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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Obviously this will depend on the industry and work environment, but I feel like the "4.5 day workweek" is already a thing for many office workers. What I'm talking about is the culture around slacking on a Friday.

At least at my company, it's an unwritten rule that you never schedule a meeting after 12PM on a Friday. You can see from slack statuses that folks most all leave early and take longer lunch breaks. And any calls usually end with "lets finish hashing this out monday".

Again just my personal experience, but where I've worked I've noticed that's consistently been the culture.

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I would say that .5 is more like .75 - still gotta go through traffic to get to work, and people are still in a place they (apparently) rather not be. Eliminating the day entirely is still quite valuable compared to leaving it as-is.

Of course by this logic it’s not 4.75 but 5.75 - you still get a .25 for the prior 4 if you are unfortunate enough to be office based.

In the UK, we call it POETS day. I’ve successfully planted that seed at a few US-based companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POETS_day

That's actually a written rule for us, complete with the "no meeting" meeting scheduled in Outlook.

Same... however, it's also the time that I actually get a chance to do things without being interrupted.

more like 'california considers codifying that which is already known'

many of the largest employers like amazon, walmart, and fast food already restrict their employees to <40hrs to conspicuously avoid paying any benefits to employees. salaried employees wouldnt be affected by definition.

what good does this serve? i guess it squeezes reprehensible companies by forcing them to pay healthcare/benefits, but the reality is likely that companies will just further divide and conquer the employees workday.

> but the reality is likely that companies will just further divide and conquer the employees workday.

This is a separate, but important issue that warrants its own laws.

> many of the largest employers like amazon, walmart, and fast food already restrict their employees to <40hrs to conspicuously avoid paying any benefits to employees

40 hours or 8 hours per day is the current general overtime threshold; 30 hours is the current general full-time threshold for benefit mandates.

This bill would lower the 40 hour limit to 32.

I am curious how this "no meeting after 12pm on Friday" would apply to companies with offices on the East Coast in addition to California. On the East Coast 12pm Pacific Time would mean 3pm. Would it put East Coast employees at disadvantage?

No more so than east coasters scheduling 9am meetings.

At my work, they standardized it once a month. The first Friday of every month is "Fresh Air Friday" where employees are strongly encouraged to log off at 1 PM their time. Meetings after 1 PM on a FAF are forbidden.

there is a MASSIVE psychological/cultural difference between "well everyone pretty much silently agrees x" and "x is the stated rule." Why not let Thursdays become the new day that people slack off and leave early? Not trying to attack you or anything but why would you undermine an initiative to enforce a better work-life balance? Your response seems pretty complacent/apathetic, which seems irresponsible to me when so many stand to benefit from this change.

No doubt California is the vanguard of adopting European culture, with work ethic included but among other things.

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