[HN Gopher] Spain to launch modest trial of four-day working week
___________________________________________________________________
Spain to launch modest trial of four-day working week
Author : fireinsnow
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-03-15 07:06 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| philmcp wrote:
| In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in
| the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the
| industrial revolution.
|
| It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5
| days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no
| variation on this model?
|
| It annoys me so much that I've just launched
| https://www.fourdayweek.io/ (shameless plug)
| ggm wrote:
| Four 8 hour days. Australia the norm is 7.5 for a working week of
| 37.5hrs. This proposal would mean 32 hours of work.
|
| I think a real 4 day working week would be closer to 28 hours or
| less: it should mean employers get somebody else for the fifth
| day or three three days left in the week: closer to jobshare, no
| overtime, people work less but the work is shared around.
| dirktheman wrote:
| I've been working 4 days since 2006, when our first child was
| born. I don't see myself going back to working 5 days a week,
| even when the youngest one is older. I get to spend more time
| with our children, and when they're in school (I'm off on
| Wednesday) I have the entire day to myself. It's totally worth
| the pay cut!
|
| Fun fact: 50% of employed people here in The Netherlands are
| working parttime in some form.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I did 36 hours for a good while (taking a friday off every two
| weeks); that was nice, but it wasn't as necessary anymore
| during lockdown, because I gained an hour a day for not
| commuting.
|
| But another reason is that because of the corona, our company
| didn't do as good as expected and they didn't give anyone any
| raises, so working a few hours extra is a nice increase in wage
| as well.
|
| Mind you, otoh I could make a lot more if I were to work
| elsewhere.
| herbst wrote:
| Same here. IMO only one day already heavily improves life
| quality. Its not 50% in switzerland, but common enough that
| most jobs would accept.
| Rule35 wrote:
| In fact, 4 10s aren't much harder than 4 8s - for me travel
| time was dominant as I had to physically go run a lab. So I
| actually kept my salary while getting permanent three-day
| weekends. And I justified it by being able to get setup and
| cleaned up outside of normal work hours which was true and
| glorious.
| buran77 wrote:
| This is true but in many companies they won't give you the 4
| 10s option. The reason is that the company can cut 20% pay
| but realistically set the same targets (where possible). So
| the expectations don't realistically drop by 20%, just the
| time you have to reach them and the pay. Depending on how
| much you were payed to begin with you may find this a
| reasonable compromise.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I do 4x9. I like it, but with travel times the days can be
| quite long. When I have kids I want to go back to 4x8 so I
| can be home earlier.
| dirktheman wrote:
| I did 4x9 also for a while, also with a long (1h15)
| commute. Was OK for a year, but I was glad that my next job
| was 4x8 again, with 1 day WFH. So 3 days in the office, 1
| day from home. Perfect!
| redsummer wrote:
| 'Spanish practices' in the UK means using bureaucracy to get as
| much out of the employer with as little effort as possible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_practices
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Oh, beautiful Spain, playing experiments with an unemployment
| rate of 16.13%...
|
| I love how my country hugs the poverty closer and closer each
| year that passes by.
| teataster wrote:
| You should check current research on work week reduction. It
| actually indicates workers increase weekly production. Yes,
| production, not productivity.
|
| There is this thing called stress, burnout... That decreases
| production. Less work usually means less stress.
|
| Research is not as solid as I would like, but promising.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Of course you will downvote me, but as an inhabitant of such
| country, the truth is, this is the result of the socialist and
| incompetent government that is in power due to the even more
| incompetent opposition.
|
| It's been long since we were the leaders of employment creation
| in the eurozone, back when Rajoy was in power.
| A12-B wrote:
| It is a _modest_ trial of a four day work week. You are so
| far from disaster. This can only be a good thing, if it doesn
| 't work they stop doing it, but probably it will work because
| people are more productive when they have time to breath.
| mercacona wrote:
| Spaniards don't appreciate research, we only nod when
| solutions sprout out of the blue.
|
| In fact, less work hours will be a complication for many
| -as they are used to justify the work done by sitting for
| extra-hours at their desk. It's sad, but it's also my daily
| routine.
| severino wrote:
| > Of course you will downvote me...
|
| Maybe they're downvoting you because they are also Spanish,
| they know who Rajoy is and what he did, and what effects a
| pandemic produces on your economy regardless of the party in
| the government.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > regardless of the party in the government
|
| I certainly do not miss Rajoy, but I whole-heartedly
| believe that a social-communist government is possibly the
| worst alternative to get us out of this hole.
|
| We need jobs, a lot of them, not only in the public sector,
| and I think that our current government is tremendously
| ill-equipped for this task.
|
| Has anyone noticed how members of the government rarely, if
| ever, talk about job creation anymore? Politicians will lie
| about anything, but they don't even dare lie about this -
| they simply avoid these murky waters altogether.
|
| My theory is they know full-well that the only path to
| growth and private sector job creation is by taking
| measures (that moderates like Minister of the Economy Nadia
| Calvino possibly support) like modifying labor laws and
| lowering taxes which sound right-wing and therefore sit
| especially poorly with the communist wing of the
| government.
