Less is more: If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
December 2, 2022 1:57 AM   Subscribe

It's official: The world's biggest 4-day workweek trial proves there's no reason to work five days a week [ungated] - "The pandemic has proven that our modern notions of how the office and our week should look are not as set in stone as we might think, exposing our ideas of what is needed to ensure productivity. Now that we've discovered that work can be done from home just as effectively, the next step is questioning how many working days are actually needed."[1,2]

A hundred UK companies switch to four-day working week with no pay cut - "Supporters of the four-day week say a five-day working week pattern is just a hangover from an old economic age that's no longer necessary."

These companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days - "From the moment the five-day week was adopted as the industry standard, about a century ago, we've been talking about spending less time at work. John Maynard Keynes declared in the early 1930s that technological advancement would bring the work week down to 15 hours within a century. A U.S. Senate subcommittee doubled down on this in 1965, predicting we'd only be working 14 hours by the year 2000."

In Britain, a New Test of an Old Dream: The 4-Day Workweek [ungated] - "The four-day workweek has been a workplace dream for decades. In 1956, then-Vice President Richard Nixon predicted such an arrangement in the 'not too distant future.'"

UK companies are testing out a 4-day workweek. Most have seen no loss in productivity - "Beyond Britain, other parts of the world have started experimenting with a four-day workweek – including pilot programs in New Zealand, Iceland, Canada and the United States. Others have pushed for policy change through legislation. In April, California introduced a bill that would make the official workweek 32 hours for companies with 500 employees or more. The bill was put on hold, and future legislation is uncertain."

Global 4-day week pilot was a huge success, organizers say - "After six months, most of the 33 companies and 903 workers trialing the schedule, with no reduction in pay, are unlikely ever to go back to a standard working week, according to the organizers of the global pilot program."

These executives are asking their staff to work less for the same money. Will it pay off? - "Some of the benefits were unexpected. 'We've all lost a lot of weight ... we were overweight before,' he said. '[The team has] more time to prepare food, [eat] healthily. Lots of people are going to the gym a lot more.' ... Now, people are scrambling to join the company."

The 4-Day Workweek: 4 Compelling New Reasons Your Boss May Be Open to It - "The number of people who reported commuting to work by car decreased from 56.5% pre-trial to 52.5% post-trial and commuting time fell from 3.56 hours per week to 2.59 hours."

33 companies tested a 4-day workweek. None are planning to switch back - "Employees cited improvement in stress, burnout, work-life balance and physical health as reasons they preferred the shorter week."

Want a four-day work week? Show this research to your boss [ungated] - "One low note came around gender: The study found no change in the balance of household tasks, meaning that when men had a free day off, they didn’t do more housework, though they helped a little more on child care."
posted by kliuless (44 comments total) 51 users marked this as a favorite
 
I can see how this could make sense for office workers, but not for anyone who works directly with the public, cashiers and so on. Surely then either the organization has to hire more people or has to reduce its open hours.
posted by one for the books at 3:18 AM on December 2, 2022 [11 favorites]


I came here to say more or less the same thing as one for the books above. If you work in service or hospitality or provide any kind of critical infrastructure this isn't going to happen for you. If you are being paid close to or at minimum wage, and need every work hour you can get. Or if you're working in a chronically understaffed organization. (Or possibly all three of the above.) At least in the economic climate in the United States.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:28 AM on December 2, 2022 [8 favorites]


Surely then either the organization has to hire more people or has to reduce its open hours.

Indeed hire more people to work fewer hours each. Labour productivity has grown significantly in recent decades, and wages have not kept up. This is an ongoing creeping theft from workers.

If we aren't moving toward more leisure-time per person, what is the point of productivity improvement? More billionaires building bigger space-dicks? Fuck that shit. Burn it all*.

*Starting with the space-dick-owners.
posted by pompomtom at 4:09 AM on December 2, 2022 [51 favorites]


Congress "works" about 18 hours a week, most of that fund raising.
posted by nofundy at 4:09 AM on December 2, 2022 [5 favorites]


The implicit but quite clear from the cut quotes part of the four day work week trial is that the employees who switched to a four day week were salaried, not paid an hourly wage, yes.

