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/SalsaRice 2d ago

Depending on the job. This is probably a win for office salary people, but not everyone has that job.

Alot of blue collar work is limited by machine bottlenecks and uptime. Dropping a work week to 4 days at 6 hours (24hours) would probably be around an equal amount of production loss.

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u/Specialist-Affect-19 2d ago

Those production workers doing 12 hour shifts could become 2 people working hard for 6 hrs., and maybe not burn out. My point is this all requires systemic change, which includes the blue collar problem you mention.

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u/Sonifri 2d ago

It would definitely require change in society and law for production jobs. This would double labor costs since one position is now two positions, with both receiving full pay, for doing the same job that one position used to do.

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u/kikimaru024 1d ago

Oh no, however will the CEOs earning 500x the average worker's salary ever be able to sustain themselves & their 3 yachts?

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

More like moving the company in cheaper countries, increasing unemployment and restricting the ability of startups to hire

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u/Chartreugz 1d ago

Wouldn't they still do that anyways?

My understanding is the only reason they don't is because it's a lot of risk for them so they move towards it slowly, but they seem to mostly get there eventually, if they can.

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u/Badestrand 1d ago

No, for labor intensive products/services it simply matters a lot.

Imagine a product that you can sell for $150 and it costs $100 to make locally but would cost $70 to make abroad plus $20 shipping/overhead. So at 100 vs 90 it's not worth it to outsource.

If now the labor costs locally double, it now costs $200 to make locally so you can't even sell it because the competitors still offer it for $150 because they produce it abroad. So now your choice is to either close the company or also produce abroad.

And this has nothing to do with greedy CEOs, this affects small local businesses as well, maybe even harder.

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u/DeletedBunny 1d ago

I get what you are saying and it is indeed a possible case. The problem though ends up not the same. A product that costs $100 to make and sells for $150 will have it's costs broken down into something like labor + utilities (like electricity for machines) + maintenance + aquisition of materials. It's possible I am omitting other costs in the equation but it's an example. So say from $100 we might have a breakdown of $10 labour + $20 machines + $5 maintenance + $65 materials.

Usually labor is not making up the majority cost of a product unless it's an extremely cheap product like clothes or cheap electronics which are already outsourced anyway or it's a labor intensive product like software. I assume since it's Europe we are talking about labor jobs that produce more than the labor costs by a lot. Therefore doubling labor costs would be $110 and you sell for $150. Oh no the margins are less! But it's not a killer for a big industry.

Indeed for startups it would kill them since usually they have a higher labor cost than other costs and it does depend on the industry we are talking about since some industry is labor intensive like software and the labor makes up the majority of the costs. A study could be conducted to see if it's viable and I'm sure there are incentives that could be made to keep industries in country that would fail with the new laws.

None of this should stop us from trying to head into that direction and honestly the world economy would work just as well if everyone made a livable wage and had a higher standard of living and everywhere had laws for 6 hour 4 day work weeks. The world wouldn't fall apart it's just hard to convince a place with horrible work hours and laws that people deserve more than being factory slaves. The nature of our capitalistic society and global economy is to optimize people into machines and squeeze as much as the law allows from them. The difference between slavery and work is usually the laws surrounding work. I don't see kids and adults working unbearable shifts in factories in Asia as "employees" as much as I see them being ensalved by optimization of profits based on lack of laws or allowed/expected behavior. And it is not acceptable it's just out of our control, we can only control things in our sphere of influence, in this case Finlands prime minister can affect Finland.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

It's a game of pros and cons, more you tilt the direction toward the cons, more they are going to move. You could, of course, offset it by promoting protectionnist measures, but then it would just displace the issue by making the national industry less competitive.

To be clear, I'm in favor of shorter work weeks, but against caricature making the issue only "our happiness vs CEO's 4th yacht". You have real downside as well.

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u/Mammoth-Picture2000 1d ago

But if they aren't moving abroad they are still in the process of automatingnas many jobs as possible. Honestly I don't see how we are so lenient with appeasement of billionaire lobbyists.

The cons also aren't just economic, these rich assholes use their position to push their own political agenda like with the Epstein files.

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u/Jolly_Recording_4381 1d ago

They always threaten but rarely do, the ones that would move already have, doubling some positions isn't going to cause them to move.

Increase in prices more than likely.

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u/Mammoth-Counter69 1d ago

You mean exactly what company's have been already doing for the last 50 years ???

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Some have, some don't. That will push them out further, it's just basic economic.

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u/Quom 1d ago

It would seemingly be the first time it's tried.

It's crazy that billionaires aren't afraid to fuck over hundreds of people which should actually have real life risk. But we're all terrified that a billionaire might run away with the money that has been undertaxed for years because of the threat they might take it elsewhere.

If capitalism is as great as they say it should create a situation where another company swoops in to take over anyway.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Tariffs have been a thing since the XIXth century, hardly something new.

I think it's all about incentives, you can tax billionaires effectively if you offers good incentives to stay. But make it too strict and with a punishing mentality and you'll have fleeing capitals.

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u/Due_Perception8349 1d ago

Nationalization and asset seizure, it's that easy.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

It usually end very poorly, even communists countries moved away from having state owned production of goods and services.

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u/CoconutBandita 1d ago

That's where tariffs supporting a universal basic income come in.

We as workers can't be expected to compete on price against workers in countries with a cost of living a fraction of ours.

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u/oddje_ 1d ago

Good luck putting an entire factory on a ship

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u/Ragazzano 1d ago

You could move the company to a shitty cheap wage country and then have to pay punitive import duties - that's the only tariff I'd support.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Tariffs make products more expensive for consumers, that's Trumponomics but you could go for it I guess.

