What would it take to reduce the work week?

schopenhauer1

What would it take to reduce the work week? There may be some evidence of current time being ripe for this kind of change:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opinion/work-resignations-covid.html#commentsContainer

The origin of the current work week as it is defined in the US for example, came about through Ford's evidence that moving the work week from 6 days to 5 days actually made productivity increase..
This is certainly not a reason I would choose to reduce it, but Ford even for being the asshole he was, knew a good outcome when he saw it, so allowed the reduction.

President Roosevelt picked up on this and signed the legislation in 1938 making overtime pay mandatory after working over 44 hours a week. He made a further reduction of mandatory overtime pay to 40 hours in 1940. So it is basically since 1940 when the 40 hour work week came into the norm.

Origin of the 40 hour work week:
okta.com/identity-101/40-hour-work-week/

So when does a further reduction and reevaluation become the norm? What would cause things to change like it did in 1940 legislation?

Food for thought:
Marxist thinking praises "productive work" as an intrinsic good. I don't even think that. What happens if you don't want to do productive work either? Doesn't seem so intrinsic. If you want to play guitar all day rather than build something "productive", that would be hard if EVERYONE wanted to play guitar. There would have to be a way the boring tasks the modern economic system, if it is assumed this is the lifestyle that is preferred.

My personal theory of economics is it is a way to distribute boredom and create incentives to be less bored. I can elaborate on that if you want, but I prefer boredom distribution in production rather than supply as the basis :). It rings more true.

Marx also envisioned machines basically running the basic processes in the end phase of communism. People don't seem to realize that and as far as we've come, most jobs just can't do that right now (though I am sure more can if investment was concerted).

schopenhauer1

Ok @Bitter Crank, any ideas? Is the Protestant work ethic and un-American anti anti-work pushback a thing?

BC

↪schopenhauer1

IF workers owned the means of production, and IF production were for need and not profit, then a 40 hour work week would be an anachronism. Unfortunately, workers do not own the means of production.

The number of hours worked in a week is one issue in people's quality of life (QOL). Equally important is how much people are paid per hour. Over the last 40 years, real wages have steadily declined for most people in the workforce. [The 'real wage' is pay minus inflation.] Falling wages mean a declining standard of living and a lower QOL. Many workers resort to second and third jobs to maintain what they consider a minimum QOL for their families.

A reduction in hours worked has to be accompanied at the same time by a significant increase in wages and benefits, else the worker is just further impoverished.

This can be achieved, but not without some major shifts in spending and taxation. The richer 9% and the wealthiest 1% will have to pay more in taxes, corporations will have to live with lower profits, and less will have to be spent on the military and other unnecessary expenditures. A greener economy (one where most workers are not obligated to own a car) is required.

James Riley

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

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BC

the Protestant work ethic — schopenhauer1

I do not know how much the Protestant Work Ethic figures into people's lives, these days. For Luther, work which contributed to the common good was as holy as the priesthood. For Calvin, salvation or damnation was predetermined by God. Prosperity could only be a sign, not a guarantee of salvation. Prosperity and poverty were not proof-positive of Grace, one way or the other.

Among the earlier generations of Lutherans, Calvinists, et al, these were vital issues. What percent of the population, do you think, actually know who John Calvin or Martin Luther were and what they taught?

Despite all that, most people do want to work -- they want the rewards of regular income; they want the belonging which having a steady job entails. They do not want to be an outsider without work.

Whether or not it has anything to do with protestantism, [don't Catholics work as hard as Lutherans?] most people seem to believe that working is a good thing. They do well to think positively about work, because not having an income means having a pretty bad life. There's nothing particularly Protestant about that.

I have worked at some pretty shitty jobs which I tolerated until better paying, more satisfying work was in hand. Work for work's sake is a dead end.

god must be atheist

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

Weak workers. You can't work the weak to work hard.

god must be atheist

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

Paying the workers weakly, not weekly.

schopenhauer1

IF workers owned the means of production, and IF production were for need and not profit, then a 40 hour work week would be an anachronism. Unfortunately, workers do not own the means of production. — Bitter Crank

Playing devil's advocate:
Let us say that a CEO really is someone who invented something people wanted. He gets rewarded by profiting off his company. He would say that since he came up with it, he would be the one entitled to the profits, no? He doesn't owe the workers anything and they can look for other CEOs if they didn't like his vision, no? Again, completely playing devil's advocate here.