But if legislation such as the proposed California law described is passed to reduce the official work week to 32 hours, that has positive implications for other workers as well. For full-time waged infrastructure/non-office workers, that would mean their employers would either have to hire more folks, or they would get paid additional overtime. For salaried workers at chronically under-staffed employers, the expanded difference in working conditions between them and better employers would create labor market pressure to hire more staff.

Currently many service industry businesses make a habit of hiring people for weekly hours that range from 10 hours a week to just under the “full time” cutoff for legally being required to provide benefits - a shorter official work week would make the “just under full time” scummy employment practice harder and at least less profitable (though given the number of employers who hire folks for only 10-20 hours per week already, the length of a legal work week would have to come down even more in order to make it less profitable than just paying benefits). Currently a significant proportion of people working for minimum wage in the US have two or more jobs in order to make ends meet already, due to such scheduling practices. So such a change would not make a huge difference for many such folks in the sort of scramble they have to do for survival, but does at least have the potential to help highlight the injustice of the situation by making the inequity between their work reality and that of salaried office workers more stark.

So while technically correct that a switch to a four-day legal work week definition would not directly impact these categories of workers in the short run, it would most certainly be helpful in the long run. (And would help other workers without harming them.)
posted by eviemath at 4:13 AM on December 2, 2022 [16 favorites]


It’s kind of like how it’s not selfish (or whatever employer advocates try to paint it as) for unions to negotiate for better wages and benefits for their employees even though some other workers in similar jobs in other companies are not unionized and thus won’t directly benefit from those increases. It does raise the standard expectations throughout the industry, which puts indirect pressure on the employers whose workforces are not unionized, which historical evidence indicates does lead to improved pay and benefits for non-unionized workers in the same industry (though more slowly and with smaller improvements).
posted by eviemath at 4:21 AM on December 2, 2022 [15 favorites]


if not salaried...hire more people

This. Well before all the remote/productivity/etc arguments European countries had been decreasing the work week for the basic reason that it's actually a 'jobs program'.

If we change the frame from anything having to do with smaller units and focus on the core relationship being between a worker and [whoever] then it's clear that one of the benefits of this is 'sharing' the work more broadly is that more people are part of the economy for the same price.

Of course capital sentiments are anathema to this, but, well, there are other sentiments.

Degrowth is crucial here too. Urgent and necessary. (decoupling is a myth, fight me)
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:22 AM on December 2, 2022 [11 favorites]


Businesses aren't going to hire more workers, especially hourly ones, without regulations forcing them to. They'll do everything they can to find loopholes, pressure employees, bend the rules. This needs to be accompanied by rules about dynamic scheduling, skirting minimum hours for benefits coverage, etc etc etc.
posted by kokaku at 4:30 AM on December 2, 2022 [14 favorites]


As a warehouse worker, I can't see this happening in my industry. You could make a 30 hour week "standard" sure, but you can't have the same productivity out of that as you can from 37.5 hours. It's also effectively already standard to work more than 37.5 a week, and it's not like you get paid overtime for two and a half if you're contacted for 40 a week.

This works for office workers where you actually can get the same work done in less time. In industries and jobs where 24/7 responsiveness is required (such as a lot of logistics) you cannot pay people the same amount for less hours and still get the work done. You'd need to hire more people, so now you're wage bill has gone up, which means it's not happening.

I'm not saying don't do this for office workers - absolutely do this! But it will be of benefit only to people who are already comparatively privileged, not for people in blue collar or service industry minimum wage jobs, sadly. You'd need 25% more staff, so either you're getting paid less (30 waged hours contra 37.5) or the risk wage bill rises by 25%. The entire argument for doing this seems to be that the consequences for the employer is basically nil - you get the same total work out of your staff regardless. Where that doesn't hold true, you just won't convince employers to do it.
posted by Dysk at 4:31 AM on December 2, 2022 [9 favorites]


The argument for starting with office work where the consequences to the employer are essentially nil is that this is the easiest starting point.

