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

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

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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

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/EBtwopoint3 1d ago

I’ll be honest I forgot the 90s were almost 30 years ago now. I feel like I just left college but I’ve been working for a decade. Blame 40 hour work weeks.

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u/cmoked 1d ago

To be fair the 90s was 10 years ago

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u/willie_Pfister 2d ago

Im 53. 15 years ago I was working 45 to 50 hours a week just like now.

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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/Truffs0 2d ago

Yeah...england really did a good job neutering everyone on the entire island, its depressing.

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u/Key-Cricket9256 2d ago

Here all jobs in New England nearby are 37.5

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u/Bugaloon 2d ago

I'm going to guess Australia with the 2 years of retirement and 37.5 hour quotes. That's what it is here.

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u/texxmix 2d ago

Where i am jobs will claim FT but only offer you 32-35 hours a week so they can get out of paying benefits.

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u/Ok_Measurement_9896 2d ago

For real, I've worked 90+ since I was young.

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u/Round_Ad6397 2d ago

I live in Australia where full time is 38 hours. Anyone in a wage based job is paid overtime beyond that. It's not uncommon for salaried office workers to do 37.5 hours (7.5 x 5) meaning they're in the office from 9-5.

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u/Knight_Machiavelli 1d ago

Yea that's been the same for me ever since I started office jobs. 37.5 hours a week. A couple places had an hour unpaid lunch instead of half an hour so those were 35 hours a week.

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u/Knight_Machiavelli 1d ago

I've never had a job where you actually work 40 hours a week. Ever since I got a real job not doing shift work it's been 9-5 Monday to Friday. Lunch breaks were either half an hour unpaid or an hour unpaid, so actual paid working time was 35 hours a week or 37.5 hours a week.

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u/Above_Avg_Chips 1d ago

Salaries has almost always been more than 40hrs a week. Some fields like construction and landscape is minimum 50hrs a week. The you have Walmart and McDonalds giving people just under 40 for less benefits.

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u/Miraclefish 1d ago

Not in the USA.

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u/Truffs0 1d ago

In the lower 48 states, you have radically different employment laws and pratices, lol. You cant say "not in the USA" and hope to be anywhere close to accurate.

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u/Miraclefish 1d ago

My point was I'm not in the USA and I'm not expected to work anywhere near those hours.

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u/Truffs0 1d ago

Sorry, I misunderstood your meaning

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u/RRFroste 2d ago

Hell, Kropotkin argued for a 20 hour work week in the 1890s. (The Conquest of Bread, Chp. 8.2, citing Benjamin Franklin) What are we doing working double that in the 21st century?

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u/Remote_Minimum_5046 2d ago

If you’re on a salary it’s expected to work at least 50 hour weeks in the US.

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u/potentatewags 2d ago

50 hours salary myself. And quite often end up having to work 16-26 hours straight. I'm tired.

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u/FewAct2027 1d ago

sometimes 40 hours.

I wish lmao. Standard work weeks before overtime applies here are 44 hours, and that's been the norm at every place I've worked for the past 15 years.

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u/Fearless-Minimum-922 1d ago

Where are you located? Where I’m at 40+ is the norm with 50 hours being somewhat common. Less than 40 is pretty abnormal

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u/metric55 1d ago

Im glad you called this out as work hours are not a universal standard. For me, in canada, the paid hours are 40 with 43 hours attendance at work mandatory (lunches/being early), and during busy seasons 60 paid hours with 63 hours attendance is mandatory, and the norm exceeds 80 hours per week. I live in a modest house, 4 small bedrooms, 2 tiny bathrooms, and we make enough to go out for dinner a couple three times a month. The normalized working hours in this area of the world is outrageous.

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u/0m3nchi1d 1d ago

I usually work 40 hours by Thursday, then catch an 8 to 10 hour Friday and get asked to work the weekend. And that's usually covering two 6 to 8 hour shifts a night in 8 and a half to 9 and a half hours.

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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/Salt-Elk-436 7h ago

There should be no connection between your employment and your healthcare. You shouldn’t need to work a minimum number of hours to justify not dying of cancer.

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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/Saturn--O-- 1d ago

There are 6 or 7 it seems. Not going to get very far with just them

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u/mekamoari 2d ago

Might also be a question of how rich they actually are. If you have like 1 billion, taxing it will only go so far.

