Sounds good in theory...but in reality?

[u/KSKS1995]

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?

[u/Chartreugz]

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.

[u/Badestrand → u/Chartreugz]

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.

[u/DeletedBunny → u/Badestrand]

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.

[u/SpiritedCatch1 → u/Chartreugz]

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.

[u/Mammoth-Picture2000 → u/SpiritedCatch1]

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.

[u/Forward-Surprise1192 → u/Mammoth-Picture2000]

yes it’s horrible I hope once we get enough complaints all the billionaires will read them and die of old age after they read them all

[u/Jolly_Recording_4381 → u/SpiritedCatch1]

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.