In Britain, Calls for a 4-Day Week. Can It Be Done? | Hacker News Reader

In Britain, Calls for a 4-Day Week. Can It Be Done?

nytimes.com

9 pointstysone13 comments

Yes, please. So much office time is wasted. Putting the "full-time" line at 32 hours instead of 40 hours would immeasurably increase the quality of life for many.

This wouldn’t work for wages workers unless there’s a 20+% increase in hourly workers. Given that that seems unlikely to happen hourly workers would have to retain the same number of hours worked anyway, only now spread across two jobs.

Unless this is purely about salaried work, in which case you’re dealing with a completely different set of problems, a trivial example: do teachers, etc now also get 4 day weeks? If so does school get reduced to 4 days/week or do you have day to day variances in which teachers are in the school? If it’s now four days/week hourly workers again get screwed because now they need to earn more to cover child care.

Etc, etc

umm no, most people struggle to get by working the hours they do, unless there is some sort of very significant increase in the minimum wage without the general cost of living increasing to counter it there is no way itll work

Maybe people struggle because there’s always more work to do. And maybe people aren’t good at taking a break.

Also, the 2 day weekend is an arbitrary construct.

Plus think of all the millions more people volunteering, looking after their elderly loved ones, going to the park, spending money in shops.

I think a 4 day week makes perfect sense

Well done for reading only the first few words of the post you replied to. They were talking about the financial impact to those who work on an hourly wage.

Increase the hourly wage to account for 8 less hours in the work week.

It sounds so easy when you just say it like that.

Couldn't it be the case? France managed several times to reduce the number of hours while maintaining the exact same salaries. Not saying this is perfect or it should be the only thing that's done but I really don't see any argument on why it cannot be done.

Edit : typos

You got me there. It’s behind a paywall. I couldn’t read it. My opinion that 4 day week is a good thing for the UK still stands :)

Please don't force me to work less than I want to.

That really depends on your job, doesn't it? There are many jobs (eg, truck driver, airline pilot) where workers are forced to stop work in order to sleep.

I believe the goal is that you should not face negative consequences for deciding to work only 4 days per week.

I also believe that "force" is only indirect - you can work as much as you want to, so long as your employer pays you overtime. Your extra productivity may justify paying time-and-a-half, yes?

Of course, programmers in the US aren't really subject to overtime law in the first place, thanks to computer industry trade groups who pushed for that exemption back in 1991 - https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/28/business/computer-program... .

Nah. I'd prefer a 4 day work week, thanks.

Now, if we had the autonomy to both choose how much we work? Sure. But we can't. Gosh I bet there were people making the same argument about working on 7 days a week too.

Such an odd sentiment.

Assuming that pay is kept the same, the only rational argument for not having more free time for themselves outside of work would be from people who had a substantial equity stake in wherever they worked. And for most situations where that was the case there would be nothing stopping them working more.

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