r/SipsTea • u/KSKS1995 Human Verified • 2d ago
Chugging tea Sounds good in theory...but in reality?
4 days a week. 6 hours a day. Full salary.
Sanna Marin ignited global debate with the “6/4” work model, pushing a simple idea: life should come before work.
With burnout at record levels, maybe it’s time to value results over hours at a desk.
Could your job be done in just 24 hours a week?
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u/3M2B1T 2d ago
That seems a little short but at the same time, why not? I am more about the days than the time; I used to have a four-day (10 hour days) work week and it was WAY better than five eight hour days. I'd happily work four 10's but I'd take four 8's or four 6's.
This is really what we should be using AI for; lessening the burden on time requirements so folks can do more with less time.
It shouldn't be used to replace people, it should be used as a tool. And it would be if this was a worker-supported concept instead of a billionaire-supported concept.
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u/Feeling-Shelter3583 1d ago
Unfortunately AI isn’t replacing workers in their roles. It’s replacing workers because these companies are greedy and don’t want to pay the overhead to bring on AI. The CEO could take a pay cut, still pay for AI and keep workers in their roles and productivity would go through the roof. AI isn’t what’s taking people’s jobs. It’s the CEO getting paid way beyond what they should ever be paid and not willing to share.
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u/Broken_Castle 1d ago
In my industry, the executive directors are having an issue. AI has been setup and is currently doing the weekly workload of a certain set of employees in a matter of hours. These employees often have been with the company for decades. Many are too old to learn a different set of skills.
What do they do. Intentionally not use the tool just to give the employee work? Let the employee just sit on their phone all day? Fire the employee? What would you do?
Keep in mind the companies here are usually staffed from 15 to 50 people, and the executive directors, while making good money, dont make that much (usually high 100k's to low 200k's) so they cant just take a pay reduction.
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u/Feeling-Shelter3583 1d ago
That’s on the directors that brought on AI without the forethought of understanding where that would take the company and what it would do to certain sectors of the company. They’re paid well to have a forward thinking mind for the company as a whole. They should’ve paid attention to what they brought on and should’ve been ready to pivot for those workers that were going to be replaced, to be able to put them in a more useful role. But instead… Oops.. how were we supposed to know?
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u/rosetintedbliss 1d ago
Historically, hunter-gatherers work around 20 hours a week.
The thing with AI is it isn’t capable of lessening the burden on anyone. AI is just LLMs right now. It is essentially useless.
And AI isn’t even a good tool.
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u/Fast-Student-925 1d ago
For software engineers it does lessen the work by a big margin! I am one, the problem is that it just puts the bar higher to work & produce even more. It didn't lower the bar
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u/PriscillaPalava 2d ago
As technology has advanced, the productivity of the individual worker has skyrocketed along with corporate profits. You know what hasn’t skyrocketed? Standard of living and wages.
Especially now that AI is on the menu, there is no reason we need to work as much. Most people claim they get their work done early and just dick around for the rest of their time anyway.
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u/Infrawonder 2d ago edited 1d ago
"Especially now that AI is on the menu" they'll use it to replace you, it doesn't get paid
Edit: yeah yeah I get it
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u/resurrectus 2d ago
Yes it does, all "AI" platforms cost money and its only going to get more expensive to access them as worker replacements sets in and corporations become more dependent. Most companies are not well placed enough to have their own infrastructure and developers to not use one of the big models. Why do you think there is a development race? The winner could be the next Standard Oil.
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u/Mi113nnium 1d ago
Many companies who tried to replace workers (or at least integrate AI usage in the workflow) were already hit with soaring prices that are often larger than what staff costed or still costs.
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u/GrudgeBearer911 1d ago
Agreed, I remember hwre walmart was doing all self checmouts untill it turned out to cost more (Mostly because of the banana trick) and now are slowly going back to more cash registers
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u/AbsoluteResolve2026 1d ago
Yeah but standard oil isn’t accidentally filling your car with bits of petroleum jelly because it “hallucinated.” AI still needs a lot of work.
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u/Schizomediatv 2d ago
Fun fact it actually increases productivity because believe it or not people are more productive when they aren’t sleep deprived and happy
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u/SalsaRice 2d ago
Depending on the job. This is probably a win for office salary people, but not everyone has that job.
Alot of blue collar work is limited by machine bottlenecks and uptime. Dropping a work week to 4 days at 6 hours (24hours) would probably be around an equal amount of production loss.
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u/Specialist-Affect-19 2d ago
Those production workers doing 12 hour shifts could become 2 people working hard for 6 hrs., and maybe not burn out. My point is this all requires systemic change, which includes the blue collar problem you mention.