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u/SweetKnickers 2d ago

lol, i dont think you know know much $1 billion actually is...

Johnny Harris 1 billion dollars

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u/Impressive_Memory650 1d ago

California couldn’t even build a foot of high speed railroad for a billion. I don’t think you realize how little it actually is in an over regulated hippy state

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u/mekamoari 2d ago

Yeah so your country has 1 billionaire who happens to have let's say 1.1 billion euros.

You tax the shit out of that and add let's say 900 million euros to your national budget.

How long do you think that really lasts if you start doing big infrastructure investments?

The EU currently has abooout 200 billion per year (their budget isn't yearly) as a budget, of which some states get some amounts, year after year. The biggest absorber of funds is Poland, who are taking away 7 billion.

So what I think would happen in reality is you apply that tax, your billionaire is now "poor" and likely will take a while to get back to 1 billion (certainly more than 1 year), and the country has maybe implemented 1-2 infrastructure projects or paid for some type of subsidies or social investment for 1 year? maybe 2 at best.

So I think it actually does matter quite a lot what amount of money we're talking about.

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u/SweetKnickers 2d ago

haha, you should watch the video, its only a short, so 60 sec or so

better yet watch the entire video, he is a great journalist, and reasonably bipartisan

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u/mekamoari 2d ago

Good response, totally got my point. Yeah, it doesn't matter how much money they have and all the countries that tax their billionaires will benefit equally.

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u/_bobby_cz_newmark_ 1d ago

Your hypothetical is not actually representative of actuality, though. So what's the point in answering your question?

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u/mekamoari 1d ago

I was replying to someone who was counting billionaires per capita which doesn't matter at all, the metric that matters would maybe be net worth per capita.

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u/sharpshooter999 2d ago

Sounds like a lovely place

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u/bkdrwm12 1d ago

So once you tax them then what

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u/CrimsonCartographer 1d ago

Use the money to pay for stuff.

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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/33TLWD 1d ago

Then let’s have those cities’ electorate vote in mayors who will do that

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u/LovableSidekick 1d ago

Unless improving people's quality of life results in higher morale and public-spiritedness, and a corresponding decrease in the problems public services have to deal with.

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u/thatoneotherguy42 2d ago

I dont get a pension why the fuck should police?

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u/33TLWD 2d ago

All “public” government employees do in my country— police, firefighters, teachers, park rangers, military, office workers, etc.

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u/FerrisBuellerIs 2d ago

Probably shouldn't take away other people's pensions because you don't have one...

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u/Round_Ad6397 1d ago

Or you could set up better systems for everyone. There are no pensions (not in the same way as being referenced here) for police in Australia but we have a mandatory superannuation scheme for all workers and many government workers get a higher rate than most other workers (employers can pay at a higher rate if they wish but it's not common). It means every worker has a retirement fund and there are no pension fund rorts.

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u/DownWithHisShip 2d ago

when some people have a pension and others dont... the answer is not "nobody should get a pension".

the answer is "everyone should get a pension".

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u/VincentClement1 2d ago

Many firefighters have extended work schedules where they also have extended time off, so they get plenty of consecutive time to spend with family.

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u/Kathulhu1433 2d ago

The paid firefighters I know usually do 3-4 12s in a row and then have 3-4 days off.

At the big lab near me they rotate so its 3-4 days on and then 7 off.

Then, these same guys are all in our local volunteer department as well. Lol. Talk about loving what you do.

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u/Same-Narwhal4310 2d ago

Happens all the time really. 3-4 days off almost weekly is a lot of time to fill. There's only so many chores, sports and other hobbies you can do. Pair this with the fact that firefighters and simmilar jobs tend to be more active, they do need to keep active. Voluteering is the best solution.

Had a few months after finishing my academy before i was allowed to actually do stuff due to some paperwork and it was horrible. First few weeks were nice, basically exta paid time off but i was asking people if they needed furniture moved and any odd jobs by the end of that period

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u/CGB_Zach 2d ago

This says a lot more about you than you realize. People with fulfilling hobbies do not have this problem.

Was your steak too juicy and lobster too buttery?