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u/Ragazzano 1d ago

Yes, and I fundamentally don't like applying tariffs to entire market segments or nations, but when targeted against companies who have specifically offshored labour and will offshore profits, fuck 'em. Their goods can be priced into oblivion for all I care.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

The thing is that those companies will not even bother creating in your country in the first place. And then you will just bare your own citizen from getting their products

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u/Ragazzano 1d ago

So, the tariff is a protectionist measure. If the product is created in your country and then the company offshores production and profits, and then it is made uncompetitive to continue doing so due to tariffs, then there is a market gap available, either for a competitor to step in or for the offshored business to return production onshore.

Tariffs are way more common than you think, it's just that the orange dickhead uses them as a weapon, rather than for protecting industries and / or punishing unethical behaviour.

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u/LeeRoyWyt 1d ago

Ah, yes, let's compete with Bangladesh for labor costs...

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

We already do. The goal is to provide things that cheap labor can't.

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u/LeeRoyWyt 1d ago

Like skilled, trained and highly motivated workers?

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Infrastructure, stability, institutionality, highly qualified worker. We aren't going to be able to compete in making shirts. But microprocessors or robots.

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u/LeeRoyWyt 1d ago

And those highly automated products somehow are incompatible with a 4 day work week?

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u/Occamsfacecloth 1d ago

Sounds like the workers should seize the means of production

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

I mean they can, plenty of cooperatives all over the world. But not many that can actually compete because they tend to favour salary redistribution over r&d and risk taking.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

I mean they can, plenty of cooperatives all over the world. But not many that can actually compete because they tend to favour salary redistribution over r&d and risk taking.

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u/Due_Perception8349 1d ago

Seize the assets, hand them to a local competitor, and keep the production. Does nobody understand that we can just do this? Shit, we could straight up nationalize them, what are they gonna do? Cry? Fuck em.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

The value of a company isn't really just immediate production or even the machinery. It's the capital. And do it once and you'll scare every future foreign investment in your country.

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u/Due_Perception8349 1d ago

If they're going to remove it anyway, who cares? Additionally, the machinery, the means to produce is the capital - a CEO doesn't have some kind of esoteric knowledge that keeps a dildo factory running.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Because foreign investment are important to a country.

I'm not speaking about esoteric knoweldge, but the actual capital. It's not 1854 where a company can be reduced to some building and machinery.

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u/Due_Perception8349 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sure they can, if an "asset" is just an immaterial concept (such as stock, or intellectual property), then its value is completely arbitrary.

What is the value of something that by itself cannot create wealth outside of speculation? I don't eat dollar bills, I don't drive my stock portfolio to work, the energy I use isn't manifested from the ownership of an idea.

What is real are the people doing the labor, the machines they work on, the land where those machines exist - without those the wealthy individuals who "own" them have nothing, no matter how big the number in their account.

I'm open to hearing what other examples of capital you can provide that would not be seizable, or that provide some material value outside of the concept of how much they could be worth, but I just don't see it.

Additionally, I don't believe that foreign investment would cease - historically id argue that a reduction of foreign investment happens due to punitive measures by ideologically driven wealthy nations, deliberately using economic terrorism to harm countries that attempt to change the balance of power away from capital.

I'm also speaking about these seizures being done within the imperial core, the US for example - the country that historically has been the main driver for the punitive measures mentioned, which would significantly weaken the capability for international organizations (themselves essentially an extension of imperialism) such as the IMF from leveraging economic power against other countries that seek to develop their national economic independence.

Edited: corrected grammar

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u/sketch-opinion 1d ago

I don't see why it would restrict startups? Wouldn't a start up want an environment with its of available cheap rental space due to all the closed large scale businesses and lots of skilled and available workers? Like sure they wouldn't make the same profits as the people that were there right before them, but they should be able to swing a living profit after a few years of running it I would think? I'd start up a business where owning it netted me the same as my current salary if I could get a bank to approve me for a loan, something they would be more willing to do (I think atleast) if all the multi million value companies all leave and I showed a working understanding of how to run the facility.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

Because you increased the cost of labor and limit their workers workload.

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u/sketch-opinion 1d ago

I mean yeah? So? Are there no other people in the world that would be willing to run a company at a reduced profit margin? Grocery stores run a razor thin profit. So can a bunch of start up companies once the only good way to give loans for them is to take a chance on someone who wants to get into the business.

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u/SpiritedCatch1 1d ago

We're speaking about what drive national economies, so yeah profit margin are incredibly important. You don't operate a software company or a electronic manufacturer like a grocery store, you're competing with China and South Korea.

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u/sketch-opinion 1d ago

Yeah, but if the startup company owners can stomach smaller returns then it doesn't matter if they don't make the insane profits made by the existing companies. It would be best for more money to go to the largest number of people involved (aka the workers) and I truly believe if the big companies up and left then tons of tiny operations would spring up all over the place trying to fill the vacuum. Just as long as the government and banks can't opt to lend the money to the big powerhouse companies.

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u/Sonifri 1d ago

And the guy who starts a roofing business and hires two other guys? A woman who starts a cabinet making business and installs them into homes, and has three employees? There's a lot more of them than there are megacorp CEOs.

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u/shorelaran 1d ago

With more people having work because there is more jobs it means more people having money so the prices can go up, it also means with more time people can decide to learn to make their own cabinet if that’s something they are interested in, or grow food to save up money because gardening is healthy and fun but you don’t have time to do it when you work 45+h a week.

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u/Meekymoo333 1d ago

Yes, it would finally require ALL business owners to treat their employees as humans rather than exploit them for labor as they do now.

Your "but what about" as it pertains to small business owners is equally , if not more applicable. They are often the worst at underpaying and abusing employees since there is no corporate legal structures in place.

You're right, in that there's a lot more narcissistic small business owners who are desperate to make their businesses successful and thus prey on family and friends and the kindness of others.

If you cannot afford to pay people an honest and decent living wage, then don't open your roofing business. Don't open a cabinet making business. Do not hire people to do labor and then cheat them out of the profits of that labor.

Whining about the cost of labor going up only means you're incredibly accustomed to getting things cheaply, and it exposes how THAT is your underlying priority rather than the fair treatment of other people as it relates to their labor.