Among the earlier generations of Lutherans, Calvinists, et al, these were vital issues. What percent of the population, do you think, actually know who John Calvin or Martin Luther were and what they taught? — Bitter Crank

Good points, but isn't the PWE nowadays simply the idea that you must like to "go to work" or "work for work's sake" or cherish some "inherent good" of work? It has become sheared of the theological original theories that drove them. Work remains, the meaning behind it did not.

A reduction in hours worked has to be accompanied at the same time by a significant increase in wages and benefits, else the worker is just further impoverished. — Bitter Crank

Agreed.

Whether or not it has anything to do with Protestantism, [don't Catholics work as hard as Lutherans?] most people seem to believe that working is a good thing. They do well to think positively about work, because not having an income means having a pretty bad life. There's nothing particularly Protestant about that. — Bitter Crank

Right, but now you are waffling from Marxist to capitalist thought it seems. I mean, is most work something people are positive about or is it sort of just an epiphenomenon of the system? In other words, if you take away the status surrounding it or whatnot, or the cultural things attached to it, it just becomes tasks to do to take up time to get compensated for later consumption. Most tasks done for "work" are not inherently interesting, just necessary to get the income.

Let's say painting, cooking, gardening, building furniture, and playing music represent typical activities many humans "enjoy" in their free time.. Eventually we will run into a problem because the type of work that is necessary to "run" a complex economy and the type of "hobby-like" work that Marx may be talking about that is "inherently" good, is not equal in the supply and demand. Thus how do you solve this?

What you are going to say is simply better wages and benefits, but that seems like a really lame way of saying there is no way out of this trap of boring work.. Hence why I think the economy is based on boredom distribution, not supply/demand in the traditional sense.

schopenhauer1

↪James Riley

And so then they join another company or try to start their own, which works out all the time of course.

schopenhauer1

↪god must be atheist

Very punny.

James Riley

And so then they join another company or try to start their own, which works out all the time of course. — schopenhauer1

It would if they did, but they don't, because profits have allied against them, legislatively and practically (labor supply and demand). That's why workers of the world must unite; not just First World workers. So, simply saying "NO" is the answer the employers could and should receive, but won't. Now get back in your cubicle, STFU and work.

baker

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

Death.

Winning the lottery.

A pandemic combined with global warming wiping out life as we know it and the remaining humans left with very little work to do, simply because there won't be much work to do left.

Becoming a monk.

Dramatically changing the values people live by, so that everyone works 20 hours at most, but everyone has a job, albeit a low paying one, and people live in modest cirumstances, three generations per home. And have fewer or no children, until the human population reduces to an economically viable level.

schopenhauer1

Dramatically changing the values people live by, so that everyone works 20 hours at most, but everyone has a job, albeit a low paying one, and people live in modest cirumstances, three generations per home. And have fewer or no children, until the human population reduces to an economically viable level. — baker

Good luck with that.

baker

↪schopenhauer1

Good luck with reducing the work week!

schopenhauer1

Good luck with reducing the work week! — baker

I asked what it would take. You said changing the values people live by. So it seems if given the maximum amount of consumer spending, people will take it and not leave it on the table any more than saving for more consumer spending down the line. You do get your ultra-wealthy who can afford to be "noble philanthropist" types and you have your occasional monk or serious Robinson Crusoe person. You have your voluntary homeless (as opposed to those who rather get out but can't), your occasional commune type that is usually a temporary arrangement when they get tired of it. Yeah, voluntary poverty doesn't seem popular, this is a truism.

BC

↪schopenhauer1

Work is required to maintain existence. Food has to be grown, clothing has to be made, shelter has to be built. A lot of work has to be done before we can move on to arts and crafts.

QUESTION: For most of our history, hunter-gatherers managed this task and didn't spend anywhere close to 40 hours a week doing it. Can mechanization and automation deliver the basic requirements and allow us the leisure of hunter gatherers?

Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago there was a critical shift: We started domesticating plants and animals, doing agriculture, and living in large groups in one place. Some anthropologists think that humans were one of the animals that got domesticated by a brand new power elite. From there it has been down hill ever since--for the average non-elite human. Exploiting other humans has proved to be a reliable way of getting ahead in the world--not since the industrial revolution, but since the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago.

ANSWER: No. Meeting the basic needs of 8 billion people (or 2 or 3 billion) requires a level of social complexity which a hunter-gatherer level of existence can simply not provide. Aside from food, clothing, and shelter (the basics) society itself has to be reproduced, and that isn't something we can automate or mechanize. It's human work.

I don't think we all have to spend 40 hours a week 'reproducing and maintaining society', but life in the global society has to be simplified, especially for 1st world people. We need to stop doing a lot of the stuff we are doing that is aimed at keeping the economy revved up--advertising, marketing, promotion, selling, financing, upward mobility, ceaseless acquisition of new gadgets (be it a fancier watch or a bigger Tesla) and so on.

Simplify, simplify, simplify--both an end and a means.

schopenhauer1

Work is required to maintain existence. Food has to be grown, clothing has to be made, shelter has to be built. A lot of work has to be done before we can move on to arts and crafts. — Bitter Crank

A truism which certain other philosophies bypass.. But I won't say it.

Can mechanization and automation deliver the basic requirements and allow us the leisure of hunter gatherers? — Bitter Crank

Service jobs and maintaining the machines themselves... probably not.

Simplify, simplify, simplify--both an end and a means. — Bitter Crank

The CEO believes that a rising tide raises all ships.. Simplifying then makes no sense.
You said yourself that people need an income. Income isn't a neverending stream that is "in-coming". Rather, income is a finite resource to be distributed to those who work their Lord's fiefdoms..
People will say with exuberant optimism:
If we are "peasants" then why are so many people able to afford health care, technology and entertainment?
Surely just because there are people who cannot afford it, doesn't wipe out the billions of people who can, and that is an achievement.

BC

A truism which certain other philosophies bypass. But I won't say it. — schopenhauer1

A minimum of effort was required of hunter-gatherers before they could spend their remaining time. Some anthropologists think they had about 18 hours a day to cook, eat, sleep, and engage in social activities. 5 or 6 hours might have been required to get food, do maintenance on clothing, tools, or weapons (for hunting). Their now ancient remains say that they were tall and healthy. Compare that to our rat race.

Service jobs and maintaining the machines themselves... probably not. — schopenhauer1

I disagree. A lot of our time is spent maintaining complex institutions which do not exist for our benefit. Examples: insurance companies; banks; the military; personnel departments; Wall Street; companies advertising and marketing crap.

The CEO believes that a rising tide raises all ships.. Simplifying then makes no sense. — schopenhauer1

A rising tide raises the boats of the richest 10%; 90% of us do not have a boat to float, raise or sink. To the 10% who own and manage the economy, simplicity is anathema. To your CEO simplicity means THE END! FINIS! ALLES IST KAPUT! CURTAIN DOWN!

For the rest of us, the essential tasks of raising food, making clothing, and making (or maintaining) shelter still requires a relatively small amount of time. We donate vast amounts of time to the CEO and his ilk -- parasites all.

Most people find this idea no more appealing than antinatalism. We are about equally out of step with the rest of the world.

Tom Storm

↪schopenhauer1

Fair question. I don't think it is the Protestant Work Ethic that holds this in place so much as capitalism and faith of free market economics - every bit as religious as Religion.

Mind you, as David Graeber (Bullshit Jobs: A Theory) points out that there are many, many men and women in 40 hour a week jobs that do 7 hours of actual work.

Kenosha Kid

QUESTION: For most of our history, hunter-gatherers managed this task and didn't spend anywhere close to 40 hours a week doing it. Can mechanization and automation deliver the basic requirements and allow us the leisure of hunter gatherers?

Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago there was a critical shift: We started domesticating plants and animals, doing agriculture, and living in large groups in one place. Some anthropologists think that humans were one of the animals that got domesticated by a brand new power elite. From there it has been down hill ever since--for the average non-elite human. Exploiting other humans has proved to be a reliable way of getting ahead in the world--not since the industrial revolution, but since the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago. — Bitter Crank

:100:

I don't think we all have to spend 40 hours a week 'reproducing and maintaining society', but life in the global society has to be simplified, especially for 1st world people. We need to stop doing a lot of the stuff we are doing that is aimed at keeping the economy revved up--advertising, marketing, promotion, selling, financing, upward mobility, ceaseless acquisition of new gadgets (be it a fancier watch or a bigger Tesla) and so on.

Simplify, simplify, simplify--both an end and a means. — Bitter Crank

:clap:

I was going to write something similar but you nailed it.

180 Proof

↪Bitter Crank

:100:

↪Tom Storm

:up:

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

In a highly integrated technocapitalist civilization, that would take something like (I prefer) restructuring the global nation-state system to institutionalize macro-incentives for international economic democracies supplimented by community-based time banking. (Yeah, I know, this will never happen.) Otherwise, it can be done, I suppose, far less equitably by accelerating automation (which is already happening, just hasn't reached the permanent unemployment crisis threshold yet) or, less humanely, by crashing the global population to around 2 billion (i.e. state-sanctioned antinatal programs!) in order to severely reduce mass consumption demand from the current magnitude – or both in tandem.

schopenhauer1

For the rest of us, the essential tasks of raising food, making clothing, and making (or maintaining) shelter still requires a relatively small amount of time. We donate vast amounts of time to the CEO and his ilk -- parasites all. — Bitter Crank

But we like our plumbing, heat, cars, roads, electrical grid.. etc. etc. endless blather.. just think STEM fields. We like our movies, our popular music, etc. etc. We like our electronics.. we like our easy to obtain items from online or department stores.. The CEO would just say that their fiefdom provides for us the "free time" in our non-work time to enjoy all that stuff.

Most people find this idea no more appealing than antinatalism. We are about equally out of step with the rest of the world. — Bitter Crank

Are you talking about the idea of simplicity?

schopenhauer1

Fair question. I don't think it is the Protestant Work Ethic that holds this in place so much as capitalism and faith of free market economics - every bit as religious as Religion. — Tom Storm

Yep, but the idea that one should not reduce work because it somehow confers a sort of virtue, is what I mean.. Work itself just has to be part of the culture. It takes pretty dull people to not think beyond the habit of "going to a job" for meaning in life. And apparently there are a lot of these people that don't know what society is like without it.

Mind you, as David Graeber (Bullshit Jobs: A Theory) points out that there are many, many men and women in 40 hour a week jobs that do 7 hours of actual work. — Tom Storm

A lot of jobs yes. But it is the habit of the job lifestyle of "focusing on this that the company wants me to focus on" that we mean by job here, not the output.

schopenhauer1

ic democracies supplimented by community-based time banking. (Yeah, I know, this will never happen.) Otherwise, it can be done, I suppose, far less equitably by accelerating automation (which is already happening, just hasn't reached the permanent unemployment crisis threshold yet) or, less humanely — 180 Proof

In a more mundane sense @Bitter Crank is right.. what can happen is employers pay workers the same or more but reduce hours.. In other words, reduction in hours does not equate to reduction in pay, they have to be inverse.

I would like to ask @Bitter Crank, what is the difference of a worker working for a state entity and worker working for a private entity in terms of exploitation? Can't both simply exploit their workers by depriving the resources to live if you don't work for them? I don't see how changing the pieces around changes the substance of the issue. Lot of wishful thinking backed by small changes in classical economic ideas it seems.

BC

Are you talking about the idea of simplicity? — schopenhauer1

Yes. It's unwelcome because "we like our plumbing, heat, cars, roads, electrical grid.. etc. etc. endless blather. just think STEM fields. We like our movies, our popular music, etc. etc. We like our electronics.. we like our easy to obtain items from online or department stores".

I very much prefer plumbing, heat, hot water, electricity, and endless blather. Especially endless blather. We wouldn't be discussing this at a great distance without a big hunk of circuitry sitting in front of us. But...

