Lol. This country just voted to move in the opposite direction of this. We voted for less worker rights. Less power for the average person.
At this point, we’ll need to start utilizing our 2nd amendment right if we want to get anything better than what we have. People died to give us the 40 hour work week. Looks like that’s going to have to happen again for any further improvements.
Smarter countries did it without the bloodshed. America isn’t that smart.
My dipshit coworkers think trump will actually be good for unions. Mfers.
I’d like to add that 32 hour weeks is pretty much purely something that works for white collar work. It’s considerably harder to implement in blue collar settings.
Not true. The electricians in my area work 7 hour days and the sheet metal workers get every other Friday off.I know machinists who work 3 12s.
It’s not, really. It would be easy to implement at any company that makes a decent profit margin. Productivity goes up with shorter working hours, anyway.
Productivity goes up with shorter working hours, anyway.
That is pretty much entirely untrue with blue collar jobs. I’m working from the start to the end of my shift—working less or more hours as I do depending on the season doesn’t change that. Pace stays about the same.
It would be easy to implement at any company that makes a decent profit margin.
Slower production isn’t just about profit margins–it’s also about fulfilling your customers needs
The mental gymnastics required to believe that hurt my brain.
My dipshit coworkers think trump will actually be good for unions. Mfers.
Are y’all in a union? If so, you should see if you and your friends could maybe schedule an appointment with an organizer at your Local, who might be able to walk these chuds through it.
We are already unionized, which tbh makes it worse.
It’s part of my position as union stewards duty to walk these chuds through it
Bummer…
Is the reason it wont work in blue collar settings that it’ll inflate prices of stuff too high? Possible making the country fall back in a global stance on pricing on exports, etc (not competitive)?
Only other reason I can see is if they need people at the workplace 24/7, but they usually hire more people to make that schedule work (which in return ig increases prices of whatever they are producing).
Not “won’t work”. Considerably harder. Big difference. There’s companies who have successfully implemented it in blue collar jobs.
But more put simple, it’s that unlike white collar, output has a direct relationship with how many hours are worked, up to probably nearly 50, more or less depending on the job.
So, in practice it turned out that slower service was one of the largest problems with it.
Half of the benefit issue costs would go away with universal healthcare anyways.
Sure you can get more employees, but people who work don’t magically appear
'preciate the edumacation. Definitely sounds like a harder problem to solve, good point on the universal healthcare, I’m sure that could save some money for companies, it’ll make employees happie regardless to not have to worry about paying doctor bills.
Lmao they don’t want happier employees they want more money
Wait,you guys don’t get that? Shit I’m.here in Northern Ireland and that would be less than standard. That’s what we give teenagers,hell,most teens would not take that deal. When did America start treating the worker so bad? Like 1865?
America was built on treating the worker badly. Most of the first people that came here were either slaves or indentured servants. Chinese people got exploited to build the railroads, and then banned from being citizens in the country. Now we have prison slavery and wage servitude. There are a million and one examples, but exploiting the worker is as American as apple pie.
The only thing that has ever really improved in American labor is actual safety standards for work environments, equipment, etc. We do a great job of prioritizing that. But actual workers are viewed as expendable, and many of the largest employers are just meat grinders even if they offer half-decent benefits. Walmart is a good example of that
It’s such a bummer when I hear about the burial lack of workers rights over there. How is there not mass migration to Europe?
Many of the people who would have been criminalized for minor things like smoking cannabis to cope with the horrific work culture and thus are ineligible for work visas to most of the world. Many of those with the resources to do so have bought into the system and don’t know what the rest of the world is like, and there’s another group who just think the US is swell and everyone else is jealous of us and trying to come here.
Because, for many people, it’s not all that easy to get the requisite visas to go to Europe legally. As it stands now, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my household of 3 who has a few options to get skilled work visas based on my work experience. In another few years, when we’ve all finished our degrees, we’re looking at making the leap.
For other people, they might already have put down roots that hold them back before considering what a raw deal they’re getting. Even if someone can qualify to emigrate, significant others, kids or property can make it more difficult for them to decide to go for it.
And, of course, you have plenty of folks who drink too deeply of the Kool-Aid, and believe Fox News when they say Europe is overrun by communist governments that implement Sharia law in their gulags, and force you to be gay to hit the national quotas.
“But worker rights that is socialism! Socialism is evil because the soviets say they are that!”
Yea everyone knows how that great socialist state of ireland
we never stopped. One week vacation per year is considered a perk at most jobs that offer it.