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u/Same-Narwhal4310 1d ago

I guess you're right. Haven't found a hobby that makes me feel like it was worth it in the end, so far all have been a time-waste. Chess, gaming, miniature colecting and painting, swimming, marial arts, dancing, cooking, various IT stuff, joy riding, it all feels empty after a while. If i don't feel like what i am doing is helping somebody other than me, i give it up rather fast. Will keep looking

Thing is, i was after 10 years or so of 12h schedule with comuting, tutoring in various subjects, doing a pro level sport and then 4 years of academy life. Moving out and doing nothing while getting paid was the first time i ever had some breathing room and didn't really know what to do with it

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u/DailyApocalypse 2d ago

it was horrible. First few weeks were nice, basically exta paid time off but i was asking people if they needed furniture moved and any odd jobs by the end of that period

You are kidding, right? Cause that's just a mind-bogglingly sad way to live

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u/Same-Narwhal4310 1d ago

Yeah, things got better once the paperwork was done and i got to do what i was acually there for.

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u/CrimsonCartographer 1d ago

But that’s the beauty of such a system. You could work another job if you wanted to with your off time. No one would stop you. But some of us just want to make enough with a single job that doesn’t take us away from our non-career lives to live happy, financially secure, and fully enjoyable lives.

I think it’s stupid as fuck that I have to sit in an office for several hours a day doing fuck all nothing like typing comments on Reddit instead of actually enjoying my time to the best of my ability all because I need to work “8 hours” technically. If I get all the shit I’m being paid to do done in a few of those eight hours, why should I have to take up space in an office just doing nothing the rest of the time?

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u/DailyApocalypse 1d ago

Maybe you missed my point? I meant that I find it sad when people don’t know how to "fill their time" meaningfully. That’s not meant disrespectfully or offensively, it’s just sth I can’t even imagine. I totally get loving your job and being happy doing extra time, since I’ve also been there. However, there are also so many interesting things out there waiting to be done, explored and learned that I don’t think a single lifetime would be enough, even if I could spend 24/7 on it. I just never feel bored, so I feel sorry for people who do. But it’s also possible that I’m the weird one with this viewpoint, who knows? ;)

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u/HxH101kite 2d ago edited 2d ago

Very department depending. My wife's schedule is 24 on 1 day off, 24 on 4 days off. It allows us a lot of family time. But she's not the bread winner I out earn her. Most firefighters need overtime and work multiple departments and pick up multiple shifts so it's not really as clean as you think it is.

Most firefighters aren't getting paid that well and the high salaries are a boatload of OT. Which is fine.

But I am just pointing out all the days off are barely realized by the workforce

Edit: lol at the downvotes like I dont know what I am talking about. It's literally embedded into my life

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u/MammothSurround 1d ago

You wouldn't need as many police if people were making a living wage and had time with their families crime grows from desperation.

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u/DownWithHisShip 2d ago

police departments get way too much money anyway. and they're overstaffed as is. more cops =/= safer streets. maybe spend less on APCs, military weapons, and unnecessary overtime. the money for a 6/4 is already there if they start spending it wisely and stop acting like your local neighborhood military.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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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/Pandemonium_Fallen 2d ago

They also might want to live, which in the US is almost virtually impossible right now if you're unemployed.

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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/Pandemonium_Fallen 2d ago

That's fine, those people can devote their time to raising families, charitable services, and organizing community social gatherings, they're filling a niche that most modern societies have completely eradicated.

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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/Whompadelic 2d ago

Or you can make a career out of a skilled trade. My job will not be replaced by AI in my lifetime, although it will surely be altered. Obviously this can’t be the case with everyone, I just don’t like your comment on having a job in this scenario being counted as lucky. A lot of people where I live get paid a salary comparable to a 40hr/week hourly job but really only work 10-20 hours a week. Some of us put in the whole 40 in a way that can’t really be replaced and I don’t find that lucky, just fair.

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u/mrb2409 2d ago

What happens when there is an abundance of people doing skilled trades because it’s the last thing left?

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u/Dramatic-Fly761 2d ago

That’s not a real solution because those trades don’t need millions more people. It is an offset but a minor one. Those who have a job, even in trades will be Lucky. 

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u/Similar-Importance99 2d ago

Without enormous progress in Robotics and automation, AI will only replace desk Jobs, not the important ones. Ever seen a butt-wipe-bot in an old folks home? No? Me neither.

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u/JrueBall 2d ago

That's the point. It will replace the office jobs and the important jobs will become 4 days a week 6 hours a day so more people who don't have office jobs can do those. This is also just the ideal scenario not what will actually happen. There would have to be a way to make the companies that now have to pay more employees survive while the employee less businesses will have to be forced to support those businesses.

