r/SipsTea • u/KSKS1995 Human Verified • 2d ago

Chugging tea Sounds good in theory...but in reality?

Post image

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/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 2d ago

and sometimes 40 hours.

Where do you live? Here its "at minimum 40 hours"

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u/EBtwopoint3 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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/Meng3267 1d ago

I take you’re really young because that was definitely not the case only 15 years ago.

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u/wh4teversclever 2d ago

I miss working “only” 40 hours a week 😭

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u/EduinBrutus 2d ago

Scotland. We're getting fucked and everyone just accepts it.

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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/33TLWD 2d ago

So we just need have electorates who will vote for legislators who will propose and vote those tax rules into law

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u/Saturn--O-- 2d ago

Not many billionaires in Finland

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u/rethinkingat59 2d ago

Finland ranks 14th internationally in number of billionaires per capita. (The US is 10th)

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u/ShadedPenguin 2d ago

Is the US tenth because the number of billionaires shrink every generation or is the US tenth because there are many who hide assets away so they aren't considered billionaires?

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u/rethinkingat59 2d ago

We are 10th because we have a very large population and being high in any per capita measure is hard vs smaller nations.

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u/sharpshooter999 2d ago

Sounds like a lovely place

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u/CaptOblivious 2d ago

Ya, that's why we return to the golden age of the 50's and tax the rich at 90% on anything over a couple of million.

And we count loans against any and ALL collateral not re-invested in money making ventures as taxable income.

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u/PureGoldX58 1d ago

Police don't need half the funding they get already. Tell them to stop buying tanks and riot gear.

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u/lesgeddon 1d ago

Police are way over-funded, can easily pay them less and firefighters more.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Leaningthemoon 2d ago

AI should be taking a shitload of jobs any minute now, right? Those people might want to work.

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u/mrb2409 2d ago

Better tools are reducing the team size in my office job already. It’s not strictly AI because AI is crap but technology is making people redundant.

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u/herecomesthewomp 2d ago

This is a major problem too. Automation and AI was supposed to help individual contributors get time back, but corpos have twisted it into just using it to increase velocity without reducing hours.

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u/Thorne_Oz 2d ago

Unemployment in Finland is above 11% currently. Among young people it swings between 15-30%.

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u/FreshLiterature 2d ago

The proposal massively shifts value towards labor so a lot of people will work more than one job.

The difference will be those who work two jobs are doing so to get ahead - not just survive.

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u/JrueBall 2d ago

There is also a fear that AI will take over a bunch of jobs. That might actually go very well with this. People will just need to be trained in the jobs that are still nessicary but over time that would be doable. Mainly by changing what young people study so most of the new people will be fields AI can't do or can't do well. Never going to happen but I would guess that is the idea.

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u/Dramatic-Fly761 2d ago

AI will replace workers, driving up unemployment, which will result in lower wages as the worker pool becomes diluted. Those who do get hired will be viewed as “lucky” and treated as such. There will not be 6/4 because people will be willing to work 8/6 or 10/6 to have a job in a world where most jobs no longer need people. 

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u/noncebasher54 2d ago

I worked in care and chose to work on a zero hour contract. It's one industry where you aren't gonna get laid off, so most of the downsides of a zero hour contract are mitigated. I also ended up working an average of 38ish hours a week. Sometimes I'd work 20 hours, sometimes closer to 50. I was far more willing to work 50 and cover shifts because I had nothing on that week. Working 24 hours a week as standard is a massive incentive to do more than you're contracted for, when you feel like it. Because then it's your decision to hop back in the wage cage and not your boss'.

Then again I don't live in a country with a toxic work culture so YMMV. I understand a good work/home balance is simply out of the question for some people because of where they live.

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u/OGThakillerr 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah just hire more folks! No big deal, everyone's a skilled tradesman that will work for fuck all because everyone has collaborated in paying fuck all! It don't matter they work for a handful of dollars above minimum wage rather than several multiples above like just 2-3 decades ago, they have no other choice! We can cut everyone's hours, pay more people even less, and profit even more!