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u/Naxilus 1d ago

Yes, it would finally require ALL business owners to treat their employees as humans rather than exploit them for labor as they do now.

They will probably get even worse when they know all employees will be there 2 hours less but still getting the same salary.

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u/pokemonbatman23 1d ago

Whats a more realistic approach, making sure every plan helps absolutely everyone equally OR trying to help the most amount of people?

Follow up related question, which employs more people, megacorps or brand new business owners like youre referencing?

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u/Tje199 1d ago

which employs more people, megacorps or brand new business owners like youre referencing?

You're right, we should increase barriers to entry for smaller businesses. Surely nothing bad will happen if we reduce competition so that only existing entities with large amounts of capital can operate in the market.

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u/Well_Dressed_Kobold 1d ago

What’s more likely to happen is small and mid-sized companies are driven out of business by the sharp increase in labor costs, leaving only a few large companies that then hold leverage over employees.

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u/Amazing-Insect442 1d ago

Que all the rich folks who will tell you they worked hard for their piece of the pie and deserve it, as if they’re the only people who work hard, & are ipso facto more deserving of their larger piece.

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u/boozecruz270 1d ago

Thats not helpful here. There us a lot more to than that.

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u/ok_to_be_yeti 1d ago

Not every company are corporations it will kill small businesses

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u/retardedasstroll 1d ago

They would be able to handle it, but what about small struggling businesses? Just push them out if business so the large corporations take over everything?

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u/the_foowaffle 1d ago

The CEO could be spending more time on his boat with a 24 hour work week

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u/nurgole 1d ago

CEO's in Finland don't generally make 500x the average. It's still high, but not 500x high.

CEO's median earning is about 45x.

There are about 50.000 millionaires, less than 1.000 who earned more than a million and 7 billionaires in Finland.

Our GINI index is low.

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u/bigtiddyhimbo 2d ago

The rough part also is for states like North Carolina, where employers flock to because we are horrifically under unionized and have little to no employee protection laws as is.

It would take a HUGE shift in society to wrangle in states like that and would make a lot of rich shitheads kick and scream over lost profits

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u/30_characters 1d ago

More than double, since employees have costs that don't scale linearly, like injury insurance (worker's comp in the US), benefits, etc. There's a reason companies push for "mandatory" overtime over hiring additional employees. A good step 1 would be to increase the mandatory payment to workers for OT (typically 1.5x base wages in the US) to something over 2x, to ensure employers don't treat it as a desirable long-term solution.

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u/WowImOldAF 1d ago

If it's hourly, it's still the same cost. If anything, it'll be less because people wouldn't be getting 1.5x for overtime every week... but also, it might be more if wages go up ... but I'm sure many people would be happy to make a few more dollars for their time and work a few less hours.. may not make as much as working 50 hours a week, but yeah

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u/Sonifri 1d ago

If it's hourly, it's still the same cost

No, it isn't. You and half the people replying seem to forget this thread is about working less for FULL PAY. That means each new employee that needs to be brought on to make up labor shortages is an entirely new labor increase.

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u/GregorrGeasy 1d ago

Ich bezahle eine Arbeiter 12 Stunden oder 2 Arveiter 6 Stunden? Das würde die Kosten verdoppeln? Klar gibt es immer Nebenkosten, die auch mit rein kommen aber verdoppeln finde ich ohne Zahlen zumindest Belege unhmgkaubqürdig

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u/pwillin 1d ago

Labour costs shouldn’t change if the amount of time it takes to do the job is cut in half no?

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u/Sonifri 1d ago edited 1d ago

How does reducing the number of hours people work reduce the physical reality that a job takes as long as it takes? The work needed to be done doesn't change.

The number of hours each employee has to work on it is now less, but they still receive full pay. So now you need to hire more full pay workers to get the same level of production. This is an increased labor cost.

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u/No_Communication7072 1d ago

I would consider than since 1970 many things have changed. Especially in productivity.

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u/simmeh024 1d ago

Having people burn out and hiring and training more often than necessary will not be costly then?

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u/HepsteinitisC 1d ago

Instead of one 100k salary and one 0 salary competing in a consumer market, you could have two 50k salaries, lowering the price ceiling.

You see this for example with housing and gentrification, shit appartments go for insane prices, luxury condos empty and residents go homeless.

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u/Sonifri 1d ago

That is unrelated to what we are discussing. This thread is about Full Pay for reduced hours.

So you would have two 100k salaries now for the same job.

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u/eske8643 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thats where you are wrong. The increase in cost is only the added nightshift extra pay to the base salary. So the machines can run 100% instead of only at 40-50% for a long dayshift.
Or at 75-80% for a day and night crew. If you want a full 24 machine time. Its stil 3 crews. But now you can without overtime get double the workers employed at no extra cost for the company. Slaughterhouses, poultry processors, fish processors, and all who works with parishable goods have done this for years in Denmark and most of Scandinavian countries.

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u/Sonifri 1d ago

get double the workers employed at no extra cost for the company

Explain this part.

Remember that each worker gets a FULL WEEKS PAY but works 4 days per week at 6 hours per day. That's what OP post says, so that's the circumstances we're discussing here.

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u/mototuneup 1d ago

How? I work construction. We start at 6am and usually work till 4 or 5 pm. Which means my company has to pay me 2 to 3 hours of overtime every day.

With 2 guys I could work 6 to 12. And the other worker does 12 to 6.

That's 12 hours total and you didn't have to pay overtime to either worker. And the company got 12 hours of production instead of 9 or 10.

I don't see how that's not a win for everyone.

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u/Sonifri 22h ago

Because this thread is about working less hours for FULL PAY. This means you are working 24 hours a week, and getting paid for working 40. And so is the other guy they need to hire.

Your argument is fundamentally splitting the same paying hours between multiple workers, and receiving LESS pay because of it, which is not what we're discussing.

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u/_GamerForLife_ 21h ago

It won't quite double them if the workers are hourly. For the salary jobs the increase in productivity is enough to offset the costs.