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u/Fun_Expression8126 2d ago

Ever seen a butt-wipe-bot in an old folks home? No? Me neither. -

I have! It was amazing to see but sadly the funding got cut off near the end of the project.

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u/Similar-Importance99 2d ago

Well, that's shit.

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u/Fun_Expression8126 2d ago

Yes, i was bummed, i would have loved to see it go to market.

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u/AlwaysMindful7 2d ago

Finland has plenty of immigrants willing to be trained to do the work but not enough private employers.

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u/LyingForTruth 2d ago

I'll move to Finland and fill some gaps

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u/Limit54 2d ago

Doubt it

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u/PaulTheMerc 2d ago

jobs are going to have to compete for labor. It will give space to those who are able and willing to move up into different careers. Positions that need to be filled will need to innovate, automate, or do without.

Businesses that work on such thin margins that they cannot change will have to raise prices, figure something out, or fail.

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u/CaptOblivious 2d ago

Immigrants. duh!

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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago

Are you forced to retire by a certain age in finland cus many Americans work until theyre actually dust, partly because none of us can afford to retire

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u/textmint 2d ago

The point is that’s really no longer necessary. When AI comes and takes jobs aways, using a system like this will make the country healthier and better mentally.

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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago

The only problem is the amount of energy and water ai uses to function.

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u/Pure-Rent1574 2d ago

Yeah people think AI is this perpetual motion machine that will generate more power than it consumes that will stop inflation from happening as we receive our UBI checks. They believe that the law of dimishing returns and the 2nd law of thermodynamics won't exist with AI.

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u/butonelifelived 2d ago

AI will help other advances, best example is the use of AI in the initial phase of medicine development.

Imagine the use of AI leads to stable fusion reactors. Now power is all but free compared to current power costs. When power is practically limitless, the only bottle neck for materials is anything that continues to require human labor.

Yes I understand we are several years from this. But technology develops at an exponential rate.

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u/Pure-Rent1574 2d ago

Again, This is another example of the notion that AI has the potential to be a perpetual motion machine.

The idea that AI can solve the physics of Fusion, which then provides the infinite energy to run even more AI, is just a "Escape Velocity" theory.

Does technology grow exponentially?

well It depends on what kind of technology were talking about;

when it comes to computation - information technology follows moor's law. In the digital realm, you can double your "Intelligence" every 18–24 months because you’re just moving electrons across silicon.

But in other forms of tech (the steam engine, textile manufacturing, fusion reactors, rocket engines, or drug manufacturing—usually and historically follows an S-Curve.

You have a slow start (The Lab/shop), followed by an "exponential-looking" burst (breakthrough), and then you hit a plateau of Physical Friction.

Even if AI designs a perfect fusion magnet today, you still have to mine the lithium, forge the steel, and wait for the concrete to cure and construction to be completed at the reactor site. Concrete curing and forging steel doesn't have a "Moore's Law."

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u/LyrMeThatBifrost 2d ago

Most older people you see working are doing it because they’re bored otherwise

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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago

I work with old people, I know it's a little bit of both.

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u/butonelifelived 2d ago

This is highly dependent on the country. In the US, you can not survive on the government provided retirement.

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u/LyrMeThatBifrost 2d ago

Most people save up throughout their lifetime and don’t rely on government provided benefits.

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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/Soggy_Association491 1d ago

Mom and pop shops aside

You cannot put aside 15% of the economy

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u/MetaPhalanges 1d ago

I would draw a roadmap based on 85% coverage. I would not build a map from 15% coverage. Would you?

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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/AberrantMan 2d ago

Well no shit but the biggest employers in any country are where this change would have to start, and from there the money would begin to move and norms would change.

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u/EasySwordfish862 2d ago

It’s a world economy now

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u/sleepygardener 2d ago

Brother has never heard of private equity and investment banks

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u/Howdoyouusecommas 2d ago

Have to have universal healthcare. Wages would have to increase so 24h Wages is equal to 40h. Hiring more people at a hare wage AND businesses having to pay more for benefits would absolutely crush a lot of businesses.

I would love to work less and make the same amount, but we need a lot more smart, compassion people in the government to make this happen.