It is still true that simplifying life, whenever, wherever, however possible would give us more time to live.

schopenhauer1

It is still true that simplifying life, whenever, wherever, however possible would give us more time to live. — Bitter Crank

Can you give examples? A book is simpler than a TV? But sitting around a fire is simpler than a book. A garden and a fire is simpler than a stove? Silence is simpler than talk? Talk in person is simpler than on the phone? Not if the people are far away..

In other words, could simplicity really not be that simple to define or apply?

BC

what is the difference of a worker working for a state entity and worker working for a private entity in terms of exploitation? — schopenhauer1

None whatsoever.

Please note: my socialist alternative does not exchange working for a capitalist pig with working for a state pig. The third possibility is the worker-owned, worker-managed economy. We don't have a lot of experience with this approach, but we have some--cooperatives, for instance.

BC

Can you give examples? — schopenhauer1

Books, music, drama, discussions sociability -- those are the things that we want to have more time for, not to simplify out of existence. How about eliminating advertising? Credit cards? mortgages? private cars? Credit cards, home loans, auto loans, education loans--are all ways of of expanding the economy on the one hand, and chaining the consumer to his job -- for life. Quite a long time ago the Ruling Class realized that one way to tame restless workers was to chain them to a mortgage (and later, other forms of debt). The worker could be tamed and turn a profit at the same time.

Does it work? Sure. People like having a home, and before long they have some equity in it. Not a lot, but some. They keep paying because they don't want to lose their equity or their home and their stuff. Apartment rental deposits do the same thing. They are now successfully tied down, and they have to keep working--regardless of how unpleasant that might be.

If one has a home, get rid of the time-consuming lawn. If you don't have cows to graze on the grass, then you don't need it. Gardens yes, lawns no. No need to mow the lawn every week. No need to fix the lawn mower. No need to buy and apply herbicides and fertilizers to produce nothing but useless grass. Nature will provide ground cover, don't worry about that.

No doubt -- simplifying life is a radical step away from business as usual.

Tom Storm

Yep, but the idea that one should not reduce work because it somehow confers a sort of virtue, is what I mean.. — schopenhauer1

Here is Australia in some sectors there are people that have reduced their hours per week. Working 25 to 30 hours a week is common enough and is encouraged. But the big problem is the idea of an hourly rate. If you are paid by the hour the incentive to cut back diminishes. This is an option taken by people who own their own homes and have money in the bank.

I've met a few wealthy people (business owners) who brag about only working 20 hours a week - so there is no inherent taboo against this. But they are still making huge money despite the moderate effort.

Most people I know would like to work 20 hours a week but can't afford it.

Kenosha Kid

In a more mundane sense Bitter Crank is right.. what can happen is employers pay workers the same or more but reduce hours.. In other words, reduction in hours does not equate to reduction in pay, they have to be inverse. — schopenhauer1

That would likely happen quite naturally. The key to keeping wages low is to ensure that there are more people than jobs to give them. It becomes an employer's market. By reducing hours each person works, it becomes an employee's market. One only has to look at fields such as mine (data science) to see how scarcity drives up wages. This is why progressive nations need to put working hours caps into legislature: the preference for employers would be to have a smaller staff working longer hours: it keeps wages low, because there's a queue of people after your job.

But we like our plumbing, heat, cars, roads, electrical grid.. etc. etc. endless blather.. just think STEM fields. We like our movies, our popular music, etc. etc. We like our electronics.. we like our easy to obtain items from online or department stores.. The CEO would just say that their fiefdom provides for us the "free time" in our non-work time to enjoy all that stuff. — schopenhauer1

I really don't get your logic here. Your question was:

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

which seems to acknowledge the need for change. But you also seem to reject any answer that would require change.

schopenhauer1

None whatsoever.

Please note: my socialist alternative does not exchange working for a capitalist pig with working for a state pig. The third possibility is the worker-owned, worker-managed economy. We don't have a lot of experience with this approach, but we have some--cooperatives, for instance. — Bitter Crank

But what if a CEO actually did invent something useful, and got money for it, and employed people to work his fiefdom.. He would say that he made something useful in the market economy. His supply met demand and he was rewarded for it. Why shouldn't he get to own the resources that he made with his money and his idea? If the people don't like it, they can find another CEO fiefdom to serve.

What would it take to reduce the work week?

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