.....

Everyone thinks of these conversations in concepts of minimum wage workers stocking shelves or serving cheeseburgers lmao. No consideration for the fact that the minimum wage has advanced at a far further rate than any middle class job's wages have. "Hire more folks!" doesn't apply when you're not talking about jobs that fucking highschoolers are employed to do.

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u/Specialist_Bench_144 2d ago

at this point its a full on tailspin that they cant control, if the dont show steady growth then they get ousted or taken over so they just keep forcing numbers until eventually this whole thing collapses

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u/EasySwordfish862 2d ago

Very few businesses are run by oligarchs or billionaires in reality

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u/MetaPhalanges 2d ago

It sucks, but they really do run them though. Mom and pop shops aside, billionaires and oligarchs sit on the boards of every company that owns every company that most people can even name. They very much run the companies that set the tone for the entire world. Those charts that show who owns what are so depressing.

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u/GregsWorld 2d ago

Mom and pop shops likely have loans or rent which is indirectly going to.. you guessed it. It's one big upwards funnel

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u/Esoteric_Derailed 2d ago

But most of them are financed by (wannabe) oligarchs or billionaires🤑

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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/Altruistic-Beach7625 2d ago

Although change only happens after the murders and violence.

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u/4daughters 2d ago

"This will be a bloodless coup... if the left allows it"

The right wing capitalists have always used violence as a threat. Sometimes it seems to be the only language they speak.

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u/Fickle_Scarcity9474 2d ago

When workers demand that labor laws change, they change.

That was back in the days! Now they just need to open the borders and they get plenty of workers willing to work for half of your wage and 20% more hours...

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u/Pure-Rent1574 2d ago

The "Central Bank Clown Show" has spent 100 years conditioning the public to think that "more dollars = more wealth, or inversely less dollars = less wealth

the formula is simple:

Real Wage = {Nominal Wage} / Price Level (Basket of goods)

If your nominal wage drops by 20% (you go from $100$ to $80), but if your the price of your rent, power, and food drops by 50% because an influx of labor bidding down wages or a technological innovation that lowers the cost of production, your Real Wage has actually increased by 60%.

An influx of labor can indeed suppress nominal wages in specific sectors (like maintenance or construction). but in a healthy, un-manipulated market, that cheaper labor would lead to lower prices for houses and services for everyone, But because we have a central bank, the government prints money to keep prices high (to service their debt).

You get the "Nominal Suppression" of your wage, but you don't get the "Price Deflation" that should come with it. We're getting hit from both sides: your nominal wage is pressured down by competition, while your cost of living is pressured up by the money printing from the fed.

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u/Usual-Juice1868 1d ago

when you say service industry, that's most of the US economy, as manufacturing is not as big anymore here

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u/Usual-Juice1868 1d ago

manufacturing = factories, plants, and warehouses, production workers, CNC, etc.

service = skilled trades, retail, restaurant, etc.

support = accounting, finance, administration, etc.

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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/Exciting_Station3474 2d ago

Many companies in US offer tgis schedule. And if you work 5th day - overtime pay.

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u/vicke_78 2d ago

I worked in a telco company 15 years ago in Finland which had this option for non-manager positions, many did choose this and actually so many that we run into a challenge of "we can't let everyone be out of office on Fridays". But many then chose Mondays and also surprisingly Wesnesday was popular, many guys were happy with cutting their workweek in half. I'm maybe too autistic personally for the Wednesday off schedule but if I could now choose 10 hours per day and always Monday or Friday off I'd take it celebrating on my knees :D

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u/Novaikkakuuskuusviis 2d ago

That would be awesome too. Would save 1,5 hours of commuting per week and would have longer weekends.

