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Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

I'm conflicted about unions, but it would be truly amazing if they brought us the 4-day work-week the way they got the 8-hour workday and weekends.

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I built my house using union labor. Having seen the quality of welds from some non-union welders it was a no brainer. Overall quality of the rest of the work (carpentry, plastering everything) was worth it.

Is there something that such unions in your area do to ensure that a worker's skill and ability matter far more than, say, who their relatives happen to be?

I don't know what it's like in Vancouver, but I have lived in Massachusetts and there it's not really a union issue: the corruption is equally present in, say, government (e.g. until recently there was a whole county all of whose land had been taken away but that remained solely so jobs like sheriff, bailiff etc could be handed out to relatives in cronies. Anything with a large flow of money (e.g. the Big Dig) gets openly looted. I've been told the same is true in Chicago, but I don't know directly. As far as the unions go, indeed, the lack of seriousness about the work is how, for example, the Ted Williams tunnel killed people, with no repercussions.

OTOH what passes for corruption in California, where I live now, would make an east coast politician laugh. Certainly in the trades (welding in particular, but all sorts of construction I needed) the quality of work was top notch. And why not? In construction, at least, there is no reason to use union if you don't want to and most don't, which leads to the the shitty quality of residential construction (there should be more of it but that's another issue).

Perhaps one thing is regulation. We once bought a pressure vessel that arrived with a small ding (if bad, it's an opportunity for an explosion). We called the pressure vessel unit in Oakland and someone arrived in 45 minutes which means he'd dropped anything else and and hopped into his car as soon as we hung up the phone. Even before he arrived we got an annoyed call from the mfr (as it turned out all was well...but the pressure vessel unit wanted to see for themselves). While he was there we showed him a piece done by a former contractor who had not been able to produce the union tickets. We had fired them because the work was safety critical (high pressure steam is no joke) and the contractor was suing us. One look at the piece and he yanked out his phone. Let's just say later that day the contractor's lawyer couriered over a document cancelling the lawsuit, a cashier's check for money already paid, and a request that we not countersue. Those guys are not fucking around.

Have you looked into worker cooperatives? Ocean Spray is an example in the US. Mondragon is an example of one in Spain that has tens of thousands of workers and has existed for many decades.

This is not correct. Ocean Spray is not a cooperative of workers. It's a cooperative of private farmers.

I wouldn't characterize any agricultural co-op like Ocean Spray as the same category as a worker co-op like Mondragon. There is a very distinct line between a farmer, who's an owner, and a farm worker, who handles most of the day-to-day operations.

Yes, I know a company in my country where the store owners are in a cooperative but the employees are not.

I suspect you are not familiar with farmer cooperatives. They are not employee cooperatives. They are corporatives of private farmers.

I wasn't talking about farmer cooperatives. Worker cooperatives are owned and run by the workers, thus the name. Certainly some cooperatives are not worker cooperatives.

A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut.

For most people here on HN, you could probably survive on a 20% pay cut - you'd just have to have the kids share a bedroom rather than having one each and a guest room.

Downside: Those on a 4 day workweek really struggle to get promoted to senior positions.

The 4 Day Week movement is to not take a pay cut, as workers are already productive enough (and that productivity can be maintained in a shorter work week, proven by several pilot/trials [1]). It's incredibly disingenuous for folks opposed to a 4 day week to say workers need to be even more productive [2] to obtain a shorter work week to maintain existing pay (at least in the US, where pay has been stagnant for almost half a century [3]).

If a 4 day week is codified into labor law and regulation, there is no game theory consideration vs some orgs with 4 day weeks competing with those with 5. Would you work 6 days a week today (for example)? Probably not, unless you're an outlier of some sort, and you don't see many orgs with a mandatory 6 day work week (because they wouldn't be able to retain talent). This is about pulling a policy ratchet to reduce the work week at scale for everyone, because the productivity already exists (it's just been funneled to the top wealthiest population, traditionally).

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

[1] https://www.4dayweek.com/ | https://www.4dayweek.com/research

[2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...

Does a nurse working a 32 hour week monitor as many patients as one who works a 40 hour week?

Does a grocery store worker who stocks shelves stock as many cans of food and boxes of slop in 32 hours as he does in 40?

It is absurd, disingenuous, and even sinister to suggest that their productivity is equal with a reduced week. There are hundreds, probably even thousands, of distinct jobs where this is the truth.

There are relatively few jobs where equal productivity continues with the reduced work week. They are all office jobs.

It is impossible that even if companies were forced to go with a reduced work week and were unable to cheat this regulation to any meaningful degree, that they would continue to pay the same for 20% less productivity. Worst case scenario for them is that they simply allow inflation to erode pay more than it does already. Given that even many menial workers earn above minimum wage, there are very few jobs where this isn't possible (and those few jobs are likely part-time anyway, where this reform is irrelevant).

If one truly wanted to help those who are hurting the worst, this is completely ass-backwards. It seems designed to make those who are already comfortable a little more so.

