Ask HN: Should I/We start a 4-day work week advocacy org? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I/We start a 4-day work week advocacy org?

I've been toying with the idea for months, but not sure how much time/energy I want to commit to it -- my current thinking is I can do it for a year, then hand it off.

I'm not completely sure a 4-day work week is a good thing -- from a Bernie/socialist/anarchist-type perspective -- but my gut says 'yes, at least a little bit, and on a massive scale, that is probably worth spending some time on.'

My primary argument in favor of the 4-day is it would allow relatively powerful white collars workers to engage more in the political system, possibly education and organizing generally -- just because they'll/we'll have more time. That's the theory. I could use to do some research generally on time off, and specifically, on the history of the weekend, to see if that happened in the past.

So, could we use a 4-Day advocacy org?

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I know the point of this post is more along the lines of working fewer hours in the week, but here's my anecdote. I work 4/10's, so 4x 10-hour days and it's been great. Even though right now I'm remote, when I would normally go in it meant 1 less day per week I'd be commuting. On top of that, I've found the following benefits:

* 10 hour days leave more chance for productive time. That's one less day of "take an hour in the morning to try to wake up and get the gears turning", one less scrum.

* Having a weekday off to do chores for places that are normally closed weekends is fantastic. Doctors appointments, haircuts, etc. Some I could do on sick leave, but it's nice to not have to.

* Working a longer day than most also means timing the commute is easier. I'm less likely to start or end in rush hour.

Overall I could never see myself going back to a normal 8-hour workday.

What would you be advocating for and whose behalf? There's many industries and positions where a 4-day work week doesn't fit. There are other where it's already possible and it's happening. So where does the advocacy fit in and what does it do?

What happens when some % of employees say that they'll happily take a pay cut to work 4 days, and others say that they would only do 4 days if it doesn't result in pay reduction and if that's not possible they'd rather keep working 5 days a week? It feels like it opens the door for employers to give everyone a 20% pay cut and dress it up as empowering people to do more impactful stuff with their free time.

i'd be advocating for a 4-day work week for people who typically have to work 5 or more days per week, typically 40 or more hours per week.

as for a 4-day not 'fitting' many industries and positions, i'm guessing that could actually be true in some very limited set of positions/circumstances -- none i can think of off the top of my head, tho.

the advocacy org tries to, effectively, grant everyone a weekend, and even expand it. it could seek to change the puritanical/wage-slavery mentality of americans and others, or argue for unions, and all sorts of tangentially-related topics, but it'd prob just focus on getting a 4-day work week for people who typically have to 'work' 5 days a week, even if much of that work is just presentee-ism.

the reason(s) people might want to support the org -- and the 4-day work week -- could be various, and even opposed to each other -- but the org would be relatively neutral on that.

like, you want more free time so you can work to _really_ make sure black people and Democrats can no longer vote? well, that's not ideal, but if you support a 4-day work week, then we're still on the same side of the 4-day work week issue -- hopefully there will be other folks working on the other side of your vote-stealing efforts.

there are lots of risks to asking for a 4-day -- i def agree with that -- from 20% pay cuts, to 100% pay cuts, to eliminating health insurance (Americans), to increased worker instability/vulnerability, etc. these risks are already there, but they're dramatically increased - potentially/probably - with a 4-day work week.

If it backfires, your advocating is harming the lives and careers of people who never asked for your involvement. That alone would be enough for me to never go near this for any reason at all.

That’s true for any kind of advocacy though. What if decades of giving women equal participation in the labor market drives down some aspect of happiness? (Which it probably did by increasing the average household income to the disadvantage of people who prefer single-earner households [whether 1 or 2 adults].)

Gender equality (of opportunity) is still the right thing to advocate for.

It’s not the same. Your analogy contains a secondary effect. While the 4-day work week example ends up being a primary “please don’t negotiate a pay cut on my behalf” effect. Also the upside in the 4-day workweek case isn’t nearly as big, not even close.

yes, all sorts of things can backfire, which is why you should think about them carefully, and after a thoughtful, careful analysis, decide if you think the potential rewards outweigh the risks.

to me, this idea of thinking things through first is second nature -- i've been doing it all day every day for prob 30 years -- as any would-be activist should, imo.

and that comes with a realization that the lives/careers of some people may and will be harmed in almost any policy you advocate for -- and that's not a reason to _not_ do something -- because doing this analysis and advocating for anything or just doing anything that has consequences is part of growing up and being an adult.

so, going to war against hitler and the axis?

very bad for myriad soldiers on all sides (wounded, killed, etc.), very bad for nazis (except all the ones we/US rescued and rewarded and used for later terror campaigns), very bad for most of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and countless civilian victims the world over, but very good for Jewish people in Europe and myriad groups of dissidents/disabled folks/gays/etc., very good for western-style democracy -- so, on the whole prob still good for the world -- it was the right thing to do, imo -- to go to war against the axis, even if, in the end, the US population had to be largely tricked and otherwise dragged into it, and the US elites mainly did it to stave off the threat of being conquered by the Nazi/axis elites.

i suspect, given the precariousness of work already, a 4-day work week would probably increase workers' economic stability -- but need to study it more, and would need to continue to study it even after efforts began.

if/since companies have not strongly resisted the 4-day yet -- it makes me think they see some distinct advantages in it, which is worrying.