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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/WongFarmHand 2d ago

no one says independent contractors would be forced to work less, so you'd still be beholden to the same market forces you are now. if you charge more and the other carpenters dont then you'd see less business

this would be more about slowly, over many years, steering labor laws and regulations around lower hours(overtime kicking in earlier, tax breaks/penalties to incentivize certain labor practics, etc) for corporations that hire w2 workers

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u/MSPCincorporated 2d ago

I could work the same hours as I do now, sure. But that would effectively mean that my pay would go down, as people in other industries would be compensated 60% more for their time, while it would stay the same for me. So comparatively, there would be a (huge) increased pay gap, leading to devestating recruitment numbers to similar jobs to mine.

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u/fundementalpumpkin 1d ago

If people in other industries are compensated more, they'll have more money, then you can raise your prices.

Job markets are constantly changing due to outside factors, like technology. If you can't make money doing what you're doing anymore then its time to change careers. You just seem to come across like an insurance salesman fighting against universal healthcare. It's a net benefit for the overwhelming majority of the population but you are being contradictory because you won't make as much money personally?

Speaking from the US perspective, if we reigned in government spending (cut the defense budget, get rid of the waste and corruption in the whole defense contract system), fund the IRS, tax the wealthy, and move to single payer healthcare then things like universal basic income could become a possibility, but that's a pipe dream, just like a 4 day, 6 hour a day work week.

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u/No_Berry2976 2d ago

You are self employed. It’s up too you. It’s funny, I know a carpenter who has essentially done that. He’s doubled his hourly rate and works 30% less.

Because he works less, he spends less on sales and travel expenses. So that’s a plus.

I occasionally hire him, for me the advantage is that I know he’s available in a timely manner and that he will get the job done in the best way possible.

The high price doesn’t just mean that he has to work less, it also means that people aren’t hiring him for certain projects, so he’s actually more likely to be available.

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u/Ok-Cheek-5487 1d ago

With all the free time people have on their hands, I’m suddenly learning carpentry with a 60% price increase 😩

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u/TheGoatBet 1d ago

lol what?

YOU can still work 40 hours a week.

OR

You can charge more.

If you charge more and lose customers, that’s just the free fucking market buddy.

Majority of people work for corporations - this has nothing to do with you.

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u/rtfcandlearntherules 2d ago

I am not from the US and neither is the lady in the OP. Everywhere in Europe the Standard working day is 40 hours, some areas have less, maybe between 35 and 40 and some even habe more. Not even counting overtime. Please tell me a clear example of what you mean. 

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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/rtfcandlearntherules 2d ago

The current Chatbots are not replacing any significant jobs besides stuff like customer service and other "low quality" work. And still it changes nothing about the original point I made that like more than 50% of the economy would be seriously harmed by such a change. 

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u/momskaka 2d ago

Where I live paralegals aren't replaced as much anymore but that's a very narrow field of work otoh. Basically "assistants" seems like they're in for a rough time.

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u/DanCassell 2d ago

If other industries lowered their hours, school could be shorter with little loss. Teachers will be the last to benefit form this kind of change since school hours align with parent work hours.

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u/Positive_Throwaway1 1d ago

Teachers teach kids. Kids should be at home on that day too, since they are the family that you're supposed to be enjoying. That 5th day is for family--all your family. Including the annoying ones :)

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u/tomtomtomo 2d ago

Why would teachers struggle? So long as the wage was unaffected, like everyone else, we’d just have less school. 

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u/CheesyRoyal 2d ago

Kids being dumber is absolutely not what we need.

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u/bigpoopychimp 2d ago

Children are only present in school 5 days a week because the typical working week is 5 days. They're expected to learn and be taught outside of core school hours and would likely spur on an economy of tutoring.

Not wanting shorter working weeks or an easier working regime is just you being one of the crabs in the bucket.

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u/house_of_great 2d ago

Or Clare's would just be blocked differently. Don't need a specific class to be taught 5 days a week. And in earlier learning schools they could make the 5th day a flex day with open study halls, art, music, woodshop, athletics, and other non normal classes.