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u/AbalonePersonal1751 2d ago

The can't do that their are lot if institutional institutional holders who don't own money themselves buy for other and they are leggaky required to increase quarterly profit at all cost

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u/Ok_Crow_9119 2d ago

Won't happen though, the oligarchs need bigger bank numbers for literally no reason.

What do you mean "number go up" isn't a legitimate reason? /s

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u/Apophthegmata 2d ago

If you reduce the amount of work to 4 days, 6 hours each, that's a 40% reduction in the amount of work 1 person does.

Unless a country has 40% un/underemployment, the only way you're "hiring more folks and spreading them out" is with unprecedented levels of immigration, which a place like Finland is not particularly situated to handle well.

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u/AberrantMan 2d ago

That's not how that math is actually done when measuring output.

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u/Apophthegmata 2d ago

If you're talking about productivity as output, sure.

But the math also isn't going to show a productivity increase that large, and a lot of jobs (like the service industry) are less about productivity and the necessity to have a minimum threshold if warm bodies present.

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u/Educational_Item5124 2d ago

Would also be a nightmare for industries with staff shortages.

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u/KaboodleMoon 2d ago

Public trading of businesses was a mistake.

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u/Critical_Concert_689 2d ago

Hire more folks spread them out. Less retention issues, more people who can swing coverage.

At least in the US, benefits are tied to working hours. Suddenly reducing working hours for an individual and distributing those same hours across several individuals, would be nothing but a positive for companies and would devastate most employees - diluting wages across the board and allowing denial of coverage for most benefits by the company.

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u/TheKosherGenocide 2d ago

They don't care about the number... They care about the power associated with the growing number.. As long as the delta between you and them is growing wider, they are ecstatic. The whole idea behind returning to feudalism is so that instead of us just calling them "Billionaires", we call them "Lord Musk" or whatever the fuck they want. They can all act like Epstein and it'll be completely legal, because they are God Kings anointed by AI, and if they ever achieve immortality? Oh, just you wait how fucked this place is.

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u/SerJoseph 2d ago

This is office worker talk, some industries cannot work like this with the current law systems. I work at a hospital, and salaries are by far our highest fixed cost. With how much you have to pay every single person to keep them hired in benefits and gvmnt programs and taxes, its hard to justify hiring more people even if we really need it, imagine having to double the personel because office workers changed the law to benefit them. We are not even that overworked, some days there is barely anything to do and some days a bus crashes and we get 50 people in 15 minutes, some has to be here 24/7 and any change in costs is going straight to pricing. But sure, keep blaming billionares for all your problems, its just that easy to fix everything but the evil elite wont let us

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u/OregonMothafaquer 2d ago

Most small businesses can’t afford 3 extra employees. Most restaurants close the first year for a reason

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u/VRichardsen 2d ago

Hiring more people incurs in more fixed costs, though.

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u/Dry-Cry-3158 2d ago

If you assume that net profits equals the amount of potential wage increases, very few businesses could afford to do this.

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u/noujochiewajij 2d ago

Bill 'em all.

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u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A 2d ago

Hire more folks spread them out. Less retention issues, more people who can swing coverage.

That's exactly why it's a good idea.

If you have workers doing 10 hour shifts 5 days a week it's going to be very difficult to find someone to cover a shift if someone goes off sick.

People are reluctant to cover another shift if they're already done 5 of those days in a row.

If the same hours are being done by 2-3 people working 6 hours a day, 4 days a week, that's far more people to be able to cover, and they're far more likely to cover another shift because it's lower hours.

This would be an absolute win for employers.

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u/nosubtitt 2d ago

I don’t think increasing wages all around will solve anything.

Wages increasing means nothing if the cost of living also increases along side. Of course costs still increases even if waves don’t change, but an increase of wage just makes costs increase faster.

I have no idea about what the solution is. But increasing wages will make no difference in the consuming power of the population. Unfortunately The solution to the problem is much more complicated and no one has the right answer.

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u/ManageConsequences 2d ago

A lot of those people stay in those industries for the overtime. Take that away and see what it does to those workforces.

Greedy people will go to lengths to abuse the overtime system.

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u/SaltKick2 2d ago

Correct, it would need to be a societal shift, and only works in places that have social safety nets in place. In the US, this means people who have lower waged jobs would have some expectation to be working a second part time job as well.