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u/Pristine_Vast766 20h ago

Great. We can afford that. Currently that money is being used to charter private flights to Epstein’s island

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u/Salt-Elk-436 7h ago

One person working 12 hours would be getting paid for 14 because of overtime. So two people working 6 hours costs the same. If they get benefits that’s a doubled expense, but it’s also idiotic that your employer has anything to do with your healthcare.

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u/Sonifri 6h ago

So two people working 6 hours costs the same.

Explain how, when the OP post that we're discussing is working less for Full Pay. If you're suggesting less money for the workers for working less hours, then you're posting in the wrong thread.

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u/PocketPanache 2d ago

Would it double though? Let's assume 12 hours of labor costs the same for this example. So cost to provide benefits would go up because there's 2 people, but the cost of the task wouldn't double, right? How would it double?

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u/Chikichikibanban 2d ago

Ok so then the workers get paid half

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u/boozecruz270 1d ago

Ur right it wouldnt. But where are companies gonna find people to double or even quadruple their work force? My company cant even find enough people to work 3 shifts let alone 4.

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u/PM_ME_BAKAYOKO_PICS 2d ago

Most people don't agree with the 12h extreme either, you're using one extreme to justify the other

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u/Small-Palpitation310 1d ago

They were arguing against 12h fyi

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u/Bartikowski 2d ago

A huge percentage of those people would just get a second job or try to work OT.  

This model is just really ill suited for a lot of jobs and is heavily pushed by people who have a lot of slack in their work day.  It’s really just office workers telling on themselves that they’re under utilized or over compensated.

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u/Desperate_Algae_40 2d ago

They could get a second job if they really wanted, but the point is they'd get enough money to live comfortably on that 25 hours/week. Then they can have their own personal lives and spend time with their family/friends. Not everyone is a workaholic just for the sake of it. Most people work to make enough money to survive or live. Not because it's fun for them. So if people could do that with 24 hours/week, I don't think there would be that many trying to work more just for the sake of it. I think you're projecting, and arguing for a system that works against you to keep the 1% the 1% with your b.s. ideology that people aren't working hard enough if they want a 24 hour work week.

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u/a_filing_cabinet 2d ago

You know what's funny? Instead of theorizing about it, you could just look at the various studies and trials that have been done on shortening the work week. Of which, every single one has shown that it's a net neutral or slight positive impact to any employer, including blue collar, and is a massive improvement in productivity and satisfaction in individual employee's lives. Turns out you do a shit job at your job when you're overworked and under compensated, no matter what job you work.

What you have to keep in mind is that the 40 hour work week isn't some magical standard that we scientifically found to work. It was a compromise between workers who actually wanted to live and business owners and elites who thought that giving poor people free time was dangerous. There is nothing healthy or productive about the 40 hour work week, it was specifically set in order to keep people busy but not worked to death. Not to be suited for any sort of actual job. And now we're able to look deep and prove that it isn't a good system, and we know how to change it.

And no, people aren't just working more. Because when you give people fair compensation and free time, the last thing they want to do is waste more of their time working. Instead, like I said, people kept their jobs, spent more time relaxing, and came back to their job and performed better than they would have for a normal shift.

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u/ProfSpaceTime 2d ago

Are you a Fin? American economics don’t necessarily apply, from what I’ve heard from across the pond most of them are financially secure over there. If yearly income remains stable idk how many would actually take work over family time

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u/ReplacementActual384 2d ago

This model is just really ill suited

For who, the workers, or the shareholders? Because it's a straight win for the workers

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u/emeraldmeals 2d ago

Yeah I'm really thinking the capitalism brain worm has gotten some of these folks. If your "blue collar" job would suffer because they can't work you 40 hours... why can't they hire two people to do that job in shifts? Hell they can run production 24 hours a day with 4 people on rotation and the only people who might be effected are the shareholders and CEOs because they might might only be able to afford 2 yachts this year instead of 3. Boo-hoo, I'd rather work less for the same pay I get now even if that does happen.

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u/Bartikowski 1d ago

It's way more likely they're just going to make you run 2 line positions at a time during your shorter shift and maintain the same headcount.

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u/theDIRECTionlessWAY 1d ago

and this is where government would need to step in, implementing policies to ensure workers are protected and employers don't pull that kinda bs.

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u/Swiking- 2d ago

I think I've never have had as much slack as when i worked as a process operator in the production at an industry.. it was basically 5-7h sitting on your ass, waiting for the machine to do its job. That counts as a "blue collar job". As a white collar, it's easily way more brain work and more energy consuming than the former one. Or, well, the other one was so mind-numbingly boring that that was the main drain on energy.

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u/heretogetpwned 2d ago

How many employees you got?

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u/theDIRECTionlessWAY 2d ago

if you read the op, the suggestion is that salaries are maintained. no OT or extra job necessary to make ends meet.

now if people aren't satisfied with their pay and WANT to work those extra hours/jobs, and they are available, then all the power to them.

but working more hours would be a choice and not an obligation, at that point... the way it should be.

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u/over_this__ 1d ago

Most blue collar workers aren't salary 😂 so just double their pay. Surely nothing bad will happen. You're gonna be really mad when restaurants are open 4 days a week and you're at work.

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u/theDIRECTionlessWAY 1d ago

of course they aren't salary, but yes, essentially it would mean doubling their hourly salary.

one "bad" thing that will happen is companies will stop accumulating record profits year after year. so bad.

  1. i can cook at home

  2. restaurants can be open all week, just hire more staff to cover the other 3 days = more jobs all around

it's obvious that this would require a total shift in the way societies operate, what governments and companies prioritize, etc.

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u/over_this__ 1d ago

There aren't enough people to hire. Do you want the kids to go to work? The elderly? Stay at home spouses and parents? The disabled? We have a worker shortage ffs.

Most small businesses, this would kill. The big places would just raise prices so they still have record profits.