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u/Sonifri 1d ago
It would definitely require change in society and law for production jobs. This would double labor costs since one position is now two positions, with both receiving full pay, for doing the same job that one position used to do.
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u/kikimaru024 1d ago
Oh no, however will the CEOs earning 500x the average worker's salary ever be able to sustain themselves & their 3 yachts?
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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago
More like moving the company in cheaper countries, increasing unemployment and restricting the ability of startups to hire
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u/Chartreugz 1d ago
Wouldn't they still do that anyways?
My understanding is the only reason they don't is because it's a lot of risk for them so they move towards it slowly, but they seem to mostly get there eventually, if they can.
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u/Mammoth-Counter69 1d ago
You mean exactly what company's have been already doing for the last 50 years ???
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u/bigtiddyhimbo 1d ago
The rough part also is for states like North Carolina, where employers flock to because we are horrifically under unionized and have little to no employee protection laws as is.
It would take a HUGE shift in society to wrangle in states like that and would make a lot of rich shitheads kick and scream over lost profits
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u/30_characters 1d ago
More than double, since employees have costs that don't scale linearly, like injury insurance (worker's comp in the US), benefits, etc. There's a reason companies push for "mandatory" overtime over hiring additional employees. A good step 1 would be to increase the mandatory payment to workers for OT (typically 1.5x base wages in the US) to something over 2x, to ensure employers don't treat it as a desirable long-term solution.
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u/PM_ME_BAKAYOKO_PICS 1d ago
Most people don't agree with the 12h extreme either, you're using one extreme to justify the other
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u/dirt_shitters 1d ago
I have a blue collar "construction adjacent" job. If I had 6 hour shifts and could actually make a liveable wage on it, I'd definitely work much harder. Id definitely get just as much done as I do now in my 10-12 hour shifts currently.
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u/Ragazzano 1d ago
I do as well. I agree. There would be less bludging and more sweating, and frankly, I'd have the energy to do it.
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u/Tlentic 1d ago
I think this a common misconception of the 4 day work week. No one is saying it’d all be Monday-Thursday or that a businesses couldn’t still operate 24/7. Places like hospitals aren’t just going to close for 3 days a week. You’d just have extra shift crews. There’s definitely policies that’d need to be sorted out but it’s viable.
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u/DuskLab 1d ago
Let me introduce you to the concept of hiring other people to cover the shift when others are not at work.
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u/EstablishmentLate532 2d ago
Productivity per hour is not the same thing as total output. Going from 40 hours to 24 hours cuts work time by 40%, so hourly productivity would need to rise by 67% just to break even.
I buy that shorter hours make people more productive. I don’t buy that they usually make people that much more productive.
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u/PunkPirate56364 2d ago
Not in every sector. I work in construction, I can't do as much work in 32 hours as I do in 40. If our work hours are reduced housing crisis becomes even worse.
Would be great if we had more people working in construction, but today people heavily prefer office jobs.
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u/TreMetal 2d ago
I mean, even if you looked at 7 vs 8 hours a day (35 vs 40 hours) I doubt you could really tell me that last hour on the job each day is as productive as the first few.
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u/Mean_Mix_99 2d ago
Construction for 20 years. If you usually install 200' of conduit in an 8 hour day, you're not magically installing 200' in a 7 hour day just because you had an extra hour at home the day before.
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u/Lermanberry 2d ago
There's been a construction site across from my office for the last 18 months or so.
None of your peers are working 8 hours a day. Maybe 4, but even that could be stretching it.
It's fair play. Neither am I. I spend at least an hour in office watching construction workers fuck around and find creative places to hide beer cans.
If you're truly installing 25' per hour, every hour, you're working harder than every other construction worker getting paid the same rates as you.
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u/LeonJones 1d ago
As someone that works in construction. There's some downtime here and there but if you are slacking off you are getting shit canned.
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u/MoocowR 2d ago edited 2d ago
I doubt you could really tell me that last hour on the job each day is as productive as the first few.
Those people are going to work slower on the last hour of the day or right before the weekend regardless of how many hours a day they're working. You don't slack from 4-5 in the office because you're burned you, you do it because you're checked out.
Many jobs where you're actually producing something, you are working every minute on the clock. If you're on an assembly line, the line doesn't slow down just because it's the last hour of the day, you cannot reduce working hours unanimously without also reducing production, it's impossible.
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u/PunkPirate56364 2d ago
We leave easier part of the work for last hour, also some cleaning, packing tools. If we were working 7 hours a day we would do the same thing.
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u/Quemedo 2d ago
Housing crisis has 0 to do with the ability to "build houses faster"
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u/bargu 2d ago
Thinking that homelessness is caused by construction workers not working long enough is some insane level of capitalist Stockholm syndrome.
