to concentrate.
Often, walking away from a problem, getting a night of sleep, and coming back fresh gives me a different perspective and I come up with new solutions.
I took this option. 10/4 is significantly better for me than 8/5, so when I saw the availability in the schedule for that, I took it. Granted, I have a job where working 10 hrs and working 8 hours is a negligible difference, but it's a trade I'd personally make regardless.
Fuck no, I will not budge an inch. Those C Suite motherfuckers stroll on in here for 25 hours a week. Fuck them and fuck the author of this article. I'll burn my workplace to the ground before I compromise for a 4-day work week.
I would demand a 33% pay increase as they are cutting out 33% of your free time days.
Free days* - it's the same amount of free time, but having a whole day free is much different than having extra hours free on a work day.
I've heard that Sweden did a research about 6 hours long work day (not the same thing as less work days I know).
The results were simply that the workers were more happy and more efficient.
People just tune out after a while, and looking busy is not the same as being busy. Management just doesn't want to get that.
They get it, but to them the only good worker is one who is well controlled.
If a work week of thirty two hours would be proved equally productive as one of forty, if most in society would be caused no harm from such a reduction, then workers may begin shortly after to consider a twenty hour work week.
Then, while considered the new objective, workers also may be discovering new opportunities for self care and community care, developing new relationships with hobbies and leisure, and expanding their identities into new facets and in new directions.
After not too much time would pass, a critical mass of workers might start to feel convinced that the whole system is a house of cards, built only on threat and deception, and deserving be dismantled in favor of one that is new and different.
Personally I would much prefer to have a 6h work day or 6,5 hour (for it to be 32h, like the 4-day work week) than to have 8 hours a day for 4 days. I don't care about having one more day of free time if I still don't have as much time during 4 days of the week. I would much rather work less time those 5 days so that I actually have time to cook, exercise and do my shit every single day.
Either is just as good as the other, in the grand scheme.
Just keep taking away cards, one and then another, until the whole house falls.
I work 7h a day, some day soon I will go to 6.5. I would always choose that over a 4 day work week. Because now I have actual evenings where I can do things. 7 days a week.
Exactly I spend more down time at my job then I ever had in my life. Even though my job can't be done at home we literally could be open only 6 hours a day and still make the same amount of money.
This how much free time I have. I have read 32 John Grisham novels in the Last two months that is peepered in with other novels. It's ridiculous the amount of commuting tolls and gas I pay and I might altogether work literally 3 of the 9 hours I am at work.
I work an extremely physical job. I get home on friday, basically become a vegetable, saturday is a blur if I go out an do anything, and I just start to feel rested and like I want to get up and do stuff on sunday. Of course, i have to go to bed early to make my commute the next day. 2 days off is flat out not enough, and I would really prefer to not give up other aspects of my life just to have free time I can actually take advantage of.
This works in Netherlands and a number of other European countries, without cutting pay. We should be able to figure it out. Should.
I smell ya! I used to work 12 hour shifts of manual labor. First day off was always spent with a huge headache. What a waste.
At this point, I think millennials were scapegoated so hard as a generation that some boomers think it's a synonym for young person.
I always thought our inexplicable youth was owed to all the Avocado toast we snarf down instead of buying houses.
Millennials is just the name for the group despised by Boomers, and Boomers is just the name for the group despised by Millennials. Otherwise, either term is completely meaningless.
Five years older than me? Tell me, what was it like working by candlelight to invent electricity with only the warm sound of eight tracks to keep you steady at night? Was Millard Fillmore as awesome as people say? Did you prefer having a coffee with Oscar Wilde or Cleopatra?
Hey, we didn't all know cleopatra. Like you had to be in the right circles to hang out with her.
I will say though that Alexander Graham Bell was an absolute fucking hoot
Why does this sound like it's all made up? lol. I wouldn't do any of those things for shaving off one day. I don't want to just switch miseries.
I also have noticed that I start wanting something extra from life after a few months of 8h/5d/w.
Nowadays I'm looking for my optimal limits. How much can I do work and still consider myself having enough free time?
Despite the popular belief that younger generations are champions of remote work, one-third of Gen Z and millennial workers say they’d be willing to work fully in-person if it meant shaving a day off of their workweek.
How does paying to commute four days a week versus five days fully remote make any sense? It's still 80% of the cost and time of commuting.
Note that this is one third. And there are people who live close enough to their workplace that it wouldn't add much burden.
The problem most people don't mention is you need to rope public school into the same equation or else you're leaving that entire, extremely large, workforce out which involves maintenance, custodians, IT, nurses, useless administration, teachers, etc etc etc.
No one said everybody had to work the same four days. If one custodian works Monday - Thursday and another works Tuesday - Friday, that still covers a full 5 day week. The whole reason for a 4 day work week is that, right now, life is all work all the time. If you work a 9-5 Monday - Friday and you need to go to the doctor, who is only open 9-5 Monday - Friday, the only way to see them is to take time off of work.
There's really no reason for doctors to be closed on weekends. It kinda pisses me off. Just take off tues weds or something
I mean, just saying, I went to a highschool from 2006-2010 that already operated on 4 day weeks. It can be done easy enough.
Fewer hours each week would be better for schools than summer vacation.
The latter is historically based on family farming.
Now children are overburdened most of the year, and idle and bored for the rest.
This is where it sucks for me. I’m an optometrist and I own my own practice. If I work less, then I see less patients and I do, indeed, make less. And I can’t just cram more patients into the day because then I can’t really spend time addressing my patients’ concerns. I’d become like all the other docs who people complain about who barely listen to them and get to spend 5 mins with each patient.
On top of all of this, vision plans have not increased reimbursement in 30+ years… so we have college tuition and CoL that has skyrocketed (I just graduated) and reimbursements are stagnant. So where’s the growth for me profession? Vision plans can be great for you, the patient, but they completely screw over the doc that accepts them in most instances. I’ve come across a lot of docs who simply don’t accept most insurances because they bottleneck our income.
Build class solidarity. Erode the power of insurance companies. Demand reimbursements that cover both your operating expense and personal income. Support other workers. Support every worker. Take down the system.
I think optometry is very slowly headed this way. In the finance group I’m part of I am constantly seeing posts of another OD planning to drop another insurance. It’s hard because there aren’t a lot of really big risk takers in this profession so gaining solidarity of “we refuse to accept this insurance until higher reimbursement negotiations are met” will likely never happen.
Part of the struggle is the older docs who got their entire 8years of college for $20k and then new grads like me paying $250k+ for the same degree. The older docs don’t need to stand up with us younger gens so they don’t. They made their money and just coast now.
The other part is huge corporations owning ALL of it. Luxottica is the reason your eyecare is so expensive. They own the frames, the optical, the lab that cuts your lenses, the products that’s the labs sell, and they own Eyemed (plus multiple others in that umbrella). Private equity and corporations are making optometrists look like fake, cheap docs but our scope of practice is huge. Places like Target optical, lens crafters, Americas best, etc just wants us to be refracting machines (spit out glasses/CL rx constantly) and we barely have time to even assess your health in those exams.
I agree that doctors are unlikely to seek union formation at the current time. I have suggested supporting the working class overall, to help us develop power against the systems that are harmful to us as a class.
Maybe do fewer hours but do them in the evening. Hopefully since people are out of work it becomes easier for them to go, so overall you might have similar numbers.
I have full books for weeks so it’s not a matter of scheduling. It’s a matter of if I work less I make less because that’s one less day every week that I’m seeing less patients. If I’m not seeing patients, I don’t make money