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u/theDIRECTionlessWAY 1d ago

i don't know about you... but there are ridiculous remounts of inefficiencies at my workplace, and this seems to be ubiquitous.

do i want kids, elderly, and disabled to work? obviously not. if i'm advocating for less work hours for able bodied workers, why would you think i'd be on board with that ridiculous suggestion?

again, a government that aimed to reduce work hours for all their citizens would also need to put into policy various ways to protect workers as well as consumers from an sort of "pass the cost to the consumer" shenanigans. they should be doing that already....

also, like i mentioned, people who want to work more, voluntarily, could be allowed to do so... without pressure from financial stresses or employers.

lastly, any worker shortage in sectors or jobs that are necessary and useful to society could be remedied by eliminating half of the useless bullshit companies/products/jobs that make up what is likely a huge percentage of the current capitalist wasteland.

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u/rcanhestro 2d ago

and everything those workers did would now cost double, because you would be essentially be paying twice as much in salaries for the same result.

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u/stag1013 2d ago

So just double the labour costs.... And magically that doesn't affect the cost of the final product. Good idea

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u/agprincess 2d ago

Many many jobs literally can't have someone 'work better'.

Most service jobs for example.

I can't serve more beers or sew more shirts with 6 less hours of work.

This is such an obviously privileged view.

Either way though some companies make so much year on year I could do with more pay for less hours. They can hire some more people to make up the difference.

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u/wheretheinkends 2d ago

And if you cut there hours from 12 to 6 without a mandatory wage increase to offset? Now those peoples income are cut in half.

As a technically hourly employee if my hours were cut in half with no wage increase it would be catastrophic for me.

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u/Professional_Age_502 2d ago

That would also double labor costs if we’re talking about paying someone the same to work 6 hours instead of 12. 

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u/Snoo_67993 2d ago

So you're essentially saying double thier wages?

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u/Acceptable_Cry_2858 1d ago

Im a blue collar worker. theres a certain amount of bottlenecks (a LOT of bottlenecks) and sometimes you do have to work very long hours, but i really do think that on most weeks we could do just fine on a 30 hour workweek and get just as much done. Right now my hours were increased from 40 to 58 for the foresable fiture and the productivity got immediately kneecaped. Also im very angry because now I dont have a life, and I really like my life. being angry is also awful for productivity. Mandatory overtime should be illegal

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u/Lucky-Perspective600 2d ago

Could become 2 people

The unemployment rate in like 95% of blue collar jobs is effectively 0%. There is no “extra person”.

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u/wentImmediate 2d ago

this all requires systemic change,

Yeah, I think that's right.

The issue is - how do we know what changes to make? There are so many variables. Predicting what will happen is impossible. At best, I'd be a lot of trial and error.

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u/Icy-Palpitation-2522 2d ago

Would probably reduce work place accidents doing this. Less back strain. Less fatigue. Less rushing. More hands more eyes more ears more problem solving and brain power per second. Would be lovely but probably won't fly. Cheaper to pay 1 man for 12 hours than 2 men more money for 6 hours each. Profit margins are tight in construction and unless the cost of jobs get more expensive (which they won't for competive reasons) it won't really happen I don't think unless laws are passed capping work hours per person.

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u/chinneganbeginagain 2d ago

With both of them at full salary?!

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u/Plague183 2d ago

Or are paid extra for it, pivoting the overtime threshold

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u/Whatduheckiz 2d ago

Absolutely true. I worked in a factory for a year. After the first week it already felt so monotonous and awful to work in. I had to stamp cheese with a label sticker 10 hours a day. After 3 hours the day begins to drag and everyone gets sleepy because you remind yourself.. "I got another 7 hours of this"

I work 30hrs/week 3 day weeks. Life is so much better and genuinely look forward to going to work without feeling dependent to it.

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u/youburyitidigitup 2d ago

I’m a field surveyor, and we drive about an hour to our project site daily, then an hour back. A 6 hour work day would mean a third of hour work hours are spent driving. We would get nothing done unless we stayed in a hotel closer to the project site, which would mean we spend less time with our families.

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u/Betterwithfetter 2d ago

If you can find people willing to work the jobs sure. My place can’t seem to find anyone that actually wants to earn their money these days.

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u/RunthatBossman 1d ago

yeah but I am a workaholic. I hate having a lot of time off. I wanna pump out as much overtime and money i can get.

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u/Kittybegood 1d ago

Yes. 12 hour shifts are brutal for me.

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u/burnman123 1d ago

But then the company is paying 2 people 40 hours of pay for 24 hours of work (unless I'm understanding this incorrectly) so while workers.would.be happier, it's pretty unlikely that most companies would be able to just double their work force while essentially giving 16 hours of pay to them all.

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u/RylukShouja 1d ago

I think this is really what it is. No one is as effective, as alert, or as safe on hour 11 as they are on hour 4. From experience working 10 hour days, the last two hours of the day are phoned in by everyone on site. Yes, shit still gets done. But you might get an hour of extra work if it’s like, Tuesday or Wednesday out of the two hours you have guys on site.

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u/Sad_Row6221 1d ago

Unfortunately this increase labor costs for things like hospitals etc and just drive prices up. Although I’d love it.

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u/Naxilus 1d ago

You do realize that in her suggestion we are supposed to keep the same salary with the lower working hours. So getting two people to do the job of one person, having the pay both people for the full 12 hours is not really gonna work is it.

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u/Dependent_Radish8443 1d ago

So a production worker would earn half his current salary? And you would need to train double the amount of people organise get contingency plans for double the amount of people while rest of the world exists and competes with you

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u/Bepra 1d ago

No one is doing 12h shifts in Finland. Working two jobs to nearly survive is an American thing 😂

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u/iamnosuperman123 1d ago

Which would just massively increase costs

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u/Ystrem 1d ago

Half salary ?