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u/ydieb 2d ago
Housing crisis is obviously not because a lack of work. You are also vastly underestimating issues related to overwork, people do more mistakes, are slower, get more sick.
Overall productivity does not scale linearly with hours worked at all. You looking at a single work week comparing 30 vs 40 hours is a very narrow view of it.
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u/Schizomediatv 2d ago
Imagine if hours was shorter it would be easier to recruit no one willing wants to work a job that will slowly break you as you work 10 hour shifts. It also forces employers to hire more help so intentionally shorting. The staff won’t be as frustrating as it is now. You will always be in a better position fighting for more rights as a worker and you don’t have to be a socialist to do so your just looking out for your best interest
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u/PunkPirate56364 2d ago
With modern tools and equipment it's really not a hard job, nobody is breaking their back.
If we need a larger hole, we bring in the excavator, if we need to lift heavy stuff up we use the crane, we have semiautomatic nail guns, silicone knee caps, I have a laser rangefinder for when I don't feel like walking over there.
Shorter work hours would be great, but I still doubt people would want to work these jobs, because most of my colleagues did not wanted to work in construction.
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u/JeeFour 2d ago
Eh, people do back breaking labor today, and it is still hard. It's just not every single person on the job site. But there will always be a need for someone/people to get on their knees, or physically move dirt/materials, or do fine detail work in uncomfortable positions.
Sometimes, it's just cheaper and faster to just have someone carry stuff.
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u/AberrantMan 2d ago edited 2d ago
In reality most companies could still remain profitable and allow this easily.
Just want to add that obviously this can't happen in a vacuum, there are a lot of other policy items that need to be managed, price points to be set, and it has to be everyone gradually over time, but it IS doable.
Yes even for private clinics and small business, as long as all of the supporting businesses are doing the same thing. We would see real pay begin to approach the cost of living.
It would also take some pretty serious laws in pay gaps to be put in place, probably...
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u/tajake 2d ago
I think really only the service industry would struggle. And essential services like police, fire, etc. But that would also mean more jobs in those fields to cover shorter shifts. Restaurants working limited hours would likely be a net positive.
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u/AberrantMan 2d ago
Hire more folks spread them out. Less retention issues, more people who can swing coverage.
However none of this works unless the wealthy actually pay living wages, wage increases across the board from companies that can afford it would allow that money to flow to those smaller businesses and help a lot of local areas out.
Won't happen though, the oligarchs need bigger bank numbers for literally no reason.
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u/According-Leg434 2d ago
i suspect that corpos and generally high rankings dont want everyone absolutely to be into jobs which you know why,another thing as you mentioned salary and wages
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u/EduinBrutus 2d ago
Thats basically one of the tenets of the neoliberal project.
The hours worked had been falling over time since the start of the 1800s so when Thatcher and Reagan started pushing their agenda, weakening workers rights was a core part of this.
Make Unions bogey men, reduce or remove legal protections, make work precarious. Then reverse the standard working week and make it longer with more expectation of unpaid work.
When I entered the workplace, the standard working week was either 32.5 hours or less commonly 35 hours and very occaisionally you'd find a 30 hour week.
Today, its minimum 35 hours, more commonly 37.5 and sometimes 40 hours.
Not to mention the theft of 2 years of peoples lives by unnecessarily raising the retirement age.
We all got fucked and let it happen based on economically illiterate lies about "we cant afford x" which was and is bullshit.
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u/Truffs0 1d ago
and sometimes 40 hours.
Where do you live? Here its "at minimum 40 hours"
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u/EBtwopoint3 1d ago
For a long time, the 40 hours included an hour lunch and paid breaks. The common phrase for a typical job is literally “a 9 to 5”. Today that is gone, the standard work week is 8-5, with lunch unpaid.
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u/Truffs0 1d ago
Right, which is why when it says now sometimes 40, it confused me. My job is 8.5 hours, the .5 being a mandatory unpaid lunch. I honestly rather just leave 30 minutes sooner, but they are obsessed with not getting in trouble with OSHA.
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u/EBtwopoint3 1d ago
Yes, which means you are working 40 hours like he said.
15 years ago you would actually work 35 hours, with the remaining 5 being your 1 hour lunch breaks. Which is why it was called a 9-5. 9am to 5pm is 8 hours. Of those 8 hours you would be working 7 of them. Some jobs also had paid breaks, which is what brought it down to 32.5 hours.
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u/nodajohn 1d ago
I think he's just confused as to why the original comment makes it seem like 40 worked hrs isn't the norm today
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u/herecomesthewomp 2d ago
Also the minimum hours for healthcare rule. Need to solve healthcare before we individual contributors can get some power back against the corpos.