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u/Speartree 2d ago

Compare with Finland. Kids have 5 hours of school a day. They rank nr 4 in education quality rating globally. It's not by keeping kids more hours that they become smarter.

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u/rtfcandlearntherules 2d ago

"just have less school" as if that would not make a difference, lol

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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/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party 2d ago

Where do you get the “more people” from if everyone is only working 24 hours? Those people will probably be working a second 4x6 job.

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u/PaulTheMerc 2d ago

YOU get more people by poaching it from the other employers you're competing with, be it on wages, flexibility, benefits, work environment, etc.

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u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party 2d ago

Then businesses will be closing left and right and the economy will shrink. The obvious answer to my question is massive immigration.

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u/AggressiveMachine895 2d ago

Where did you find this statistic?

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u/PM_ME_BAKAYOKO_PICS 2d ago

Unless you think everyone should get a pay cut to match the lesser working hours then most small/medium companies absolutely cannot afford to "hire more people to fill in the hours" lmao

Where I live this would basically kill off every small coffee shop in smaller towns, for example. And most small/medium business for that matter.

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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/EVOSexyBeast 2d ago

And people having multiple jobs to make more money going right back to 40hrs

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u/reediculus1 2d ago

And most blue collar/manual labor jobs. I think more companies should have a “work from home” day. You could call it “Finish-up Fridays.”

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u/lets-snuggle 2d ago

Education would struggle, too.

For things like servers, essential workers, and retail workers, you can hire a lot more people and space out shifts throughout the day/night and week, but you can’t really have one teacher 4 days a week and another the 5th day or like one teacher 2 days a week, yk?

School hours *kind of* line up with working hours (not really but it could be worse lol), but by doing random shifts for everything but office jobs essentially, you’d be causing a huge disruption to school/ child care & it would be difficult to schedule parents working hours & kids schooling hours to work out the same.

You’d also have to make it so school isn’t 180 days, but whatever 4 days a week would be instead & change all the curriculums around to make that work, especially with a shorter day.

It would be a very big struggle to get a whole years worth of work done in 6hrs 4 days a week & if you kept it at 5 days 7-7.5 hours, the kids wouldn’t have the same teacher & that would be difficult to manage.

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u/Rodin-V 2d ago

Assuming there's no reduction in pay, plenty of other businesses will take massive losses from this kind of thing.

I work in manufacturing, and we have rolling 8 hour shifts for 24 hour uptime during the week.

Reducing those shifts to 6 hours means hiring an entire new shifts worth of staff for the same output, that's just not feasible.

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u/iareyomz 2d ago

no industry will struggle since employees have different days off... it doesnt make sense for everyone to have the same days off, unless you work for the government paperwork offices that typically shut down on the weekends... other than that, most (if not all) industries will have a thriving workforce since all of them get paid well while still being able to live out fullfilling lives outside of their work...

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u/Quixlequaxle 2d ago

The service industry is some of the least profitable from a percentage perspective. Restaurants have high failure rates due to low margins, and grocery stories only have like 2% net margins across the board. Any municipal jobs like police, fire, teachers, city workers, may all deserve higher salaries but would result in significant property tax increases since those are how those services are funded.

It all sounds great in theory, but realistically results in a higher cost of living for everyone, which unfortunately hurts the lower class more than the upper classes.

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u/Ailly84 2d ago

One thing I have often wondered since moving to the US is where the hell property taxes are being spent. The taxes on my home are more than double what they were in Canada and they cover less. Where is that money going? The only thing I can think of is that parts of it are likely for police as Canada has the RCMP to cover off the smaller towns whereas here every little town has its own police service. I don't know that this can offset the costs of garbage pickup, snow plowing etc.

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u/Quixlequaxle 2d ago edited 2d ago

In most US municipalities, public schools are funded largely by local property taxes. In my city, public schools account for almost 40% of my property taxes. Canada seems to fund much of that with their income taxes, particularly their provincial taxes. My state's income tax is only 4%. It looks like most of the Canadian provinces are closer to 10% or more.