> There's many industries and positions where a 4-day work week doesn't fit.

I fail to see what industries or positions those could be. Heck, 168 hours in a week is 4 FTE and an extra hour shift. At 4 days a week its 5 FTE and an extra shift. The math works great for things that need to be manned 24/7 (in either case, you need an additional floater for the extra shift of to give people some paid OT.)

I say that doesn't go far enough. I think it's more compelling to go to a 24-hour work week.

I'm seriously.

Bucky Fuller calculated that we would have the technology and automation to retire after a career of only two years or so, having paid for the expenses of the rest of our lives in that brief period, and that this level of tech would be reached by some tine in the 1970's. The tech arrived right on time, but the awareness of the possibility of a new kind of lifestyle and civilization has not grown with it.

I don't know -- I have a friend that just got a payboost to $130k and admitted that she works just 19 hours a week out of 40. "But don't tell my boss."

So I wonder if any of this is really necessary in a remote world. I -- perhaps stupidly -- always put in my 40 hours....

"perhaps stupidly". No not really. You have morals which is a good thing. Your friend is cheating and unless she is really delivering great in 19 hours, she is not a good example to follow.

Companies don't reward morality, they're trained to extract as much value out of a resource as possible - it is the duty of a worker to establish limits and enforce them at every opportunity. "Doing only what needs to be done" is a perfectly normal limit.

Not commenting on work habits or company expectations, but I found “companies don’t reward morality” a funny statement: I would argue that morality is almost by definition something that doesn’t get rewarded. One is moral simply because they think it is right, not because it gets them something or because doing the opposite would get them punished.

I think there's too much focus on the 4 in 4-day work week. I think why a 4-day work week is more appealing is because we'd have more time (3 days) doing what we love to do instead; We want to do things that bring us joy or give us rest. How do we get that at a societal level in our work? When I think about my relationship between time, work, and value add to society, my gut instinct tells me that I want the security of a w-2 job with the freedom of a 1099 worker. I want to be able to easily find the projects I want to work on regardless of who my employer is, and I don't want to be chained to any n-day work week.

Some companies doing a 4-day work week still measure themselves against the 5-day/40hr work week, which feels suboptimal and not the point.

I'd bet in a world where a 4-day work week was normal, then I'd bet there'd be a similar ask HN to start a 3-day work week advocacy org.

not sure i understand -- are you saying a 4-day work week effort should really be called something like "more free time work week" effort? if so, i might agree, except that i think using simple to understand language and concepts is really important - especially in modern-day america/world (short attention spans).

i imagine, if we had a, or the, just-type world i'd like to see, we'd have enough work for about 1 day of work per week, maybe more, maybe less.

i think, if you look at the history of work and, for example, the weekend, the reasoning before a 4-day work week starts to make more sense. that would be part of our efforts -- educating folks on things like, what is the weekend? how did it start? why is it only two days and not three days, or six days? etc.

Please enlighten me but what I don't understand is how total output can be maintained

If...

Output = Productivity * Time

Then to reduce the amount of working time by 20% requires an increase in Productivity to maintain the same output, and therefore earnings and wealth (certainly at socialte level)

How does the 4 day working week movement hope to achieve this simply by working less? (I.e. without the traditional capital investment in machinery to allow workers to operate more efficiently)

Does being more relaxed or having more time off really achieve that?

Also what about competition with other societies? China's 996 culture seems completely nuts and too far the other way, but damn are they prepared to work hard!! There's a danger they will just out-compete (in terms of overall output), which doesn't seem desirable

there have been more than a few companies -- like Microsoft Japan -- that claim that going to a 4-day work week actually increased their total productivity -- assuming that is your primary objective.

if you've ever worked a shorter work week, you've probably felt the productivity increase personally.

the way i see it, unless/until the US massively destabilizes, presumably due to internal power struggles/rising right-wing authoritarianism/etc., US elites will remain global policymakers for the next 100 years -- assuming organized human life on earth still exists at that point.