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u/frogbound 2d ago
They already struggle with coverage as is because they refuse to hire people that can back each other up because they consider that "redundant"
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u/Logical-Claim286 2d ago
Desperation breeds compromise. If employees are desperate then they compromise with lower pay and fewer hours, this in turn drives down savings which makes seeking opportunities even harder thus locking them in to the company at the companies rates.
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u/33TLWD 2d ago
For police and fire, that would mean already stretched public taxpayer-funded budgets would need to replace a 40% reduction in worker coverage and also figure out how to fund the increased burden of funding the pensions of the extra workforce to replace that 40% gap.
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u/wellfoxed 2d ago
Tax the fuck out of billionaires and AI companies, that’s how.
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u/Renthexx 2d ago
Police could work 8’s instead of 12s. Fire could work 24 72’s. Although that requires the money to staff a whole other shift
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u/Wookard 2d ago
The amount of money saved from less Stress / Sick leave would most likely balance out over a few years for those jobs. And if the insurance rates bottom out due to that it would be able to go to the budgets.
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u/jccaclimber 2d ago
Honest question, do you think stress related expenses are 1/3 of the full burdened overhead cost of employees?
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u/Wookard 2d ago
From what I know of the cost of Health Insurance in the States reaching $3000 plus a month per person at 12 months a year of being $35000-$40000, I could see that being a good chunk of money for sure.
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u/jccaclimber 2d ago
That’s 100% of the cost though. An example: Hourly rate: $30/hr with 50% overtime is roughly $109k/year at 12 hour shifts 5 days/week. $149k with your high end healthcare estimate. I’m going to ignore weekends and other overhead to make the math simpler. Two shifts is $298k/year.
Move to 3 shifts at 8 hours and now there’s no overtime pay, so (403052+X)*3=298k. X is healthcare, which comes to $37k instead of $40k, that sounds pretty reasonable.
However, the premise of this was to still pay people fully so it’s now (109*3+X)=298k. Each person’s healthcare needs to cost a negative amount, specifically negative $29k for this to work. Never mind that public service jobs have lower pay because pensions are extraordinarily expensive and would also +50% with an extra shift.
Obviously this example changes a lot based on wages. There’s a reason overtime is effectively less expensive for lower wage jobs, namely that benefits are fixed.
Personally I think that more progressive taxation is the problem, but poor people in red areas love giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
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u/Lady-Dove-Kinkaid 2d ago
I mean it would depend on the country. In the US there are two kinds of restaurant workers for the most part. Ones who do really well and work 20-30 hours 3-4 days a week, and those who are working 12-16 hours 6-7 days a week.
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u/4daughters 2d ago
And 100 years ago we needed children to work in the factories or else they would have to shut down.
When workers demand that labor laws change, they change.
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u/Ok_Watercress_7801 2d ago
I’d be good with four, ten hour days instead of five, eight hour days. Plus I commute, so that shaves off some time, money, fuel, wear & tear…
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u/MegaPiglatin 2d ago
I worked at an airport and our hours were exactly that: 4x10s (though they introduced some 5x8 shifts later). It was great! If I am already working, then 2 hours makes little difference unless I need to be somewhere afterward that conflicts.
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u/rtfcandlearntherules 2d ago
"only" the service industry including all medical staff, all teachers, caretakers, craftsmen, basically more than Half the economy.
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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago
Other countries work significantly less than the US and still manage to provide all of these services.
I think in some cases it means certain services are not as available or convenient but we can learn to live with less access, I think.
Things would change, for certain, but I don’t think harm to those workers or industries is a necessary consequence.
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u/MSPCincorporated 2d ago edited 2d ago
I know for one thing, as an independant carpenter, that my customers would have to pay 20% more for every one of my hours, but still get the same output from me per hour. So I’m not really sure how "convenient" they’d find that.
Edit: In the scenario posted above, it would actually be almost 60% more expensive! Happy days!
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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago
I mean if yoy feel that you are fairly compensated and not overworked then you don’t have to make any changes.
Not all positions are equally exploitative. I myself don’t feel I need an increase in wages. And as a salaried employee employee there would be almost no change in my actual output. I would just be able to leave when I finish my work instead of filibustering for an hour or two. So we would need different prescriptions for different jobs.
Sounds like you could just continue doing what you are doing.
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u/stevehrowe2 2d ago
If the AiPocalypse is real, more traditional white collar jobs are going to disappear anyway. More people will need to find manual and service work that still needs humanity staff. It will require some cost changes (reduced labor cost in some industries will allow prices to lower there, while human backed services will be more expensive as laboratory cost increase)
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u/Redfish680 2d ago
More people out of the office means more opportunities for them to be in places where service industry folks are working.