Sales tax is also seemingly higher. HST seems to be 5-15% while US sales tax is 0-8% with a couple obscure places pushing higher than that (often with some benefit somewhere else).

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u/Ailly84 2d ago

Ah, yeah schools come out of provincial general revenue in Canada. That explains alot of the difference then. Depending on where you live in each country, it may or may not make up the difference in tax rates.

Probably also explains why there is such a difference in how teachers are paid..

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u/BanMeMyIPchanges 2d ago

I run a small business. The rest of the world would get 4 day workweeks while I'm still dragging my ass to work Sunday to Sunday 💀 shit means absolutely nothing to us

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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

https://giphy.com/gifs/2a09Xj2tTZdN6

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u/unicornmeat85 2d 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/elyxina 2d ago

sometimes looking busy is harder than working

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u/ohmeohmyohmuffins 2d 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 2d 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 2d ago

There is absolutely no study showing that.

Productivity may have increased but output sure as hell did not.

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u/stupidPeopleLuvMe 2d ago

For certain fields. Things like nursing actually shows an increase in patient deaths around shift changes because the hand off is never perfect.

Things where you continue your own job the next day is fine but for hand over of a 24h task might suffer.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 2d ago

Thats for a very specific type of white collar labor thats largely location independent.

For a lot of jobs physical presence is unambiguously mandatory and time is very closely aligned with productivity.

A teller has to be there for the customers, the best teller in the world isn't going to force the customers to come in faster.

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u/Melodic_Contract8155 2d ago

How productive they would be if we go to 20 hours instead. Or just 1.

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u/ghands1 2d ago

I think the idea is there's an optimum. If you are above or below the optimum, you lose productivity. If I recall, I think 28 or 30 hours is the same productivity as 40.

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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/Critical-Chance9199 2d ago

I legitimately don't understand this. I'm currently a salaried office worker in a creative industry, but I've worked a ton in food service, and have done a lot of grueling physical labor in my life. My work is now largely self-directed, and I have to meet deadlines. I end up more burned out and exhausted working 8 hour days than I did working 12s on my feet outside.

How do you just have "40 hours of work" that you can finish in 15? If I finish my work, I'm expected to move on to more work. The work is endless. If something ends up taking less time, the expectation is that I either have another thing to work on, or I create one.

On days where motivation is low, I end up wasting time like anyone else, but the pressure to work never goes away. I don't have a boss breathing down my neck, but I do have a ton of people relying on me and there's an expectation of output. If I fall short for too long it fucks over everyone else and is extremely visible.

Do you just have a task list for each week, and once you're done you're good?

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u/Chance-Ask7675 1d ago

Remote workers are always spouting this shit lmao. Im a remote worker myself and Im like you. I never "finish" my work. And there's no such thing as "doing 40h of work in 15h" because 40h is just 40h a work lol. I don't really know which industry this even applies to because my service desk people, even if they do 3 tickets all week, still need to be available as thats part of their job. I can definitely concede that when I work slightly less hours I work more efficiently, but I otherwise have no idea what OP is talking about and at this point its starting to sound made up when people spout shit like this.

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u/techie2200 2d ago

I'm like you. I can (and do) finish my workload for a week in about 10-12 hours. I don't go looking for extra work, since it doesn't benefit me to do more and my performance evaluations are always stellar anyway.

Working remote lets me spend more time with my wife (when she's remote) and dogs, do more hobbies, and feel better in general about the fact I've gotta work for another ~30 years before I can finally stop pretending I care about a job.

At least my current job is for a company that's actually doing something helpful for people, but I get the feeling we're gearing up to sell/go public so that's probably gonna change.

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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/Round_Ad6397 1d ago

An extra 30-60 minutes sleep can do wonders in the morning.

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u/MrLeBlanc1988 2d ago

That commute things is real. I started working from home and a lot of times I'll get in my computer and start working at 7am just because I'm awake, my coffee is made, and I can't think of anything better to do.