US military spending is a way to guarantee our tech (and military, and cultural, and diplomatic) supremacy -- that number goes up every year, even accounting for inflation. and the US is geographically golden -- another reason we need to control space -- it could make us vulnerable in a way we have not been before.

but all that said, the US is turning into a developing nation in terms of income/wealth/opportunity inequality -- that could, in theory, slow growth and 'global competitiveness', but i'm not sure it really matters in the new global, financialized economy, with very few controls on capital flows -- i.e. the interests of American elites -- what we refer to as 'the national interest' -- are not the interests of the rest of us. right now, it is primarily black people in America that have been marginalized/discarded as unncessary/extraneous, but that policy is starting to gobble up other poor people like latinos and even some white people -- there's no reason that trend has to stop that i can see. that's why it's so necessary to strip black people, and Democratic-leaning voters generally, of the vote.

but if you do a simple google news search for '4 day work week', you're likely to see a spate of articles dropping all sorts of facts and figures and research and trials and anecdotes -- they're generally positive articles:

https://www.google.com/search?q=4-day+work+week&newwindow=1&...

I've been running https://4dayweek.io for the last year, so I'd definitely be interested

As for the benefits for a 4 day week:

https://4dayweek.io/post-a-job (I really need to move this to a separate page...)

I'll support anyone who advocates for shorter work weeks.

I think 40 hours is way too much time if you want to spend time with your family.

There is https://www.4dayweek.com/

interesting -- i'd looked them up previously, but maybe not in a past few weeks.

it seems they're growing or have much more of a footprint now, etc. nice site, associations, etc.

i've been skeptical of them for a few reasons -- maybe primarily because of i guess i would call the business focus and maybe the class issues.

it feels like it is basically some rich-enough-to-retire-early-white dude who is bestowing upon us, the bewildered herd of workers-working-because-we-have-fucking-have-to, the ability to wage slave for you a few less hour per week? eh, thanks mate, but no thanks.

what are you trying to be the Elon Musk of the 4-day work week? or that dan price guy who is just as crooked and is always bragging about how benevolent he is for paying his employees a living wage?

like, do i actually care about making companies even _more_ profitable? not fucking really -- not unless it's my own -- i'm more interested in democracy, a habitable world, etc. -- and that's why I'm primarily interested in a 4-day.

but thanks for the reminder, i'll def check them out again and give them another chance. maybe they're the answer, or the good-enough answer, or maybe we could use an org that is more worker-driven -- we'll see. thanks!

In Das Kapital, Marx goes to some lengths to prove that capitalism tends towards longer working hours. I can't remember if I liked the argument on its own terms, but it's absolutely been borne out by the facts. Working hours have been a really good inverse barometer for labour power.

I think if you were going to start and advocacy org, you'd probably want to work out if it's something, at a basic structural level, that capitalism can budge on. If not, that doesn't mean you can't still push, it just means you can expect a lot more resistance than you would get for a normal common-sense adjustment to legislation.

guess i have to read Das Kapital one of these days -- i have a feeling i wouldn't understand most of it. maybe a Das Kaptial for Kids/Beginners.

not sure on that capitalism->longer working hours arg. probably?

take, say, america. we got weekends around the 1930s maybe? don't quote me. we have a state capitalist economy. which, i guess means we're technically more capitalist than socialist? (even tho it doesn't feel that way to me) and the nature of the US economy as state capitalist has, afaik, been largely the same for our entire history. and yet we started getting days off 100+ years into our existence. and now, 250 years later, there's a movement to get another day off.

i don't know that capitalism has much to say about 4-day vs x-day work weeks. maybe?

i tend to think in terms of, "OK, hypothetical, if I'm rich, how do I keep everyone below me not-rich? right -- make sure they don't have any free time, and if they do have any free time, make sure they're exhausted and/or broke and/or hopeless and/or distracted and/or atomized."

How has average household paid labor hours changed in the last 100 years in the US? I suspect it’s gone up (and substantially).

I think this is a good change overall based on the underlying driver of increasing equality, but it’s far from a Pareto improvement.

guess i want to point out that we're presumably talking about _paid_ work, not unpaid work -- like childcare -- which women have, and continue to, do a disproportionate share of.

good point -- women entering the workforce -- presumably, largely due to the WWII economy (I guess?) -- all the men shipped out, so factories needed women -- i tried to find some stats on household hours per week, and it seemed to suggest they went up, but not sure.

if they did go up, is that because of (state) capitalism? or womens' rights? or war?

https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

that page says about 200 years ago, artisan-type work started moving to industrialization/factories, and workers then started agitating for max-10-hours-per-day work day (no weekends until about 100 more years later).

average per person weekly work hours seems to have been declining since about the 1820s (200 years), but women entering the workforce possibly changed things.

when it comes to 'the workforce', should we start referring to it as 'the paid workforce'?

i would guess slavery is tied in too -- but even that didn't _require_ state capitalism, even if there was a symbiosis there. and you could argue that the jim crow south was even more profitable than slavery itself - b/c prison laborers were not paid, and slaveowners -- in this case, semi/privatized but state-funded prisons took on the cost of feeding/housing the prisoners, etc. -- point being, if we're not counting paid work (childcare/slavery/prison labor), we're leaving out a lot of work.

Seems wise to look at the impacts on both paid and unpaid work with any change, but if you’re contemplating changing the arrangement of paid work, you surely want to look at the impact on paid work.

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