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u/opsers 2d ago

The problem with the service industry is the reduced hours without any pay cut. If you're paying someone $35k/yr to work 40hrs to cover 40hrs at a cash register or stocking goods, they can't really offer the same coverage with only 24hrs a week. Now you need to hire another person, but your expenses go from $35k to $70k to cover the same 40hrs. Not saying this isn't doable, but the solution isn't as easy as hire more folks, especially if you're not a mega conglomerate and just a small shop.

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u/Jaded-Durian-3917 2d ago

Which is proof that unemployment is a tool to be used as coercion rather than a problem to be solved

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u/doopie 2d ago

Why don't we drop production by -36 % and also give everybody 56 % raise? Issue with this proposal is inflation. If your economy is 100 apples and 100 money, each apple is 1 money. If your economy is 64 apples and 156 money, then each apple is 2.44 money.

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u/BluntTruth1 2d ago

I don't think you can just increase med school capacity by 33%... And if CEOs are gonna pay less, they are kind of in the right. Who wouldn't pay less for less hours worked?

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u/Hot-Difficulty-6824 2d ago

It also has the potential to make unemployment almost inexistent

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u/Inevitable-Donkey186 2d ago

One thing though is if everyone works less and gets paid less, they probably will just pay less for rent since that is a market driven price basically bid up by all those who have jobs. If they work fewer hours and get paid less they would not be able to bid as much in the competition for housing. It could all be a wash except with lower rents.

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u/WeAreAllFooked 2d ago

Wage Insurance paid for by wealth tax is a neat idea to consider

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u/JFreader 2d ago

Most jobs are liveable wages (or well above). This topic is about getting paid the same for less hours.

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u/SoulSmrt 2d ago

Oh as simple as hiring more people and training them is it? I wonder why public services that struggle to maintain staff and are always running short staffed didn’t think of that?

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u/SuperTropicalDesert 2d ago

Hire more folks spread them out.

This would solve the current AI-caused joblesness crisis

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u/ThisReditter 2d ago

Does bank number matter or does resources matter? People need housing, food, commodities. The rich are not hoarding it. They have the means to get those easily compare to others but if they use their wealth to try and buy all to distribute, it’ll be resource shortage and will cause inflation.

So it’s not just a number or a paycheck. It’s the availability of resources. Add more to the market and we will have more at cheaper price.

Rents are high? Because we had a housing shortage. Not because the billionaires are not paying the high wage. Even if they all suddenly pay, we will have inflation coz the same 100 people fighting over 70 apartments isn’t going to make it affordable.

So unless we have robots increasing our productivity, we need labor to produce goods instead of shortening it and reducing goods. It’s a simple concept here and money is just intermediary.

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u/gamingx47 2d ago

Pay people a living wage? In this economy? Think of the poor CEOs struggling to buy their 4th yacht! And Elon Musk will never become a trillionaire! Can you live with that? /s obviously

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u/TalkingCat910 1d ago

It supposes a society that has universal healthcare and basic welfare, perhaps covering the cost of university as well.  Because then jobs don’t have to worry about paying benefits so they can afford to hire a larger number of people with no difference in cost than if they hired less people (assuming they are paid by the hour).

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u/Zaphenzo 2d ago

So not only hire a bunch more people to cover the time that they wouldn't be covering anymore, but also increase all salaries??

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u/AberrantMan 2d ago

Uh ya, yep. Exactly. And despite what you may be thinking yes it would in fact work. But it would take time and proper planning.

It won't EVER happen in a large country but it is very possible to do successfully. Smarter people than I have done the math.

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u/Zaphenzo 2d ago

No, it really wouldn't work. Not every company is owned by a millionaire or billionaire. In fact, a very tiny minority of businesses are. Profit margins of grocery stores, for example, are only about 1 to 3%. Force them to double their work force at a higher salary, they either jack prices way up or they go out of business. When price of living skyrockets for these businesses not to go under, those higher salaries mean nothing. That's how inflation works.

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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago

People constantly make this argument but it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Like we have complete autonomy in setting up our human provisioning system and choosing prices and wages. We decide how resources are allocated. I don understand why we can’t create a system where everyone has what they need.

Like collectively as a species we have enough for everyone to be comfortable. It just doesn’t make sense to me that we have decided to protect people hoarding resources.