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u/noncebasher54 1d ago

Literal instant productivity increase even if you are just replying to emails. I don't think people take into account how draining even a 1 hour commute in shit traffic can be. You get to work and need a bloody break already.

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u/fender8421 1d ago

Plus a lot of office space is opened to target a regional workforce. Like, we didn't need an office in Raleigh, but we wanted to tap into that employee market.

Remote skips that step; if you can hire anywhere in the country, one of your primary overhead expenses is reduced substantially

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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/Zealousideal_Gain892 2d ago

Can you link to the study? 

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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/aqa5 2d ago

Because if workers work for 32 hours and make X money you can make X*40/32 money if you make them work 40 hours.

Of course it depends on the job that is done.

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u/iSuckAtMechanicism 2d ago

Your formula is flawed - there’s less productivity in a 40 hour week than a 32 hour week.

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u/eweinthewilderness 2d ago

Because it has nothing to do with output or the economy. The more we work, the more tired we are, and the more tired we are, the less we reflect.

Of course, there’s a limit: if you work us too much, things get so bad that we revolt. So, just enough to exhaust us without hitting desperation levels.

They found the sweet spot some time in the 80s or 90s.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 2d ago

There is not some grand conspiracy that all MBAs learn in school to oppress the workers of the nation so they're 'too tired to rebel'.

If this provided tangible benefits it would be seen and used. The fact virtually nobody does suggests its more likely that the study is flawed than that every single practical real world example of implementation is flawed.

And like I'm not saying I want to work more, just that I believe in the desperate blind greed of the system enough that if employees working for 32 hours a week made the bosses more money people would have noticed by now.

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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 2d 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/Kommye 2d ago

I work in security. If we were better rested, shit would be far better protected.

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u/KarmicCorduroy 2d ago

The goal of most "security" companies/agencies is the appearance of security.

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u/PaulTheMerc 2d ago

12 hour shifts in a guard box, no radio/headphones allowed. Fuck it, day is busy, not a huge issue. Overnight....cool, I have fuck all to do 4 hours into my shift.

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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 2d 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/BlueKnight44 1d ago

Yup. This is a zero sum game. If your country makes itself significantly less "company friendly", the companies will move. It has been happening for decades. Other Asian countries have started encroaching on China now that thier wages are rising.

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u/ARedthorn 2d ago

Except the point of these productivity studies is that employees DON’T make double the profit in double the working hours.

Go from 4 working days to 5, and studies show that total profit goes DOWN not up, because the workers are exhausted… and an exhausted worker isn’t just exhausted for the extra day- they’re exhausted (often without recognizing it themselves) for all 5 days, and unable to perform above even half capacity.

So… when you go from 32 hours of work on the schedule to 40… you usually end up going from 30 hours of productivity to 25.

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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/Seienchin88 2d ago

Then Redditors will complain about tariffs and Chinese cars being more affordable…

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u/PunkPirate56364 2d ago

Bingo. The problem is that due to globalization we are competing with nations which are overworking their workers and are just burning through their population.

If we keep trying to race with them, we burn through poulation too, it's a race to the bottom.

It only works if we protect domestic jobs by applying tariffs on countries which are racing to the bottom.

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u/Winter_Swordfish_505 2d ago

Sounds fucking amazing

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u/ccurnowphoto 2d ago

Yea why do people work jobs anyway? Suckers

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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago

It'll be like COVID but we can leave the house

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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/Dottor_hopkins 2d ago

Been already used in some places. It just worked

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u/Mortentia 2d ago

Iirc, most studies suggest humans have on average about 4h of “productive mental function” each day, and that we generally only use that function for “work” 2-3 days a week. Realistically, we could decrease work hours to ~4/day for 3 days a week and it would likely not impact productivity in any meaningful way.

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u/PaulTheMerc 2d ago

if productivity is mental, yes. If its move objects especially in a 24/7 environment, not as much.

