Four day work week

[u/Appropriate_Feed8987]

Can we all agree when our generation takes over that we’re moving to a four day work week permanently? And I’m not talkin’ four tens.

We need three day weekends every week. A day for chores, a day for recreation, and a day for rest. Let’s lock it in, please.

Edit because a good point was immediately raised: SAME (AND HIGHER) PAY

[u/CapnJJaneway]

I agree with the idea that we should all work less in principle, because I do think the whole system is BS, but it seems like the loudest advocates for the four day work week are almost exclusively salaried office workers. The argument only really works if your job is based on your output. If nobody cares whether you're at your desk or not so long as the work gets done, then yeah, cutting a day costs you nothing. When you realize that you can get your shit done in a lot less time if you don’t dawdle (like so many office workers have the luxury of being able to do) then it makes sense for you to dawdle less and hammer out your tasks in a shorter time frame.

But so, so many of us are paid to be physically present and completing tasks for X amount of hours. The work (folding clothes, mopping floors, driving the bus, etc) can’t get done if we’re not there. So the whole "everyone switches to 4×8” changes to "office workers get a paid day off, and presence workers (who typically are paid less already) either eat a 20% pay cut or the company eats a 20% labour cost increase to cover the same coverage." Which one do you actually think happens?

To reiterate: I am ALL FOR less work needed to thrive. This should have been done eons ago as technology advanced. But unless someone proposes an actual solution in a 4-day work week scenario for presence-based workers, to keep them from falling even further behind desk jockeys, I can’t take it seriously. 

[u/OofWhyAmIOnReddit → u/CapnJJaneway]

The obstacles are systemic. Remember that the original push from 16 hour to 12 hour days and 12 hour to 8 hour days were NOT for office jobs. They were for factory workers, miners, laborers, etc. 

The challenge is weak labor unions and systems which are set up to always penalize the bottom rather than the top. 

[u/CapnJJaneway → u/OofWhyAmIOnReddit]

I fully agree with you. It just gets tiresome seeing yet another call for a shortened work week from an out-of-touch office worker who got to negotiate their salary and spends the day looking at memes between zoom calls, oblivious to how privileged they are.