One week? Do you get like 46 days of bank holiday?
I don’t know how many banking holidays there are but they typically are only observed by people working at banks… Personally speaking, I’ve never had a job that gave any holidays off, but I also never had a job that gave vacation time, even though some of them said they did on paper.
No, it’s usually somewhere between 5 and 12 and none of them are mandatory.
Edit: if I’m translating that right, anyway.
You have 32h/week as a standard?
Yeah its slowly becoming the standard
That’s awesome! I was actually looking into moving to Ireland (not the TERF-island part tho). Sadly their trans healthcare is also sub par.
Your sexuality is not a personality
Cool. Didn’t talk about my sexuality. Weird that you would bring that up, are you well?
Well full time is 36plus i think
Legally, I get 1 hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked. And this is a pro-worker state, most states don’t mandate any sick leave at all.
1 hour of sick a week ? That doesn’t make sense, you can’t plan being sick. How does that work? What if your sick fir one hour and ten minutes
The way paid time off works in WA is that it goes into a fund that you get paid out of for missing work. So, a minimum of one hour of wages gets added to the pot for every full week of work.
I go to therapy weekly, so I can choose to either take my PTO to cover the hour I miss each week, or I can choose to save it for when I actually get sick. Hypothetically, I could also save it for a vacation, but I’m not bougie enough to take a vacation.
Everyone deserves a holiday
32h work week?
Only 4 weeks? In much of Europe, 5-6 weeks is the norm.
It’s 7 days in Singapore 🫠
But most white collar jobs here are around 18-21 days.
4 weeks is still not on par with other civilised countries. Living here in the UK now, 5 weeks is standard. When I was in the Netherlands I was getting six.
Know what really hurts?
Running into foreigners in your own city who tell you about how they’re on a multi-week vacation to America and they’ll probably do it again to another country again next year. I’ve had that happen multiple times while out at bars in my city.
Meanwhile, I’ve barely crossed state lines in my entire adulthood because it’s hard to even get a 3-4 day extended weekend.
America sucks y’all.
Join a union. I work part time in America. After just one year of working I had 3 weeks of vacation. After 3 I now have 4 weeks and am taking my 2nd international trip of the year and 3rd vacation trip of the year.
Or better yet, unionize your own workplace with vacations as the primary demand
Don’t forget the healthy dose of salary and humane treatment.
Your premise is flawed in the first sentence - “Want happier employees?” No American employer cares about that in the least. Being happy at being allowed to keep their job and keep showing up to collect your meager pay is about all you can expect.
came in to comment effectively this., but you phrased it better than I would have.
“But happy employees naturally work harder” yeah, but so do desperate employees, and that also satisfies corpo desire for abusable slaves.
I would literally take a life for that work balance.
40-50hrs a week isn’t a life worth living
Ikr. I can’t even find time to go to gym cuz of commute. That alone just drains whatever energy I had left from the day and so I just scrap by with the few things I can do later in the evening. Sucks man.
The next ad you see: “The only device that lets you work-out, on your way-out, to work!”
A sad world indeed.
Also worth mentioning from the article,
I work fully in the office. But I think remote work is better for work-life balance. I don’t have the option to work remote
Well, why not? Covid showed how great this can work … but so many companies went back to 20th century norms as soon as the pandemic ended*
- AS per https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/who-pandemic-not-emergency-1.6833321 the global emergency ended on May 2023 - almost two years ago to the day, but covid itself still circulates.
Maybe he is a hardware toucher
My experience is that in person and remote favors different sorts of tasks. For me I have both so I think hybrid is the most ‘productive’, though I’m much happier with the ‘remote’.
So on pure productivity, I could see some roles favor in-person.
But if you want to more cheaply recruit and retain, favoring remote is certainly going to help.
I really want a new normal of shorter hours, though that might be a trickier discussion so long as we have very highly utilized labor pool.
Productivity has been universally higher on every job that moved to remote, tracks those metrics and makes them public.
A dock worker wouldn’t be more productive remote. There’s obviously some responsibilities that cannot be done in person, and a lot of jobs require both.
But let’s say we discard all obviously in-person sorts of work from the “jobs that can move to remote”, the so called “knowledge work”, and we are deep in an area where objective measure of “productivity” has proven elusive. For example, one such study I looked at used “how productive do you feel?” as the basis. Another facet is individual productivity versus group productivity, particularly over time. A pretty middling junior employee spends a lot of time flailing hopelessly because no one knows to get with him and help him become better, both in terms of his job and in terms of communication and confidence (e.g. not trying to hide having difficulty to avoid people thinking he is less competent than he should be, when everyone has those sorts of struggles).