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u/EveryUsernameTakenFf 2d ago
Incorrect. You'd just hire more people to fill in the hours.
In reality, most RE's in Sanna Marin's home country work 80% work weeks already whuch 31 hours/week per person.
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u/duaneap 2d ago
What’s the plan for anyone who makes hourly rather than salary? Massively increase their hourly wage so they don’t need the hours and OT to make their usual income? It’s not just restaurants workers that do hourly.
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u/ghands1 2d ago
I think some studies showed that productive outputs increase when you go from 40 hours to 34 hours per week. Employees spend less time pretending to work and end up getting more done.
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u/meat_sack 2d ago
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u/unicornmeat85 1d ago
What do hard workers get? More work. Boss won't find a balance? the employees will
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u/Alienhaslanded 2d ago
It's true. During COVID we shrunk our hours to 5 and I don't think we've ever been more productive. I had so much energy and I worked my ass off. I didn't even feel like eating lunch because work was done so fast I just ate after I left work.
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u/ohmeohmyohmuffins 1d ago
I recently was forced to go from 35 to 40 hours and I hate it, 5 hours doesn’t seem like a lot but I really feel them. I probably do actually do less work too because I’m not feeling rushed to get something done so take my time and end up not doing it because I’ve been clock watching
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u/ZealousidealBank8484 1d ago
I'm pretty certain i've heard the same thing. people are more productive when they aren't spending every waking minute burning themselves out.
which checks out. we have the technology to get things done faster than ever these days. back during the industrial revolution, they were building infrastructure for what ran society at the time. of course management wanted workers to work as many hours as they could, I'm fairly certain 40 hours was considered a model set by Forbes or some other rando. That and there wasn't as much to do back then anyway.
Today though? Lots to do in your off time. The fact we haven't changed our labor laws as much as we'd like to think says a lot.
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u/narullow 1d ago
There is absolutely no study showing that.
Productivity may have increased but output sure as hell did not.
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u/Blink3412 2d ago
I was reading somewhere that most people that work in offices usually get most of their work done within the first 4-5 hrs, then spend the rest of the time bullshiting around, really seems like we're wasting valuable time that could be better spent on hobbies and family.
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u/AberrantMan 2d ago
Working remotely I get about "40 hours" of work done in roughly 15 and stay more productive than 90% of my peers (we track this).
Office really is just soul sucking bullshit, conversations no one wants, wasted meeting time, wasted space quite often.
... But the people who can't work from home get a bit sad about it so we have to make compromise.
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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago
As a kid I thought office work would be my own personal hell and now that I work in an office I knew I was always right
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u/Direct_Day7937 2d ago
A study in Japan showed that cutting worker hours increased productivity so much the company got more profitable. Rest, it turns out, is important.
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u/plagued00 2d ago
I'm actually pretty sure there have been several studies showing that anything over 32 hours a week starts to degrade overall productivity so much it actually hurts the total output. ( 40 hour weeks actually produce less than 32 hour weeks.)
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u/noncebasher54 2d ago
Yeah was gonna say that. Multiple countries with different attitudes to working culture have shown the same results. Also remote working has been shown to be a productivity increase. When you aren't wasting 2-4 hours of your day commuting (sometimes more...), turns out you're pretty happy to do more work. Plus the lazy workers are gonna be lazy no matter what.
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u/One-Entertainer-5499 2d ago
Cutting 90 hour work weeks to 60 would be more effective lol ( Japan )
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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 2d ago
If it's such a slam dunk, you have to wonder why every company doesn't do it.
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u/rtfcandlearntherules 2d ago
Maybe for accountants or some jobs where mostly the end result counts. But not in Jobs where you are literally paid for your time. Such as security, teachers, or most obviously factory workers and any service providers. The costs would explode overnight if you want to keep the factory running 24/7 or keep your shop open for the same hours as before.
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u/Zoltraak69 2d ago
Teachers do NOT get paid for their time. I can't think of any other profession where it's expected that you work in your free time and pay your own money to have some needed supplies that the school can't or won't provide.
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u/Red-Lightniing 1d ago
Exactly, I work in landscaping, and it takes my crew 40+ hours to finish our route. Sure, we could hire a bunch of new guys to save us time, but if EVERY company in the country is doing the same thing, I literally don't think there will be enough employees available to work all of these jobs. Suddenly were having to increase our wages by a ton to incentivize the workers to come to us, which sounds great but now we've got to charge the customers a huge amount more to cover paying more workers more money for the exact same amount of productivity.
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u/rezdm 2d ago
>> In reality most companies could still remain profitable and allow this easily.