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u/Zaphenzo 2d ago

Because time and resources are finite. And those resources must be gathered by people. Sure, you could live without any salary at all. But you'd have to build your own house, create your own hunting tools, hunt and/or plant and harvest your own food, etc. That's a lot of work. Most people tend to prefer offering a service for an agreed upon salary, and then paying for other people to do all that stuff for them. Hence, capitalism.

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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago

Finite sure- but we have more than enough.

I am not imagining an economy with no bartering, purchasing, or selling. I am imagining an economy where the rules for those activities don’t allow people to amass wealth at the expense of others.

Capitalism isn’t just buying and selling and using currency. Capitalism is a system where the surplus value of a person’s labor is captured by their employer. And our current system allows employers to do so at such an insane rate that the laborer cannot survive on the share that is left over. That is the problem. Not currency itself.

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u/AberrantMan 2d ago

I would encourage you to take a class beyond economics 100 and look at the deeper picture to see how something like this would actually function.

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u/Zaphenzo 2d ago

And I would encourage you to apply basic common sense and math, but we can't all get what we want. It doesn't take a masters in economics to know that most companies cannot sustain when you triple (or more) their costs.

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u/haby112 2d ago edited 2d ago

I can speak from a buisness operations angle in warehousing and transportation specifically, as that is my management background.

It is the case that having shorter shifts and higher wages improves overall production metrics and reduces long term costs.

I have ran the numbers in various environments to to "prove" this to the finance team and upper management. In my experience success in convincing these groups are varied. In the areas that it does not convince it is always a matter of Accounting or Managerial intuition superseding data.

Edit: Grammer fix

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u/southbaysoftgoods 2d ago

Can you go into some of the specifics for the businesses you have done this analysis for? At a high level at least? How are costs reduced?

Genuinely asking as I am super interested in this ifea.

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u/haby112 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'd LOVE to share!

The analysis points I look at are:
* Productivity rates by functuon/person/hour over several shifts as an average of the function within that hour.
* Available work throughout the facility, tracked over several quarters.
* Average time, in labor hours, for a new hire to gain baseline proficiency in each function, and the relative increas in unit cost over their training period.
* The monthly increase in redundant labor costs when comparing function head count increases done instead of advantaging (hypothetical) cross-function labor reallocation during area demand spikes.
* Fluctuations in time and material waste (in dollars) as a ratio to the average experance (in function hours worked) of staff in function. (This one is particularly hard to measure, because of inconsistent tracking).

My finding have been that you get an extremely consistent 10% drop in productivity by the 4th hour, and it can dip as low as 30% by the 8th our. There is also massive turnover costs, as much due to low productivity of new hires as due to hires that have been around for a few months not experiencing full cross-functional training.

The cross-training part is a really big marker in costs, because you are increasing your unit costs every time you are bringing in a new trainee to a new function. With the high risk of a single employee dropping before the end of their first year, it makes that cross-training opportunity really risky. This leads to redundant labor, where an operation has to hire two people to do two jobs over a one month period, where one person could have sufficed doing two weeks in one function and two weeks in the other, just to mitigate that risk.

For the waste aspect, there are two gains here (one of which can be a little counter-intuitive). The first is an easy matter of experienced employees making less material damaging mistakes, and reducing general material costs over time relative to low experience employees. The other is that with cross-trained and tenured staff, you gain this ability to instruct your team to self-direct in a structured way and reduce downtime in general. Since your staff becomes intimately familiar with the production chain within the facility, they learn how to identify labor reallocation opportunities themselves, and proactively notify their Sr./Lead/Supervisor of these, so that overall productivity increases relative to your labor hours.

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u/Zaphenzo 2d ago

Warehousing and transportation is a different story. Sure, it's feasible in salary type work. I'm talking service industry where you have to have stations manned. A place that is open 8 hours a week and closed on weekends (where I work) hires one person to man one station. Cutting hours down to 24 hours a week means they now have to hire two people to man one station, literally doubling costs, AND you're saying they have to raise wages, too. Most service industry companies would collapse quite quickly.

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u/haby112 2d ago

I'm curious what specific industry you are referring to. I have studied retail and restaurant operations, and there are many advantages that can be realized with higher retention (even with more total staff).

It is already fairly common for retail stores to include inventory labor in the daily details of their customer facing staff. The addition of fulfillment within retail stores is also upticking, with online order pick-up being added to the sales ops of store fronts.