The commute, morale, ability to avoid low value coworker distractions (no, I don’t need the daily reminder that my coworker in fact has a boat…) , and ability to manage the work related distractions better certainly help remote work. However home life distractions and the ability to tune out work related distractions a little too well at the expenese of peer productivity can impact work at home. Different people and situations manipulate this balance and for the best employees, that morale can go a long way to having a good outcome, but I think we have to confess that in-person has some value.
A dockworker driving their machine remotely using low latency tech like they’re using in remote surgeries could very well be more productive remote, but we won’t know until we try.
In person work only has value to micromanagers and commercial real estate investors.
Start paying people enough that they can actually live instead of struggling just to keep their heads above water.
4 weeks vacation is too small.
Make it 8. Rest is fine.
I deeply wish this would happen, but know it would never happen in my lifetime in my country.
I’ve been working full time, sometimes overtime, for almost five years out of college. I want to practice piano more. I’d love to volunteer. I want to go outside more. I’ve always wanted to spend a month backpacking in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been my lifelong dream to write a book.
I’m so exhausted after work every single day that I can only get myself to play piano for a half an hour, and then play video games or read until I pass out before my bedtime.
But companies don’t want happier employees. With that title this article will never break out of the echo chamber and reach employers.
I worked for an employee owned manufacturing company for near ten years. The philosophy of our company was, “the essence of life is relationships”.
The founder of the company was the only religious person I knew who actually followed it’s teachings, he sold his stock to the company for less than it was worth until we were 100% employee owned. The stock price then shot up from $200 a share to $6k a share in ten years.
The company understood the importance of working ideas from the bottom up, (involving the lowest ranking employees just as much as the highest ranking). We understood the importance of company culture, and even had teams of people to make sure the needs of our employees were being met.
We had a supervisor who by all accounts was a fine supervisor on paper, however he rubbed every single employee the wrong way, he was a cunt if i may. With the support of all of us, we were able to, I don’t want to say get rid of him, it sounds cold, but his name came up on our (truly anonymous) survey one year the company asked him to resign, and he did.
The owner passed away in 2018, and shit got squirrely from there, i left during the pandemic. CEO and highest ranking positions then changed hands to folks not there at the founding of the company, I felt the culture shifting and left due to personal reasons. The stock has since tanked.
I dont understand why these companies don’t see the importance of uplifting their workforce.
I’ll never find and employer like that again i think. It was a magical decade. Of course my stock is tanked now, im to be cashed out this year.
The ladder has been pulled right before my time my whole life so this osnt new. I went from having enough for a down payment on a house, and now i wont even beable to afford a car lmao.
I’ve seen this happen to multiple people. Join a startup with good perks, listen to the siren song of “the stock price will go up!” while the owners are out getting offers for their shares, then the owners sell out or the company tanks and you’re left with nothing despite having millions just a couple years ago on paper.
The key is to sell out once you have enough that it makes enough to impact your life. 500k or more is enough to escape poverty for almost anybody for life.
Even if you just sold it as it vested you would probably be better off.
It works a little different for employee owned companies, but you’ve the right spirit. This company grew from about 1972 on- a long, successful legacy. Shame to watch it fall
Yeah, the nuance is kind of nuts but i’ve got a relative who had and lost about 5m. Could have cashed out at the 5m number but didn’t. Got about 40k at the end of all of it.
Numerous friends who went into startups have somewhat similar things, but few had that much equity available for sale at any time.
Wow that’s absolutely fucked. But at least you had some nice years. Sorry to hear that about the stock.
I just want to say that I work for an amazing boss in the UK as a software developer and a few months ago we all got pay rises and a reduction in hours. We now work 33 hours a week instead of 37.5. We get 4 weeks holiday and an extra day added after each year of work up to a total of 25 days (five weeks).
We can be sick without being moaned at and they truly do put us first and the work second. I’ve had a lot of jobs before I sorted my life out (like 50+) and I swear I have PTSD from the old ones in that I can’t believe how nice my boss is as every other have been for corpos who somehow manage to get some other poor idiot to treat you like shit whilst paying you minimum wage and expecting maximum effort.
You can see that having 50 jobs meant I was not really one to take the bullshit and I would just lose the job for giving them my thoughts.
Incredibly relatable.
Okay i agree now what