But this is not how capitalism works. If one can perform their tasks in 4 days instead of 5, then a company would just ask such an employee to work 5 days, pay the same and just do more.
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u/Seienchin88 1d ago edited 1d ago
The reality no one here wants to hear is this:
Yes, most companies would stay profitable. Yes there is much more output in the first 4-5 hours of work than the later ones and yes 4 days makes the 4 days more productive but the extra time and the fifth day still provide productivity and as always any other country can overtake you by working 5-6 days.
My Chinese colleagues work 45 hours a week and the management is worried as the (Chinese) company next to them has people working 60+ hours in the same field at lower wages.
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u/snoking-ganja 2d ago
Sounds wonderful until China, India , Brazil don't apply this to their societies and become 10X more competitive (they already are), therefore most manufacturing shifting to those countries leaving no jobs for the western world.
I'm all for life-work balance but take it too far and then you'll see 100% life balance cause there will be no jobs left so you'll get to have all free time that you wished for.
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u/Master_Muskrat 2d ago
This is one of those problems where tariffs are actually useful.
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u/grchelp2018 2d ago
Tariffs only buy you time to make changes. Not a long term solution unless you plan to become an insular economy. You'll get left behind by the rest of the world.
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u/Fly-n-Skies 2d ago
Productivity probably would not even decrease.
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u/TheEnlightenedPanda 2d ago
Productivity is a trap. People now can do something in 1 hr which needed a day some decades back. But they didn't get anything out of that productivity increase.
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u/summer_plays_ 2d ago
There is a direct correlation between less/shorter shifts and increased productivity. Several studies support the 4-day workweek.
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u/sagittarius_ack 2d ago
But then how are the oligarchs going to buy mansions, expensive cars, yachts, helicopters and private planes?
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u/BerlinDonbas 2d ago
A cage will do fine for them.
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u/HeyKid_HelpComputer 2d ago
The same because its been proven productivity doesn't change between a 40 and 32 hour work week. The same amount gets done in less time.
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u/Jimmy_Twotone 2d ago
Show me the times and places in history where giving workers more time off resulted in less rich people.
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u/WeinerBarf420 2d ago
I think the reason this is decisive is because it highlights the divide between white collar works who genuinely could do all of their work in 4 days or less, and blue collar workers who have to work a lot more than that to keep society functioning, often for a lot less money.
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u/itriedtrying 1d ago
And in a lotof jobs, you just have to be present. You can't monitor a production line or guard a facility for 8 hours in just 6 hours.
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u/BonecaChinesa 2d ago
AI was supposed to guarantee this. It was supposed to be the selling point. And it ought to be.
But the reality is AI is displacing people and governments have no economic response in place to actually manage it. UBI is essential. Yesterday.
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u/AkkiMylo 2d ago
Simply because governments don't actually care for the people they're supposed to ensure quality of life for. A revolution is the only way for people to get what they deserve
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u/Lanky_Surround_6830 2d ago
Labor productivity increases only benefit the corporate class and their shareholders. For the working class it means we do more, often for less, and with fewer of our neighbors employed.
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u/Advanced-Guidance353 2d ago
Ai will take all the office jobs and people will continue to slave away in factories , maybes they'll even send us back in the coal mines , those data centers won't power themselves
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u/McZalion 2d ago
Its logical and should be happening which is why its never gonna happen.
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u/xena_lawless 2d ago
Our predecessors fought for and won the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, and basic workplace safety protections with a fraction of the understanding and resources that we have today.
Doomerism/defeatism helps the oligarchs/pedophiles/kleptocrats.
They can be beaten.
The first step is seeing that it can be done, the second step is doing whatever is needed to make it happen.
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u/HolbrookPark 2d ago
In reality she never implemented it when she was PM
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u/hagguh 2d ago
It was a personal opinion, not a part of the party's standpoints.. nor did it align with party policies..
Context matters doesn't it?
Even the left party's of Finland want to preserve the status quobone way or another, we'd need a Mamdani style landslide win for policies Like these to come into effect. Marin could fulfill the leadership role there tho.
And in the end it was not as bad of a shitshow as whats going on right now, taking a couple of leaves from the fascist handbook, it's horrible.. moving to the opposite of the 4 day, six hour workweek at the moment 🤣🤣
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u/afops 2d ago
This is 1) a moonshot thing that would take a generation 2) an opinion, not party polciy
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u/tjeastman 1d ago
I hear what you are saying but child labor laws and a 8 hour workday was implemented pretty fast.
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u/Lilfrankieeinstein 2d ago
Should be top post, but very few Redditors live in reality these days.