The push for an eight hour day was also part of a broader call to re-structure industrial era employment practices/labor relations. Employers who will not be directly affected by some other businesses in a completely different industry switching for a four-day work week lobby very strongly against such pilots and work behind the scenes to sabotage such efforts because they understand that there is a larger picture and a longer end game. Don’t make their efforts easier for them by looking at this whole issue with short term blinders on as a worker. The legally defined work week has quite significant impacts across the board.
posted by eviemath at 4:39 AM on December 2, 2022 [14 favorites]


I was just coming here to post this. Thanks, OP! Apologies if this is a duplicate, but I didn't see it: Four-day week trial confirms working less increases wellbeing and productivity, from The Conversation.
posted by Bella Donna at 5:06 AM on December 2, 2022


Also, what others have suggested. Start with this then expand to other workers. The planet is going to shit, we need to do everything we can to challenge the status quo. Including this.
posted by Bella Donna at 5:08 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


a shortened workweek without a reduction in pay...

This sounds wonderful, but in the longer term what I can see happening is that companies offering a 4 day week will be very popular places to work, so the salaries won't increase as much as other places.
Eventually you will be getting ~4 days pay for 4 days work, which is fine when inflation is not taking chunks out of your monthly budget, but some people will eventually end up taking a second job.
posted by Lanark at 5:27 AM on December 2, 2022


I believe this to be an entirely self-serving suggestion, as one would need an extra day off if one were to read all the links in any given kliuless post.
posted by chavenet at 6:09 AM on December 2, 2022 [26 favorites]


It does raise the standard expectations throughout the industry, which puts indirect pressure on the employers whose workforces are not unionized, which historical evidence indicates does lead to improved pay and benefits for non-unionized workers in the same industry (though more slowly and with smaller improvements).

This is not theoretical, in my lived experience: I grew up in a city focused heavily on one industry, and there were two major manufacturers. (And as if to illustrate it in an almost too-pat fashion, my father worked for one company and his brother for the other of the two.) One company was unionized and one not. The union-based company would often see raises and additional benefits and such and the non-unionized one would follow suit within a few months so as not to lose workers.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:28 AM on December 2, 2022 [11 favorites]


Siri: show me internalized oppression.

Instead of being snarky and insulting to this poster, it might be more helpful to point out why you think their assertion about their own industry is incorrect.
posted by anastasiav at 6:38 AM on December 2, 2022 [9 favorites]


Sometimes I daydream about a sci-fi future where there's not enough work left for everybody to work four days a week. People will make sandwiches for a hobby, even though the nanites make them better.
posted by adept256 at 6:53 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


Slavery was not economically optimal and lots of earst while afficinados of efficiency sometimes point out the counterproducivity of slavery, austerity, burnout, early start times, dangerous work environments etc. They are correct, but they omit an important point.

The people who make decisions about the economy and your life don't need the money or the productivity, they value the control and domination more.

4 day work week is great, it should be supported, but demonstrating that it raises profits alone won't be enough for your overseers to choose it. Most market feedback mechanisms are not strong enough to overcome the non-market values of your owners. See for example useful pocket for clothing, pay for productivity instead of paying employees more for being the in the preferred race, gender and generational cohort, see school times, see paid sick leave, mold in workplaces. Penny wise pound foolish corporations choose what is worse for their workers and their bottom lines all the time. They must be defeated.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 7:40 AM on December 2, 2022 [8 favorites]


It's interesting to see quite a few comments saying: "You'll never get any companies to sign up for this" when the links in the post are literally about companies which have signed up for this.

That doesn't mean it'll be possible or accepted by all companies or industries, and those taking part in the trial were clearly those that were more amenable already. But obviously there are some employers that are interested in doing this, or this post wouldn't be here.

I say this as someone who a few years back had a conversation with a friend who's a senior management consultant and said something like: "Well, as technology continues to make us more efficient, of course all companies will have no choice but to move to a four day week eventually." And I spluttered and scoffed at the very notion that the private sector would use increased productivity to do anything other than line its own pockets while working underlings even harder. I'm as surprised as anyone to see this being adopted even on a small scale. But here it is.
posted by penguin pie at 8:26 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


Frankly, if having a four day work week is a problem hourly employers can't solve then other companies can emerge that can. Capitalism is a brutal mistress and that's supposed to be as true for companies (if not more) than for workers.