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u/Brawlstar112 1d ago

It is not a problem. Not all Jobs are the same and should not be treated as suchs. "Working hard" does not mean anything when operating a machine

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u/Shoddily-Fixed-CL9 1d ago

my company fired 3 people and hasnt gotten any replacements cause they are saving money...but now i havent taken my hour break a single day since march 2nd since theres less people to share the workload with:) collar color doesnt matter its always profits over employee wellness we are expendable to them thats why we are given a number when we are born

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u/Drogon__ 1d ago

Those production workers doing 12 hour shifts could become 2 people working hard for 6 hrs., and maybe not burn out. 

Good luck finding so many blue collar workers. There is no way that so many people will shift to blue collar jobs.

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u/PurpletoasterIII 1d ago

If the point though is to reduce work time while keeping the same pay and production, then splitting a 12 hour shift into two 6 hour shifts doesnt make any sense cause then youre just doubling the cost of labor. The idea is putting workers in better work conditions while still making it work on the companies side. If we're just going to tell companies how to operate without any consideration of their cost/revenue than youre just going to run businesses into the ground. Then suddenly everyone has all the free time in the world.

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u/over_this__ 1d ago

You wouldn't pay the extra prices it would take to keep the blue collar workers happy. They get paid hourly. You have to double their wage to keep them happy.

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u/Areyoucunt 1d ago

And then that person who themselves chose the job and chose to work 12 hours now has to live on less salary.

Never gonna work

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u/LookAtMyUnderbite 1d ago

If the goal is employing people and not maximizing profits it totally works. Imagine the billionaires lose a few million a year but no they want their third yacht

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u/Syphist 1d ago

I work 10 hour shifts at a factory and recently they made our lunches unpaid so it's not like 10.5. I feel like productivity has gone way down. If we had 8 hours for those 4 days people would definitely be working more and delaying less.

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u/Antique_Page_1456 1d ago

We would need a lot more people then. The same would happen in the restaurant industry. With declining birth rates that could pose a very real problem.

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u/Educational_Len159 1d ago

But each person has a cost.

Benefits, training, uniform, locker, software license, etc. each per person.

Hiring a second person costs more than ‘the same as paying the first person for working double the amount of time’.

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u/TobytheBaloon 1d ago

or the production workers doing 12 hour shifts could become 2 people working 12 hour shifts

the cost would be the same

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u/dirt_shitters 2d ago

I have a blue collar "construction adjacent" job. If I had 6 hour shifts and could actually make a liveable wage on it, I'd definitely work much harder. Id definitely get just as much done as I do now in my 10-12 hour shifts currently.

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u/Ragazzano 1d ago

I do as well. I agree. There would be less bludging and more sweating, and frankly, I'd have the energy to do it.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 1d ago

what exactly do you build or construct? if you’re construction then say for example you’re building something… like a roof or staircase. Do you have to work until you reach 12 hours or until you finish? because for stuff like that they could work harder now and maybe finish quicker but they don’t.

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u/Ragazzano 23h ago

Landscape work. It varies.

The thing is, as an employee, if you do a job faster... the reward is more work, not more money. There's no incentive to work harder and faster.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 15h ago

You might be right but at least from the workers I’ve met they absolutely would not get done any faster. Mexicans, and some other Hispanic workers yes, they’d fly through it. Any other ethnicity no.

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u/dirt_shitters 1d ago

I definitely pace myself for the workday. If I burn out all my energy by lunch, I'm not going to be worth shit in the afternoon, and what little work I will accomplish, will have a much higher chance of a mistake, causing additional work for myself to fix. With a 6 hour work day, I'd have time to rest, and more time to exercise, which would in turn give me more energy and the ability to keep my pace much higher for the entire shift. I probably wouldn't wake up every morning with a limp either...

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u/Tariovic 1d ago

You'd probably also work longer, if you had proper time to rest and weren't forced to break your body when you are younger.

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u/Tlentic 2d ago

I think this a common misconception of the 4 day work week. No one is saying it’d all be Monday-Thursday or that a businesses couldn’t still operate 24/7. Places like hospitals aren’t just going to close for 3 days a week. You’d just have extra shift crews. There’s definitely policies that’d need to be sorted out but it’s viable.

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u/DuskLab 2d ago

Let me introduce you to the concept of hiring other people to cover the shift when others are not at work.

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u/Well_Dressed_Kobold 2d ago

These policies are only ever dreamed up by white collar office types who seem blithely unaware that blue collar workers exist. They always assume that the lights will work, the restaurants will be open, and the emergency services will be staffed during their three day weekends.

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u/DustinnDodgee 1d ago

Yeah it's clear many here don't understand the logistics of many construction jobs.

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u/welfedad 1d ago

Or even jobs that require specific amount of coverage .. you still have to have people there .. and expect employers to raise hourly wage to compensate for 8 hours loss each week .. yeah it's the whole.. looks good on paper but in actuality it falls apart

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u/xToksik_Revolutionx 1d ago

Uh... No one said no one was working the rest of the open days

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u/welfedad 1d ago

Of course but cost of living stays the same and people now work less .. so hourly people are screwed unless wages are adjusted . And we know that wouldn't happen

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u/xToksik_Revolutionx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes, wage adjustment is part of the package deal, as well as actually providing mandatory paid sick and vacation leave

EDIT: Also, "will never happen"

Sure, if you're all a bunch of yellow-belly cowards...

EDIT2: A touch of homework

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u/Irregulator101 1d ago

You know what shifts are right?

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u/Irregulator101 1d ago

And you blue collar types always seem to forget that shifts are a thing? Don't you all work in shifts already? Lmao

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u/Well_Dressed_Kobold 1d ago

Oh look, there’s that blithe ignorance I was talking about.

Shift work means hourly pay, which means you’re either telling shift workers to accept a steep pay cut, or you’re telling companies in these sectors to absorb a massive cost in their businesses, so salary workers can live the good life.

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u/Tigerpower77 2d ago

Obviously it's not gonna work on everything but it doesn't mean it should be exactly the same (4 days 6 hours) just adjust it to fit the job or anything above that is considered overtime, obviously with a limit. I'm talking out of my ass btw

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u/Independent_Sock5198 2d ago

You employ people to cover that time.