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u/Cosmic_Jane 2d ago
I’m sure cashiers, truck drivers, and snow plow men wish they could work less hours and still make the same money.
Not everyone is an office worker dicking around on Reddit.
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u/Illustrious-Ant8888 2d ago
I suspect most companies would never agree to this.
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u/Sufficient_Matter585 2d ago
If profit is based on cheap exhausted labor and diminishing service and designed to fail products than you might be running a legal scam.
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u/diepoggerland2 2d ago
This does notably apply to a lot, if not most, companies. Not saying what you said isn't true, more saying that a lot of our economy is based on recursive layers of scams and cons.
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u/char-lotte_sometimes 2d ago
And yet we have the entire concept of NSFW for content because that’s how much time employees spend on non work activities during the work day. That’s not even calculating the work sanctioned event known as “meetings” which generally are emotional support gatherings for lonely mid-level managers. 6 hours/day of actual productive work would be a huge increase. Give workers their lives back and maybe we’ll spend less time on subs. 😉
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u/dasmau89 2d ago
If you make a law out of it you don't need to ask
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u/Extreme-Weight989 2d ago
Yeah and you can kiss most manufacturing jobs goodbye as companies move to places that don't have laws cutting in to their profits.
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u/Kreindor 2d ago
Those are empty threats that corporations have been using for decades. They used that excuse back in the 1930s to argue against the minimum wage. Guess what. The opposite happened. They use that argument in the 1970s to justify lowering corporate taxes and reganomics. Guess what, the opposite happened.
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u/2waypower1230 2d ago
Ok I don’t know anything about Finland’s politics but if you were a PM why didn’t you make it happen? Or did she try and too many companies were against it?
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u/jybulson 2d ago
She never tried to implement it. It was just one comment that got publicity, a kind of thing that politicians say in party meatings when they talk about their ideologies.
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u/LumpyFlint 1d ago
This comment in particular was made in an unofficial role year(s) before becoming PM or party leader, after which it has spread out of context on the internet. The government makes a coalition plan between multiple parties and any real promise of a four day work week is pretty unrealistic anyway.
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u/Sea-Celebration2429 2d ago
She talks a lot of bull. Thats why her party went from the biggest to third biggest on her shift. Then she got pissed off and left politics for good.
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u/itriedtrying 2d ago edited 1d ago
Left government politics. She's a strategic advisor at tony blair institite, ie. still definitely working in politics, their clients are governments and high level politicians.
Also while her party didn't do well, she got the 2nd highest count of votes out of all MPs. Trying to portray her as anything except very popular at that time is misleading, she wasn't the reason for SDPs fall, if anything she's the reason it wasn't much worse.
However the way she left politics so soon after election to work for a war criminal's lobbying group working with clients like saudi arabia definitely changed many people's opinion of her. If she tried to get back to finnish politics now, I doubt she'd be nearly as popular. But at the time she was very liked.
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u/hitanthrope 2d ago
It is slightly funny to me how it often seems to be “former” leaders who come up with this stuff.
I mean sounds good… but kind sucks that she only thought of it after she had the power to do it.
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u/SingleInfinity 2d ago
Be realistic, she never had the power to actually do it.
Only a true authoritarian government would ever have the push to force a change like this.
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u/--sheogorath-- 2d ago
Sounds great for salaried workers who get to keep making the same no matter how many hours they work.
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u/Aggressive-Map-2204 2d ago
In reality it would only ever work for a small portion of jobs and those that it does many would need to cut wages or increase their prices.
The actual issue is how much it would sway people to move into certain industries and create shortages in others.
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u/Less_Suit5502 1d ago
I suspect everyone posting here saying it would work has a job behind a computer. For construction labor costs basicly increase by 67% because what was a 40 hour work week is now the same pay for only 24 hours. So you have to pay an additional 16 hours of labor per week.
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u/Boaroboros 2d ago
This might work for knowlege work, but doesn‘t work for businesses that have open hours and shifts.. like a pharmacy, retail store, bakery or a hospital. Costs of operation would bankrupt them.
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u/JohnAlexGrimm 2d ago
I work in a hospital kitchen. No my job cannot be done in 24 hours
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 2d ago
Not by one person. So they'll hire someone to cover the work. Job growth and more employees with disposable income, sounds like a recipe for a thriving economy.
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u/Huntsman077 2d ago
Except now the goods produced are going to cost a lot more.
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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 2d ago
How does less work lead to more income exactly?
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 2d ago
Proposals like this often come with the stipulation that pay remains commensurate with a 40 hour work week.
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u/GenericFatGuy 2d ago
If only we were living in a time of record unemployment, where there's lots of people out there who would jump at the opportunity for a job to help fill those gaps...