Some companies will see labor costs increase, that's their problem to solve. Be innovative corporate America, I'm sure can! And if not, we'll find another one that will!
posted by VTX at 8:46 AM on December 2, 2022


but not for anyone who works directly with the public, cashiers and so on. Surely then either the organization has to hire more people or has to reduce its open hours.

Yeah, this. My office would scream, "But we need to be open if people need help!" even if they don't actually get that many people needing help on Fridays. We can't possibly limit people's options to get their help! Also, everything in my job is an emergency, so.

I don't ever expect this to happen in my lifetime on any major scale.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:55 AM on December 2, 2022


The argument for starting with office work where the consequences to the employer are essentially nil is that this is the easiest starting point.

The argument for starting with office work (and certain kinds of workshop work - I can see a lot of the same arguments applying to e.g. my woodworking friends in their jobs) is that the arguments about getting the same productivity in fewer days/hours actually works at all. It just doesn't apply to a lot of (particularly blue collar and service industry) jobs at all.

I did explicitly say that I was not arguing against the four day week for the situations where it does work. I do think it's worth acknowledging that the benefits will primarily accrue to white collar workers, though. And I don't really see a lot of that necessarily trickling down to those of us in industries where it doesn't really work - if we had a meaningful option of moving into an office job instead, we'd already have done so long ago, for the better pay, better conditions, and the being treated with less utter contempt by employers. There might be meaningful competition for workers between the union shop and the non-union one, meaning that union benefits end up applying to both, but there just is no meaningful competition in the same way between office job employers and e.g. warehousing.
posted by Dysk at 9:05 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


I mean. No labor rights advances ever trickled down; they had to be fought for. But an advance in one field changes the Overton window and opens up possibilities in the fight in all areas.
posted by eviemath at 9:19 AM on December 2, 2022 [13 favorites]


I’m again thinking of the fight for the 8 hour day. That wasn’t fought by clerks and other lower level office workers of the time, it was fought primarily by factory workers and other physical labourers. But it ended up changing work standards more broadly, leading to legislation on the legally defined work week and overtime pay requirements and such, that also benefitted office workers despite their being in a completely different work environment.
posted by eviemath at 9:23 AM on December 2, 2022 [4 favorites]


I mean, the elephant in the room here (in the US) is health care. If companies drop the work week to 32 hours, and you hire more salaried people to cover time, then companies have to pay for health care for more people. Which, good luck with that.

This won't happen in the US until we have socialized medicine. I'm not holding my breath.
posted by nushustu at 9:26 AM on December 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


No labor rights advances ever trickled down; they had to be fought for. But an advance in one field changes the Overton window and opens up possibilities in the fight in all areas.

For sure, my experience in the UK is just that the Overton window shifts don't generalise between industries like that, sadly. Being expected to opt out of the working time directive is also standard in a lot of jobs here, so the legally defined working week changing doesn't necessarily mean much.

I’m again thinking of the fight for the 8 hour day. That wasn’t fought by clerks and other lower level office workers of the time, it was fought primarily by factory workers and other physical labourers. But it ended up changing work standards more broadly, leading to legislation on the legally defined work week and overtime pay requirements and such, that also benefitted office workers despite their being in a completely different work environment.

Thing is, office workers can move into factory work in a way where the reverse isn't true, so office employers do need to worry about matching pay and conditions in factories.

Again, this is not a reason not to go for this! I'm fully in favour of better conditions and a shorter working week for office workers even if it won't benefit me!
posted by Dysk at 9:28 AM on December 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


Being clear or realistic about what the obstacles will be is important in any struggle. I apologize if I was misreading your comments (as with others in this thread) as exhibiting the labor rights equivalent of climate doomerism. I think what led me to that interpretation was the distinction between “this won’t happen” (no solutions possible) and “here are some serious obstacles to this happening” (a realistic starting point for action).
posted by eviemath at 9:33 AM on December 2, 2022


(I think that class stratification at the time made transitions from office work to factory work a bit harder than they are nowadays, but that’s really a side quibble at this point.)
posted by eviemath at 9:34 AM on December 2, 2022