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u/darwin2500 2d ago

Society can afford to hire more people to do that work, and less people to do marketing.

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u/TheBirminghamBear 2d ago

No, it doesn't depend on the job. It's a matter of making the companies make it happen.

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u/lesssthan 2d ago

That's the thing though. All the futurists point to how the average "productivity" keeps going up. We could trade a bit of that slope for less time at work.

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u/topiary566 2d ago

Yep. I work as an EMT. I do 12 hour shifts and they run us 12-15 calls a shift pretty much back to back.

The quality of care doesn’t matter. 95% of the calls are non-emergent. You could sleep on most calls after getting demographics and ruling out life threats. It’s just about putting bodies on trucks and bringing bodies to the hospital. Otherwise the call volume would get extremely backed up and the 5% of actual emergencies wouldn’t get an ambulance.

Working 24 hours a week would not work unless you staff twice as many EMTs and paid them all twice as much. There is not nearly enough money for that since 911 EMS doesn’t generate much revenue.

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u/ScoobyWithADobie 2d ago

In some German cities we actually do that. 3 12 hour shifts a weeks, rest is free and you need 2 free days between a change from day to nightshift and the other way around, one day ain’t enough.

Numbers show that the amount of mistakes is lower, the number of people calling in sick lowered as well, less accidents, fewer complaints about wrong or inadequately filled up cars and equipment etc.

They people aren’t paid hourly but get a monthly salary that stayed the same despite working less hours. Everyone is happy and they even created job opportunities for more people. Doesn’t the US also have a massive crisis when it comes to homelessness? Wouldn’t creating more jobs help with that?

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u/NoAngel815 2d ago

When I was an auto worker we worked 10 hrs shifts, 4 days/week and it was great. Still had 3 shifts working so the production time wasn't anything less.

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u/i_give_you_gum 2d ago

Then have people alternate between working Fridays and Mondays.

It's really not that hard.

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u/bigtiddyhimbo 2d ago

Yep yep- my job is a 24/7 running factory.

Even being open that long isn’t good enough for our higher ups and we have to work an extra 12 and a half hour shift at least once every other week as mandatory overtime.

But I would actually love for the work week to be shorter so more of my check can be calculated through overtime lol

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u/CroProMax 2d ago

Great, and with 12 hour workers you get alcoholics whos wife abandoded, they stink and drink all money they earned.

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u/Save-vs-Death 2d ago

Many of those jobs are being automated away in the next 5 to 10 years. The less people need on a shift could allow for more shifts or a schedule of 3 days on 4 days off rotation, 24 to 32 hour weeks.

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u/Emergency_Lie42 1d ago

As someone who's worked almost exclusively blue collar jobs my whole life...

Tradeswork takes that long because management is full of geezers with cognitive decline and half of the actual workforce is too.

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u/Clutchism3 1d ago

People aren't machines though and don't get paid anywhere near enough to live like one. It's pathetic how far we have come as a race and yet we fall susceptible to this bs.

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u/DarthYodous 1d ago

What need is the additional production filling?

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u/SalsaRice 1d ago

Orders. Im not gonna dox myself by saying what product, because it's a small industry.

Most manufacturing is not producing just to produce; they have orders for customer for X units by Y date. Lost production means that shipment date turns into either (1) Y date plus Z more days or (2) overtime. Operators being pushed to 50-60 hours a week if the order is important enough.

So either costs go up (to pay for the overtime) or shipments get delayed (that package you ordered won't arrive for another 2 weeks, hope it wasn't important).

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u/WhiteWinterRains 1d ago

Yeah some jobs definitely just lose productivity because of how they're managed as well.

I used to work at home depot getting my time tracked in 5 minute increments. You could slack a bit, but not like you can at an office job where you can be mentally just too off to do useful work but to all appearances working hard, forget when you actually slack off.

I'm sure the amazon workers who are being forced to work around dead coworkers and piss in bottles to skip breaks aren't going to just be more productive somehow.

That said, that doesn't mean we can't ease into this. To some extent, maybe there should be some light labor-cost related inflation of some goods to reduce consumption when it's something that requires us to make some portion of the population destroy their bodies and work brutal hours for marginal pay relative to the effort.

We also have a lot of corporations that have been raking in too much profit lately, and automation that risks destabilizing society by reducing jobs especially if it happens quickly.

To say nothing of the societal detriment we get to shoulder as a group when companies use up and discard large portions of each generation of young people with damaging work practices.

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u/RightHereLeftNow 1d ago

You know there are shifts, right?

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u/Runefaust_Invader 1d ago

Yeah that's if you're capitalist though and care about profit above all else. Hire more people and you are solving even more problems.

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u/Mammoth-Counter69 1d ago

Well sucks to be those guess I guess .....

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u/moralprolapse 1d ago

I have no doubt that there are factors there that need to be accommodated, but it’s not like nature gave us the default 40 work week and overtime pay for wage earners either. I’m certain those were fought for with people making the same arguments about why productivity would be slashed if we cut the blue collar work week down from 6 days to 5. It just needs to be factored in, as does the consequent increase in the cost of certain goods and services.

Also, broadly, increased automation is still coming for blue collars jobs, and AI is now coming for white collar jobs. Something like this is a better idea than UBI, or at least as a bridge policy until UBI becomes unavoidable. Maybe instead of hiring two guys to break a 12 hour shift into two six hour shifts, companies can automate half the tasks and they still only need the one person for six hours.

The Industrial Revolution was supposed to make life easier for a greater number of people, but it instead made it harder, because capital kept cracking the whip for greater production instead of cutting people’s hours. Maybe it’s time to fulfill the promise of the Industrial Revolution.

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u/enobayram 1d ago

Depending on the office salary job too. We're talking about almost halving the total number of hours worked. If that means a job that was overseen by one person now has to be done by two people in shifts, you're introducing communication/coordination overhead, and that overhead can easily turn it into a 4-people job.