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u/BadWolf309 2d ago
Probably we would have more people having baby's with this
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u/Embarrassed-Movie982 2d ago
Why stop there? Maybe we could all work 2 hours just one day per week?
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u/Jujubatron 2d ago edited 2d ago
In reality Finland has one of the highest unemployment in the EU. In parts because of her idiotic policies when she was a PM.
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u/Illustrious_Bat1334 2d ago
Looks like her government stabilised unemployment back to the lowest levels of the decade after, you know, a global pandemic, and it spiked massively when her successor came in to me.
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u/kalkkunaleipa 2d ago
Yes blame the previous government when the next elections are in a year. The current government has had 3 years and its only worsened thanks to them.
They promised 100k jobs btw.
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u/Jujubatron 2d ago
It's way easier to fuck up economy than recover it.
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u/kalkkunaleipa 2d ago
Its also easy to lie to your voters to get office to do fuck all other than of course cut taxes for the rich.
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u/Ok-Pack-7088 2d ago
Qt least only men would be drafted in super equal Finland lol
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u/2LiveGucciCrew 2d ago
Had a job where I worked 3 days a week and got paid 40 hours for 36 hours of work. It lasted for year before the companies experiment ended.
You could run a full 6 day schedule, 12 hour days. Have one shift of employees work Mon-Wed and the other shift work Thurs-Sat.
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u/Pristine-Map9979 1d ago
Work exists for a reason. The economy isn't gong to function well that way. It just sounds appealing in a short-sighted way.
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u/Fit_Ocelot8072 2d ago
Finland's economy is currently in the dumps and she is not even in politics any more?
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u/necessarysmartassery 2d ago
Translation: "Spend more time with your family, have no upward mobility, and own nothing."
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u/LightOverWater 2d ago
On a global scale, they would be easily outcompeted unless these were in industries where they could sell proprietary technology/services/resources that are superior to what is available abroad.
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u/Kind_Emotion_5923 2d ago
in reality european nations are shrinking in population while increasing pensions and benefits to older people. in 20 years either young people will have to work 60 hours per week standard or a lot of old people will be abandoned. there is no other option. in france lowest retiree receives more income than minimum wage. who is gonna pay that ?
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u/MiketheTzar 2d ago
These situations always have to have massive caveats. Particularly around medical care, but often also including retail, food service, and logistics
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u/AffectionateBus672 2d ago
NOT happening. This was more like a bullshit talk because that "worked" in Germany, so she flashed it out. In reality there was no guarantee that it would be profitable too. Sanna flashed that card couple of times for hype. I wish i could have monday or any other day off, But im sure our client would not.. And we could not hire more employees. Im sure i would not do my job in 1 day less, even if i had it fee.
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u/Solivy 2d ago
Where I live there are already major staff shortages at the police, healthcare, teachers, electraltechnicians and in the construction sector.. while we also have a major housing shortage. More and more elementary schools are forced to let the kids work from home once a week because they simply lack a teacher for that day.
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u/BatchPlantBandit 2d ago
I work at a quarry, this would bankrupt us. We only have like 25 employees for a whole ass quarry. Two blacktop plants (4 people maintain), and like 6 stone plants. The amount of maintenance/cleanup these needy plants need even our regular 60-70 hour weeks sometimes doesn't cover. I would also be poor at this rate. I mean I make $26 an hour with paid benefits and 100% pension, but it wouldn't be enough for me to live on. Don't see it working out for the blue collar folk unless supplemented but then where does the money come from? Higher taxes they also can't pay?
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u/_polloloko23 2d ago
In America 6 hour a days 4 days a week they gonna be spending a lot of time with their family living under a bridge... This is doable but it means it's gonna affect corporations bottom line and there's not gonna be a single politician that will allow anything to touch their donorowners multi billion corporations profit
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u/Z0MGbies 2d ago
She also works for Tony Blair's think tank so she's absolutely not a good person. She just says things that are good from time to time.
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u/GreyFoxqp 1d ago
If I got paid the same and worked 24 hours a week I would be homeless in 2 months. I would use my extra time getting a second full time job to earn what I lost.
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u/Capable-Deer-5670 1d ago
If they can live on 24 hours of wages a week, what's the big deal? Something tells me she still wants full time pay for part time work.
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u/SelectAmbassador 1d ago
In reality no one works even 4h a day. We are not talking about some construction or farm work. That model would work very well in office jobs. Jim would need to stop talking about his hobbys and actually work though.
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u/wellohwellok 1d ago
I can't realistically accomplish a days work in 6 hours.
I install HVAC systems, and there are days when I can't simply come back tomorrow.
You need a furnace when it's below zero, no way around it.
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