It's just as easy to divide 40 by 4 (work 4 tens) as it is to divide it by 5 (work 5 eights). my field , Dentistry, has been doing it forever. Just the knowledge of 3 days off per week, less commuting, a weekday to get banking and other appointments accomplished, makes for a more satisfied staff. I would suppose that any industry that provides labor in shifts can agree. 5 by 8 is just an old paradigm that applies to almost no industry, full stop.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:40 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


No worries eviemath - I did try to make it clear that I was still fully in favour of benefits and improvements in working conditions even if they don't accrue to everyone, but I also didn't make it massively clear, just put a quick aside in the middle of one or two of my comments. I totally think it can work and is a great idea, I just don't think it'll necessarily generalise that widely. Like, in my last several jobs I have had weekend and/or night work, often without extra pay beyond the normal hourly wage (which was usually minimum wage or a hair above), 12 hour work days, or shift patterns that were completely different every week. None of these things would be remotely acceptable to better paid office workers, but we're still expected to do it. I just don't see why this improvement would be different in that regard. But what reason would I have to oppose better conditions for others?
posted by Dysk at 10:06 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


When I was a factory foreman we had half-day Fridays. This is because a full 40 hour week meant higher pay. There wasn't much point in firing up all the machinery for a few hours so we used this time to prepare for the next week and hit the ground running on Monday. This meant tidying up and preparing what we were going to need. For example, we emptied a lot of boxes during the week and they piled up in a corner. Friday is time to stomp them flat and put them in the recycling bin. Aluminum shavings would pile up around the saws, sweep that up on Friday. We need our materials lined up in the order we're going to need them next week, that's a Friday job.

So I decided that for Fridays there would be no welding, no cutting, no power tools, and definitely no forklift. We're crushing boxes, sweeping the floors, I'm sorting the orders and writing them on the big board for next week. It should be safe enough for us all to do stoned.

I know! Bad foreman! But my workers loved it, I was the best foreman they'd ever had. Fridays became an incentive, I'd tell them if there was any work left on Thursday, we might have to work on Friday. Which meant we weren't going to smoke.

So we worked four days a week, and on the fifth day we got stoned and did non-dangerous odd jobs. I can tell you it worked. We kept up a good pace, then slowed right down into the weekend. Did I tell you the workers loved it? We were all friends, they respected me and when I asked them to work hard they would. They really did work hard too, they moved mountains for me.

I quit to go back to university and finish my degree. They hired my replacement from outside and chill Fridays were over. I know he told one of my guys 'I'm not your mate, I'm your boss' - verbatim quote, and he walked out. Huge mistake, he was one of the people that knew every job in the factory. The best welder there, artist with a forklift, he knew the tools, the process, better than I did. He would have been my pick for foreman, and he walked out of the job.

Anyway! That's my four day work week story.
posted by adept256 at 10:10 AM on December 2, 2022 [42 favorites]


We’re still disagreeing, Dysk, in that while I don’t think office jobs moving to a four day work week will directly impact other industries, I do think it will change overall conditions in a way that will make labor struggles for fair scheduling in other industries a little bit easier. That’s not the same as having no impact.

The current abysmal work schedules in many industries (whether too many hours or too few, or just not enough staff during the given hours) represent a shift from labor standards of the 1950s-1970s. We can shift back in the other direction too. It won’t happen without organized pushes, but we’re talking about society-wide shifts in the relative power of labor versus capital. That does affect everyone, even though it has to start somewhere and that starting point is more localized.
posted by eviemath at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'd love to share your optimism, but I've just seen pay and conditions get continually worse in the sort of jobs I work over the last decade, even as they've gotten better in a lot of other industries. I just don't think a conception that lumps all workers in together as "labour" as a class with shared agency and destiny is useful. My bosses don't have to care what the power balance my engineer or consultant friends and their bosses are, and consequently they don't care. While hours, pay, and conditions have improved for them, forklift jobs for example actually pay less now than they did five years ago, before you adjust for inflation. Shift allowances for night or weekend work are rarer and smaller, and more and more jobs require some of either or both. Work that used to be comfortably above minimum wage is now at minimum wage (partly due to minimum wage going up roughly in line with inflation). Pay inequality has risen - the gap between what I and my white collar friends can expect to earn is bigger than ever. Gains can be and are distributed unevenly, because while we're all workers, we're not fighting against the same bosses. Their victories (and defeats) are not victories (or defeats) for me and my colleagues, and vice versa.

