• PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Every time I see any discussion about a 4 day work week, it’s always the same. Discussion is focused around what changes/sacrifices the workers are willing to make to accomplish this. Fuck that noise, nothing should be sacrificed. Your pay shouldn’t change, your leaves shouldn’t change, nothing should change. Fucking capitalist mentality bullshit.

    • charles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      “Studies show productivity increases with 4-day/32h work week”

      “Ok but we’ll only pay for 32 hours.”

      “I literally just said it makes us more productive. Maybe you should pay us for 48 hours”

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Teleworking was possible in the 90s. It took goddamned covid for the stonewall of telework being “impossible to manage” to topple.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yet we still have corporate-backed talking heads doing everything they can to convince us to the contrary, and there’s a significant amount bootlicking morons that lap it up like the pet dogs they are, which ducks it up for the rest of us. “You see Steve? He works 60 hours a week for minimum wage with a smile, you all should be more like Steve,” nevermind Steve has the IQ of a grapefruit and has zero life outside of work.

      • _number8_@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        really sick that at least half of the country hears about 4 day work weeks and starts crunching the numbers for their overlords

        i have to assume it’s pure bitterness. it’s a rite of passage to waste your life from 20-70 and fuck you if it’s any easier for you

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not to mention a complete absence of service/retail voices.

      The only way they could afford that is going to ten hours a day over 4 days- or the company has to increase their hourly wages to compensate.

      But of course no one is actually advocating a 4 day for retail and service. It’s for office workers who want to go shopping on Friday too

      • Matt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I have worked in service/retail, and this argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most service/retail is actually 7-day weeks, but the workers average out to 5-day weeks with rotating shifts etc.

        All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).

        The 4-day week isn’t about office workers, it’s about everyone.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).

          You’re forgetting that retail and most service workers aren’t salaried in the US. They’re paid hourly. And most are living paycheck to paycheck-or very close to it.

          In order for to not loose on pay, either the company has to increase their rates (lol. Not gonna happen,) or they have to work more hours across the four days to make up for the lost day.

          And many retail workers are already do 12’s and 16’s to eek out overtime.

          Edit: To put this another way, OT starts at 40 hrs. Most retail/service managers do everything they can to keep their employees at less than 40/week. OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.

          If you reduce the threshold to 32, that’s still going to be true- on the 5/2 week day-weekend rotation it only helps the weeked- moving hours to them. It doesn’t matter to managment whose working that shift- only that it gets worked.

          So, now, you’ve got an entire sector’s worth (and the largest economic sector at that) of people who are being shorted hours- and we all know that corpos are not going to be increasing wages to match: that would be a 25%increase in wages- and not just for the full time employee. Most large companies will dictate the wages for everyone at a given position.

          Alternatively, they can just pay time and a half for the last 8, which might be only a 10% loss.

          Regardless, retail/service sectors won’t really see any changes. This is probably true because many are working 20+ hours of overtime at low wages anyhow. Those companies have already decided paying adequate wages, and attracting employees is “too expensive”

          • Matt@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Right, the point of the 4 day work week is that it will become the new standard for full time work, rather than the current 5 days.

            So all your points are kind of moot, as they will ideally be addressed through cultural changes, employee expectations, or regulation.

          • PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I think most of us realise that corporations will not do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Doesn’t mean we should just say “Fuck it, never going to happen”. We should demand better.

          • 30mag@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.

            That isn’t necessarily true. Assuming OT is paid out at a time and a half rate, if you have one employee working 50 hours a week at $10 an hour, you would pay $1040 + $1510 = $550 per week, plus the cost of benefits per employee, which is $75 per week. Total: $625

            If you hire an additional employee, each working 25 hours for $10 an hour, you pay $500, but the cost of benefits has doubled to $150. Total: $650

            This is a extremely simple example. I am ignoring the fact that you would probably pay someone new to the job at a lower rate, the associated training costs of hiring an employee, payroll taxes, most businesses employ a higher number of people, does the business do 401K matching, whether these people work on the same shift and probably a hundred other things.

      • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I can’t deny the truth of this, it’s true that only a relatively small group of jobs could realistically implement this. You can’t make a delivery truck go 20% faster, or get 20% more customers in your store at a given time. Many such jobs scale productivity with time by their nature (to some extent). While I absolutely think those workers deserve the same pay for less work at the very least, the reality is that no company will do it. There’s no benefit for them.