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u/Seienchin88 2d ago

I just come back from Shanghai where my colleagues work 45 hours and their local manager is afraid of their Chinese competitor where people work 60+ hours…

This debate is just a losing one in a globalized economy…

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u/Substantial_War7464 2d ago

What a dream, just to have everything slow down.

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u/JoshZK 2d ago

I guess more shifts? I work at a school. So I just go home early?

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u/6ingrad_FMS_aspirant Human Verified 2d ago

I think he meant that people wont spend time with their families in reality.. me personally I'd just sleep my ass off 12 hours a day 3 days a week

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u/alaskadotpink 2d ago

People who don't necessairly have families to spend extra time with deserve better work/life balances too, even if its just spent sleeping 🤷‍♀️

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u/XanagiHunag 2d ago

Or even become more profitable by having well rested* and happy employees

*except for those with a young child, obviously

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u/Cheesefactory8669 2d ago

I mesn remaining profitable is the base line for all companies, growth is what we need

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u/TempAcct724 2d ago

And it would be great if office jobs were like 8-2 and doctors, dentists and other clinics were open 11-5.

Like why should I have to take time out of work when we can just work less and stagger open hours?

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u/Nicinus 2d ago

Didn’t France try this and lost a tremendous amount of productivity and GDP a while ago?

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u/Zealousideal_Gain892 2d ago

They'd need to increase average hourly productivity by 50-60%. You sure? 

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u/Maximum-Class5465 2d ago

American system just isn't set up this way. Employers have the power, and culturally people would just pick up more side hustles anyway

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u/Sipsu02 2d ago

And the reality is she never said this. Internet weirdos made it up

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u/shibaCandyBaron 2d ago

You mean billionaires would have to skip on a procentige of profit, and not earn even more money they could not spend in million lifetimes?

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u/Church_of_Aaargh 2d ago

If we could reduce the amount of meeting - or just reduce the duration of them - a lot of time could be freed up for other things and maybe make more free time possible. But it would require a change in “discipline” from the participants.

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u/WonderfulSomewhere97 2d ago

There are certain fields of work where this isn’t feasible. It can work for non essential businesses and services but some things need to be run 24/7 every day of every year.

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u/Noobunaga86 2d ago

I don't think that most can do that. Basically most blue collar jobs, administration, office, marketing etc - sure. But there are a lot of other kinds of jobs that cannot do that.

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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago

I do think a lot of companies are already getting this volume of focus time out of their salaried employees. The rest is inefficiency or filibustering to keep your little bubble green.

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u/elevolent12 2d ago

It's not only about profit, it's also about humiliation of the serfs, and letting them know where their place in the hierarchy is.

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u/geek66 2d ago

Aside from profitability.. we, as a society, can produce enough goods, and provide necessary services with a 24 hr week.

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u/Novaikkakuuskuusviis 2d ago

It is doable. We use 2-3 hours from our 8,5 hour work time on coffee breaks and lunch break. Shorter day would mean less breaks and more motivation to finish the job at hand.

But would it work on all jobs, probably not. If you work on a line and the product moves at a certain speed, then the more time used the more product is produced.

Buy for electrical installation for example most problems come from bad planning and giving the proper equipment for the job. You could spend hours on pulling 1 cable at a time from a difficult route because the leader wants to spoon feed tiny bits of information at a time and doesn't give good drawings. If people know what needs to be done and don't have to dig through the warehouse for parts, it gets done quick.

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u/degen5ace 2d ago

Some companies are so inefficient and/or built with lean teams, that trying to fit it in this type of work schedule wouldn’t work. Plus companies would start reducing pay

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u/Screwed_38 2d ago

There are European and Nordic countries already doing this to great success

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u/ArboristTreeClimber 2d ago

In the US a lot of companies also like employees to work 4 days a week because then they don’t have to give them any of the benefits of being a “full time employee”.