I still celebrate every victory for workers, but I don't believe they generalise like that, and everything I've seen about how the last ten to fifteen years in the UK have gone has done nothing to disabuse me of that notion. Things have improved for a lot of people at the same time as they've gotten worse for others, because we aren't in the same labour market.
posted by Dysk at 10:59 AM on December 2, 2022 [6 favorites]


I am astonished that a country with a smaller economy hasn’t picked this up just as a method to draw talent.
posted by zenon at 11:09 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


or has to reduce its open hours.

And why can't this be a thing? Growing up in the 70s, everything was closed on Sundays. Going to the mall these days post pandemic, everything is still closing at 7 p.m. Half the stores close earlier with a sign saying "closed due to staff shortage." We make do, we adjust if we have to.
posted by Melismata at 11:41 AM on December 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


Speaking from academia, we’re experiencing the same degradation in real, inflation-adjusted wages and in working hours/conditions/amount of work expected. Also increased precarity. That’s been the trend in higher education for some decades now. All the data I’ve seen says that it is an across the board trend in all industries. Some actual improvements in some industries have very recently (like, this year) been won through some very hard fought union struggles among largely service industry workers in the US, eg. through the Fight for $15 campaign, or the UFW - but those have definitely been the exceptions so far. But on the other hand, they have made advances - through organized collective and militant action - and it has changed the conversation so that even other industries in North America are taking notice and getting worried. Eg. while legislative changes favouring workers have been relatively small so far, that’s still a real turn-around from before the successes of those workers’ efforts where the legislative situation was an ongoing anti-worker onslaught. Instead, teachers in Ontario this fall defied a provincial back to work order and got the Ford government there to back down and make concessions. They were successful due to a community organizing model that connected their struggle with housing struggles with labor struggles in other industries that were major employers in their communities, and that wouldn’t have happened without cultural shifts in support for labor in general, which have been due in part to the major, high profile campaigns in the US over the past decade that are also just finally winning gains.
posted by eviemath at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2022


I just don't think the dynamics are the same where you are and where I am, then. Academia has been getting worse here too, and consequently academia has been losing a lot of talent to the private sector where wages and conditions have been improving. There are few conversations about across-the-board legislative changes because the people with meaningful political influence and agency have been seeing their lot improve, at least until very recently, and even now they're being shielded from the worst impacts on a way that just isn't true at the lower end. Your analysis might well apply 100% to the US, but I don't think it does to the UK, which may be the source of our disagreement?
posted by Dysk at 12:12 PM on December 2, 2022


And why can't this be a thing? Growing up in the 70s, everything was closed on Sundays. Going to the mall these days post pandemic, everything is still closing at 7 p.m. Half the stores close earlier with a sign saying "closed due to staff shortage." We make do, we adjust if we have to.

Give it a year or two and see how many of those closed-earlier business are still around. They do lose business to the ones that are open.

Instead, teachers in Ontario this fall defied a provincial back to work order and got the Ford government there to back down and make concessions. They were successful due to a community organizing model that connected their struggle with housing struggles with labor struggles in other industries that were major employers in their communities, and that wouldn’t have happened without cultural shifts in support for labor in general, which have been due in part to the major, high profile campaigns in the US over the past decade that are also just finally winning gains.

While I agree with some of this thinking, it was not teachers, it was CUPE - educational assistants, secretaries, janitors, to put it starkly. Mostly hourly workers, a lot of them making only a few bucks over minimum even after years of experience. Pink- and blue-collar work.

Teachers would have been unlikely to get the same support because the perception is that they are well-paid.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:02 PM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


My husband's company has been doing Friday afternoons off as a recharge time and it has made a significant improvement in our lives. Unfortunately for us, they've been bought (privatized, which is good on some levels because it got them away from investors who wanted to wring more money out of the company for themselves) and as a part of the reorganization that goes with the privatization, they're giving up Friday afternoons and going back to the previous scheme of one day off a quarter.