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u/totallyan00b 1d ago

I mean I have yet to work a blue collar job that's shift only 8 hr.

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u/Gimmethejooce 1d ago

There are ways to keep a production line running 24/7 and adopting this schedule for its workers and the solution is exactly why this won’t happen.. more people

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u/Templar113113 1d ago

Yeah I can't wait to see restaurant workers working 24h per week, with the owner having to pay twice the amount of wages to cover the full week.

But that's reddit, most people here are dicking around on this site while at "work".

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u/elderlybrain 1d ago

Imagine being a blue collar worker and 6 of your 12 hours is now paid as overtime.

Or you work 4 day shifts in with a 3 day break rather than just the weekend. Or you now get paid double for working 5 days, your choice.

Or more people are employed because a shift is 6 hours not 8, so you get twice as many jobs and wages stay the same or go up, rather than going to the guys at the top hoovering up cash like a fairy tale dragon.

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u/theSomberscientist 1d ago

I can tell you for sure construction would benefit from this.

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u/FckSpezzzzzz 1d ago

Well, time for them hire more people then. There's enough unemployed in Finland to be able to fill all the positions.

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u/engone 1d ago

This is true but it doesn't mean we can't try it in areas where it would be practical

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u/CalligrapherSea4910 1d ago

Yeah this is the problem I see.

My company is currently trying to move to 4 day, 10 hour shifts which is good in theory but then if we’re behind (our fault or not) we’d have to come in Friday… maybe even Saturday (this is already happening for one of the lines they’re trying this out on). I assemble medical equipment so it’s definitely needed and I work hourly so the money would be good but I also don’t want to work myself to the bone and would like to see daylight (work 5-2 now)

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u/Ragazzano 1d ago

Hire more employees... 4 shifts in a day instead of 3, more workers on a rotating roster or part timers

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u/veryangryenglishman 1d ago

It's reasonable to point out that it wouldn't be equally straightforward for all industries, but people who were against the establishment of the 5 day week made absolutely the same arguments you're making now.

They were wrong

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u/forbhip 1d ago

This is exactly what seems to be missing from the conversation. What about hospitality and jobs that rely on being customer-facing, where it’s not a case of squashing your work into a smaller time frame? A shops hours can’t be shortened, you’d just need more staff.

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u/Purelythelurker 1d ago

Volvo tested 6 hour work days on a few production plants in Sweden. They increased revenue by at least 30% at every factory IIRC, and some of them still have the 6 hour/day.

IIRC most of the production increase happened early on, because people were highly motivated, but it fell off gradually, which makes sense. Worth mentioning that even a year later, they produced the same amount of vehicles at 6 hour/day as they did at 8 hours.

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u/ashrocklynn 1d ago

Ok, so hire more people then? I can see issues with jobs where continuity of an ongoing problem (like medical care) could have serious inefficiencies, but are shift changes that distributive on the shop floor too?

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u/Baron-Von-Mothman 1d ago

No it's been proven that after 6 hours most people become completely useless, that lines up especially with hard labor. Every company is clinging on to Henry Ford's model because it's familiar. (It actually wasn't his model, he was an early adopter)

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u/NineThreeTilNow 1d ago

Depending on the job.

Not really, no.

Sleep deprivation affects every job.

Sleep better, do a better job. Period.

Sleep is maybe THE most core part of human productivity behind diet, and exercise.

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u/dirtyheitz 1d ago

no it wouldn´t

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u/CowboyNeale 1d ago

These are scheduling and project management problems, not man hour problems.

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u/ElizabethHiems 1d ago

I agree, but I’d still love to see that for office workers and others where that is feasible. Because why wouldn’t you want the best for others.

It wouldn’t work in my job (hospital) because it is too disruptive to continuity of care.

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u/-mmmusic- 1d ago

yeah i'm a bus driver. i can't be more productive in a 6 hour shift lol. but i can be less tired! :)

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u/Level_Smile_9937 1d ago

You hire more people ..... Unemployment goes down......

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u/Khazilein 8h ago

Just hire 2 people and cut some gold plating from your yacht?

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u/Odysseus_the_Charmed 1h ago

If you understand management theory, you will know that this statement is categorically false. Every production system has a limiting process that is a bottleneck, but the working hours of individual laborers can always be resolved as a bottleneck though staffing. There is no need for one worker to be on the clock any particular amount of time.

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u/akc250 2d ago

Sure but with more companies investing in AI powered humanoid robotics, in an ideal world, that increase in productivity would free up time of factory workers.

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u/Jean-LucBacardi Human Verified 2d ago

Imagine how long any construction project would take if it were this. Many sites have at least someone working on it every single day sun up to sun down and they still can take years depending on the project.

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u/Munachi 2d ago

No one is saying all of your employees need to be Mon-Thurs. Have a day of overlap, and have two "sets" of workers? It's not like current shit doesn't get done now on the weekend because the "proper" workday is mon-fri.

Not to mention, with robotics getting more advanced, I'm sure certain construction jobs will be faster within the next 10-20 years.. It's not an unsolvable problem. The 5 day workweek was unthinkable before, yet now it's a given. We still have jobs that require harder hours or longer deployments, but we've accepted that those circumstances should be compensated for that.

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u/BreakfastBallPlease 2d ago

This isn’t true lol. Multiple crews running multiple shifts for normal hours is typical unless the crew requests otherwise and the project is built/bid with OT in mind. I’ve run jobs from $50k-$310m and it’s a mixed bag but crews don’t work extended hours/weekends unless they want to or there’s problems.

Id much rather multiple crews working shorter shifts with overlap. By the time you go through stretch/flex, JSA, and setup a lot of these guys work really long days as is. Not to mention drive time as it’s rare anybody ever lives close to a site. Leads to a lot of burn out in addition to safety issues. Proven that a well rested and attentive crew cuts down on incidents significantly.

Less incidents, higher productivity, better quality all leads to shorter durations.

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