For sure, we're going to have differing opinions based on life experiences, data consumption, and the resulting mental models. Outcomes are going to be driven by voting (politically) and unions. With union support being at the highest in history in the US, along with rapid electorate turnover (4M 18 year olds aging into voting each year, ~2M 55+ annual age out rate of voters), I'm hopeful workers will be able to secure a greater piece of the value they generate (through a combination of wages continuing to be pushed up and a shorter work week) at the cost of those currently holding substantial assets and wealth. There will be some inflation, that is inevitable due to the US freeloading on substantially underpaid labor for so long it has become accustomed to it (the federal minimum wage is laughably at $7.25/hr for example [1]) as well as structural demographic compression of the working age cohort. Lots of macro unwinding that is going to be painful due to the poor economic choices made over the last half century. Importantly, most people under 30 didn't have a hand in shaping these poor choices.

> If one truly wanted to help those who are hurting the worst, this is completely ass-backwards. It seems designed to make those who are already comfortable a little more so.

Very broadly speaking, the very wealthy have enough [2], and can make due with less. Tax them more if necessary [3]. Those hurting the worst are hurting because of greed and selfishness of a minority, not workers who have been taking it on the chin for decades. But, most unfortunately, the mental model that gets you wealthy heavily discounts luck and overemphasizes individual exceptionalism [4] [5], so these folks aren't self aware enough to come to the conclusion on their own, leaving collective action and the legal/political system as the most likely path to success.

Again, the productivity already exists. Where do you think all of this accumulated wealth is coming from?

[1] https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/ ("The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. In the absence of action at the national level, many states and localities have raised their own minimum wages. Explore the map to see how these rapidly changing laws differ across the country. Values as of July 1, 2023")

[2] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly... ("2023: Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years")

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ijiLqfXP0 ("Rutger Bregman tells Davos to talk about tax: 'This is not rocket science'")

[4] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol... ("The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized")

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37419334

A nurse is a pretty bad example to use for this. Nurses often already only work 3-4 days a week (doing 10 to 12 hour shifts). They’re already on a 4 day week (or 3 day).

Maybe some unions will let the shareholders get a 20% profit-cut[1] and the workers a four-day workweek in return for not starting a strike.

[1] In reality less than that; see the autoworker strike in the US where they are demanding (among other things) a 40% pay increase, meanwhile those companies could really afford to pay the union members 100% more.

> A good chunk of employers will let you work a 4 day workweek in return for a 20% pay cut.

Where?? This has not been my experience, especially in tech. I've seen that work for "shift work" type jobs, even highly paid ones like doctors, but for "product work" type jobs like most tech, where there is essentially an infinite amount of possibile future work to do, companies are, generally, much less amenable to having people less than full time.

For a sense of scale, the difference in pay for the same hours and same role (and same individual), just for moving 200 km between Seattle and Vancouver, is something like a 40-60% cut in total comp before tax. 20% is small potatoes.

It's "they" because it's people in the past. If you want unions to win new rights today, you'd better start using "we".

Although unions fought for a long time for 8 hour work days it seems the biggest push came after Ford switched to 8 hour days (and doubled pay) and saw productivity and profits rise. It’s hard to give all the credit to any one group.

Regulation on work hours, holidays and the like is better handled by government legislation on the whole. I mean it works ok in France for example.

Weekends and 8 hour work week is not necessarily a good thing. There could be benefits to switching to 996 work week to compete better with China.

Benefits to whom?

Benefits to the country tend to also be benefits to the people of the country - or perhaps their children.

What do you mean by "to the country". Faster economic growth?

Faster economic growth tends to lead to happier citizens.

In fact, there is a philosophical school of thought that shows that happiness isn't related to the environment one lives in, but the improvement that one sees through one's lifetime. Economic growth can deliver that.

Unfortunately all of that improvement is concentrated in the hands of the ultra-wealthy.

> Faster economic growth tends to lead to happier citizens.

What's the evidence for this?

Look at this graph and rethink your post: https://www.epi.org/files/2013/ib388-figurea.jpg

Productivity has gone up over 200% but wages have stayed flat. Where is that economic growth for the worker?

Those vaguely phallic shaped rockets flying billionaires to space won't pay for themselves, you know!

But if you roll over and let them own 0your entire life, I guess you can have a pizza party from time to time.

Not for the workers, no.

I mean, I don't think it will happen but it's not hard to imagine a scenario where an imploded society losing to China will be even worse for the workers.

Competing with China is easy when their working population is compressing and getting old rapidly due to structural demographics [1]. The competition is between the extremely wealthy and the people who perform the actual labor that generates the value being vacuumed up by the former. I am no fan of the CCP, but at least they gave Jack Ma (a big supporter of 996 [2]) the boot [3] and overall, are a lot more adversarial with their wealthy system participants.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-shrinking-populati...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/business/jack-ma-996-china/in...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#Disappearance_from_the...

First, there are obviously diminishing and eventually negative returns to increasing work hours past a certain point. At the extreme end, 168h/week is clearly less productive than 40h/week despite being more than four times longer. At some point an additional hour provides zero marginal benefit, and past that point an additional hour lowers a worker's weekly productivity. That point may be 72h/week as "996" Chinese companies suggest, 40h/week as Henry Ford suggested, 32h/week as some 4-day workweek experiments suggest, or something else.

Second, even policies that provide some benefit to companies may backfire for society if they increase mental health problems, lower social cohesion, prevent family formation, and/or cause their best-and-brightest to leave. At some level the best way to "compete better with China" may be to focus on maintaining sensible policies focused on maximizing an individual's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" alongside overall national productivity and let short-sighted competitors burn themselves out. (Similar to the strategy adopted during the Cold War.)

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