(Data point: the company was founded in Denmark. The buyout was US-based VCs; not sure where all the money is coming from.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 4:31 PM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm sure my management has been working four-day weeks for over a decade.
posted by meowzilla at 12:57 PM on December 3, 2022 [4 favorites]


Congress "works" about 18 hours a week, most of that fund raising

That may be the case for some, but there are a lot of people who work for congress besides those who get elected, and most of them seem to work pretty hard.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:23 PM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


The 4-day week: does it actually work? [ungated] - "Platten's is one of 70 companies, encompassing 3,300 employees, who signed up to the UK trial of the four-day week, running from June to December 6. It is spearheaded by 4 Day Week Global, a non-profit organisation founded by Andrew Barnes, a New Zealand entrepreneur who implemented a four-day week in his own financial services company Perpetual Guardian, after a trial in 2018."
Advocates for the four-day week point out that unlike a season or a day, there is nothing natural about the working week. The two-day weekend — dispensing with working on Saturday morning — did not take off in the UK until after the second world war, quashing arguments that too much leisure time could spur political activism among the working classes.

If the trial prompts widespread take-up of a four-day week, advocates say wider societal benefits could include increased gender equality, improved wellbeing, as well as a reduction in workers’ carbon footprint...

At Platten’s, the fish and chip shop, staff were handed cards at the start of their shifts setting out the priority tasks so that they could hit the ground running.

There was initial “scepticism” when Platten’s asked staff to keep a daily diary to gauge the productivity baseline for a standard working week and find efficiencies, says owner Luke Platten. Some employees resented the scrutiny of their working day, causing one to quit. “Building a culture of trust and being really open and honest . . . is something that just takes time and a lot of reassurance,” Platten adds...

Platten’s found it impractical to measure the speed of cooking or service, and was reluctant to use revenues as an indicator of success due to changes in the business. Instead, it focused on a number of indicators, including customer satisfaction and unauthorised absence, one sign of stress. That fell “through the floor”, says Platten, noting a 74 per cent increase in staff retention and seasonal workers wanting to return. Participation in voluntary training went up from 76 per cent to 94 per cent.
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]


I can see how this could make sense for office workers, but not for anyone who works directly with the public, cashiers and so on. Surely then either the organization has to hire more people or has to reduce its open hours.

There are companies who already do exactly this (hire more people), and for exactly the same reason (to keep everyone on a four-day-a-week schedule).

The only difference is, they do it to cut down on the number of "full-time employees" they have so they can save on health insurance and other benefits.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:57 PM on December 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


An excellent point, if they can do this to save on health benefits, then they can do this to save on paying overtime.

We could deploy a 3-4 day work week easiest for jobs for which we know how to train people, including most services, hospitality, etc. It's really harder for jobs with more ratified skill sets, but if more people have better work-life balance then those employees would balance their own lives better too.

It's clear 3-4 day work weeks make sense right now. It already made sense 100 year ago really.

As for the future..

We'll need tariffs that unwind globalization for many many reasons anyways, which helps avoid some effects of competing with poorer working conditions elsewhere, but maybe cuts "productivity" slightly too.

It's likely peak oil undoes far more of our staggering productivity gains. We'll still have incredible technologies, and power sources like solar, wind, nuclear, so really our productivity should stay much higher than 100 years ago.

As for the past..

We must ask, what did humanity waste all its productivity gains upon over the last 200 years?

We spent some productivity gains growing and maintaining our excessive population of course, which adds social control jobs, like legal systems, advertising, etc., but I doubt this flushed all our our productivity.

It's true capitalists can hoover up enormous amounts of funny money, but funny money was never really the same thing as productivity. We've only started the space-dicks quests recently, but capitalists have always done some stupid things, but how much resources and time did they really waste?

At least in part average people spent our productivity gains maintaining a more complex social pecking order, so exactly what we bitch about the rich doing, but across far more strata of society.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:03 PM on December 7, 2022


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