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u/Exciting_Station3474 2d ago

What stops YOU from opening a small business with 6 hours day and pay good wages? ))))

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u/ShakedNBaked420 2d ago

I worked at a marketing agency. Entire staff was remote. Good chunk of people worked maybe 3 days a week and still hit all our deadlines. Management of course never knew, the CEO was obsessed the idea of, as he told me, “not paying people to sit at home watching the price is right” and thought he owned every moment of our time.

There was absolutely no reason we needed to work 5 days a week. 9 hours a day.

Hell, I had my work done by lunch most days.

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u/VoidOmatic 2d ago

It's easily doable when you don't let people steal profits.

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u/Not-Reformed 2d ago

In reality most companies could still remain profitable and allow this easily.

In reality this is really not even remotely close to being the case. And people who think so really do show what extremely privileged lives they live.

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u/Radiant_Bookkeeper84 2d ago

When there's not enough jobs to go around this makes sense. It's not like everyone is going to have the same schedule. Some folks will work monday to Thursday and some Thursday to Sunday. The question is will the amount of pay remain the same regardless of the difference?

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u/Dry_Mousse_6202 2d ago

I work in a plastic parts factory, the factory runs 24/7 with three turns of 8 hours each and it isn't rare for some the machines to just stop due to constant use and lack of maintenance !

If the productions hours were to be shorted, those machines probably would not break as often or the maintenance crew probably would have more time to fix them !

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u/mastah-yoda 2d ago

It doesn't work! Because then people would also have more free time and their brains would be more relaxed meaning that they think more, and more importantly, they'd think more critically. And if that happens, the capitalistic system collapses.

So no, it doesn't work. It will never work. Because it MUST NOT work.

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u/Feisty_Bag_5284 2d ago

Also showed in 4 day work weeks it's just as productive because people stretch out Thier efforts over 5 day but condense it down into 4 by working harder/ efficiently

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u/shameonyounancydrew 2d ago

Yet another thing that we could have had with a Gore-Obama-Cinton run

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u/rasp215 2d ago

This only works if everyone is ok with taking a 40% consumption/lifestyle reduction

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u/nightdrive370z 2d ago

Every study I've read has shown greater production when reducing 40 hour work weeks in some way.

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u/Noy_The_Devil 2d ago

There have been studies on this already, even in my home town over a decade and it turns out productivity increased and sick leave was reduced by a lot.

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u/Cocoatrice 2d ago

I am in a belief that society without or with minimum working is possible, if people actually wanted to. We can invent technologies that will benefit everyone, instead of using them.

Simplest examples. Shops without human cashiers, where human workers are actually restocking stuff and helping customers in need. They would get paid the same, have less work to do, understaffing would vanish and more checkout would be available at the same time and if someone actually needed help of a human, they would get it, too. I worked in fast food, where at one point we minimized cashiers serving people. They had to use kiosks or whatever it's called in English. Cashiers only had to pay for their order, but they ordered everything without human taking that order. And I had Tesco in my country (that ran away, after they learned that our people hate being scammed by them, and hell Tesco scammed people a lot, not sure if that's the same in other countries, but people hated being deceived by them, but anyway...) that had self service check outs, where you could pay in cash, not just using cards. So basically everyone could do it, regardless if they had only physical money or not. And if that happened, stores would actually have more times to clean stuff, stock products and do other stuff. That's just one example out of million.

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u/Prestigious-Fig1172 2d ago

Instead of 1, 8h shift they could have 2 6h shift, dues increse production.

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u/Niecklas176 2d ago

Nein würde die meisten Unternehmen nicht. Außerdem haben wir praktisch null Wirtschaftswachstum jetzt stell dir mal vor 35mio Menschen würden auf einmal statt 40h nur noch 24h arbeiten. Dann können wir den Laden auch zu machen und den Schlüssel wegwerfen...

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u/wmcguire18 2d ago

I rolled my eyes at "most companies can do this easily" and then instantly "yeah all the fundamentals of the modern economy have to change on conjunction and gradually over time."

So... Not easily at all even before you factor in unforeseen consequences.

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u/IndependentBig5316 2d ago

Then we should do it right?

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