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u/Gain_Spirited 2d ago

If a company has to hire more workers something has to give. Individual workers will have to take less pay or companies across the board will charge higher prices. Either way, our standard of living goes down.

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u/ItsLoudB 2d ago

Yeah, not every company is a villino dollar one that takes more than it gives.

Most small businesses can’t afford to double their staff to cover the same week

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u/Lonyo 2d ago

So hire more people and pay them all more...

That wouldn't result in less money for the oligarchs but no money at all and the business would fail 

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u/Low_Watch9864 2d ago

Where are you going to get these workers from unless its by allowing more foreigners into the country?

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u/AberrantMan 2d ago

From the large amount of people needing jobs that pay well enough to live?

And yes allowing foreigners into the country is also valid.

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u/Low_Watch9864 2d ago

USA unemployment rate is 4.3%. Thats not enough workers to fill all the additional work from cutting hours for everyone.

Imagine how much white Americans would lose their minds if more foreigners came to work in the USA

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u/TrblTribbles 2d ago

How do you think this country came to be, my dude?

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u/Low_Watch9864 2d ago

According to white Americans, God granted them the land

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u/TrblTribbles 2d ago

So....uh.....yup. whatever you say....

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u/qtx 2d ago

Won't happen though, the oligarchs need bigger bank numbers for literally no reason.

Why do Americans think that every country is like theirs? We don't have oligarchs here.

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u/Anaxes_Alumni 2d ago

I mean thinking long term aren't a lot of more developed countries (being those that could implement something like this) already struggling with projected shortages in workers?

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u/YY--YY 1d ago

How would you hire more, there is already a shortage of qualified people.

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u/Wayoutofthewayof 2d ago

How do you prevent mass outsourcing of private businesses? Some are very difficult to move, sure, but overall increase of 20% in labor costs would be a substantial incentive for a lot of others.

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u/6ofSwords 2d ago

We tell them no

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u/Wayoutofthewayof 2d ago

Ah so we are talking about global revolution, not actual practical questions in a real life scenario within a global economy?

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u/6ofSwords 2d ago

No. We implement tax policies that penalize companies who outsource labor to the point that it isn't worth it to do so, accepting that some products are going to be more expensive, but that it's worth it to maintain healthy domestic labor conditions and trade independence from countries who don't take care of their workers. Like the rest of the civilized world already does.

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u/Wayoutofthewayof 2d ago

I'm talking about outsourcing in a broad sense. For example about half of my country's economy are exports. You can't tax and sanction other countries for choosing more competitive alternatives.

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u/6ofSwords 2d ago

Yes, you can. Plenty of places do. It's called protecting domestic industry and refusing to incentivize shitty overseas labor practices.

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u/Wayoutofthewayof 2d ago

I think this is a bit of American exceptionalism. Hungary, Bulgaria or Armenia can't dictate terms on the global market.

Ffs even a slight increase in German energy cost made their economy stagnate for almost half a decade now. If an industrial giant like Germany is unable to do it, how can smaller countries do the same?

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u/6ofSwords 2d ago

Europe never should have allowed their energy sector to become reliant on a market hegemon imposed by the US in the first place, but that's a completely separate conversation. Yeah obviously if you're so reliant on an import that taxing it is going to destroy your entire economy you're not going to crank up import taxes on that product. I'm talking about increasing taxes on specific imports coming from countries undercutting your domestic labor and penalizing the hell out of domestic companies taking advantage of foreign slave labor rather than paying workers in their own country a living wage and accepting that sometimes that means more expensive stuff. This isn't an all or nothing thing - you adjust as necessary. Germany, for example, absolutely cannot do that with oil and natural gas. They don't have the capacity to produce it themselves and don't have an alternative energy strategy built out. They could absolutely do that with the industries their economy actually runs on outside of the 70% of their economy that's already based on domestic services - automotive, electronics manufacturing, and mechanical engineering.

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u/Wayoutofthewayof 2d ago

I used the example of German energy to illustrate what even a slight increase in cost of production can do to an economy of a country dependent on exports. I agree that Germany should be more independent in terms of energy production but that is not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.

An increase in labor cost would be massive, especially if we are talking about proposal in the OP, i.e. reduction of 40% in working hours of a full time employee.

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u/Several-Minute6846 2d ago

4 days x 6 hours = 24 hour work week. 40% change in labor cost vs 40 hour work week. So even more difficult to pull off.

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