|
| The only alternative to that is, as some communists like
| Iglesias or Garzon are consistently pointing out, to
| nationalize a bunch of industries (they've talked about
| examples ranging from banks to media companies) and turn to
| a centralized economy.
|
| I hope I'm wrong but I clearly do not see how the situation
| will improve under the current circumstances.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Come on, the government is not "communist" in any
| practical sense of the word, anymore than the right is
| "fascist" as people in the left usually call it. Those
| words work well to inflame the masses and polarize
| political campaigns but not for serious political
| analysis.
|
| Sure, some individual members of the government (with
| very limited decision-making power, being the minority
| members of a coalition) declare themselves so. In an
| already very diluted way. And they do some political
| posturing with nationalizations (which aren't even a
| communist thing. If nationalizing a few strategic
| industries is communism, then what was Spain in the 80s
| with lots of nationalized industry? The USSR?). But it's
| not really going to happen. They know it, we know it.
|
| Macron has also set forth the idea of nationalizing some
| industries to face the COVID crisis, and I actually think
| it's more likely to happen in France (with its
| notoriously non-communist government) than in Spain.
| severino wrote:
| > I certainly do not miss Rajoy, but I whole-heartedly
| believe that a social-communist government is possibly
| the worst alternative to get us out of this hole.
|
| Why is that? We said we needed a new labour law so you
| can lay off people at no cost, because they said that was
| the reason the unemployment rate was so high here in
| Spain. And we did it. And we still have the very same
| law, nobody is changing it. They also didn't raise taxes
| very much, in fact not as much as Rajoy did when he took
| office.
|
| Instead, I think one of the reasons our economy is so
| vulnerable is because we are so much dependent on tourism
| and also there seems nobody can innovate and create a
| business other than a restaurant. But this is hardly our
| current government's fault.
|
| (Of course, calling this government "communist" is a joke
| in poor taste, but people from outside Spain may believe
| this country is the new Soviet Union).
| mordae wrote:
| Check out Czechia. We have a communist party that supports a
| cabinet lead by a billionaire capitalist who literally
| sacrificed thousands of lives for better election results.
|
| You should get better opposition. Do you have a functioning
| Pirate party already? It seems dormant. Maybe try to revive
| it?
| yiyus wrote:
| I think the reason the Pirate party never got momentum in
| Spain is because they cannot compite in pirateness with the
| traditional parties.
| sofixa wrote:
| Well, with a reduced work week, some jobs ( mostly service jobs
| that need to provide full coverage) would require more workers
| to cover the whole week, so i really don't see the issue here
| with regards to unemployment.
| yiyus wrote:
| We are talking about Spain, where most people work in service
| jobs for very small companies that are already struggling to
| stay alive. If a bar needs, let's say, four bartenders now,
| they are not going to contract a fifth one with the increment
| of costs that implies (with no increase, at all, in their
| income). They probably cannot even afford it. What they will
| do is to keep the same four bartenders and pay a part of
| their salary in black money, increasing the submerged
| economy, and in the long term being detrimental for the
| economy and, therefore, employment.
|
| We need more high quality jobs, not paying more for the low
| quality jobs we already have.
| fogihujy wrote:
| Less working hours per person definitely means more workers
| are required in order to fill a given amount of work hours.
|
| I'm not sure it's viable in today's financial climate, but I
| guess we're about to find out.
| sofixa wrote:
| It's not necessarily less work per person, it's less _time_
| per person. That matters in cases where coverage is needed
| ( medical personnel, police, fire department, secretaries,
| phone support, hospitality, etc.) but in others where only
| the output matters ( like software engineering, lawyers,
| marketing, even factories in some cases etc. ), there have
| been multiple studies around the subject and they all claim
| that fewer work hours increase productivity.
| fogihujy wrote:
| You're right. It's time spent and not work performed.
| Original comment edited.
|
| However, in many professions being available for a given
| number of hours is often a major part of the job, and
| that means there will be a direct requirement to hire
| more people in order to cover the reduced working hours.
| teataster wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree with you, I think we should
| be careful with this discourse. Rather than increases in
| productivity, increases in production should be
| emphasized. And yes, you cannot increase labor production
| without an increase in productivity, everything else
| equal.
|
| Iirc, increase in production is about 40%. So working
| Monday to Thursday, you produce the same as someone,
| working 5 days produces Monday to next week's Tuesday
| morning.
|
| Research is not solid, but promising.
| daptaq wrote:
| Aren't fewer workdays better for employment, because more
| people can be employed? I'm guessing it's more complicated, but
| is there some clear tendency?
| fidelramos wrote:
| Part of the complication if the enormous taxes and
| bureaucracy involved in companies hiring workers, it's a real
| pain for start-ups and smaller companies.
|
| I will give you one concrete example: companies in Spain with
| more than 50 workers must carry out salary audits to avoid
| gender discrimination [1]. These and other perverse
| incentives keep many companies from growing, which in turn
| hurt the economy and reduces demand for workers, driving
| wages down.
|
| [1] https://spainsnews.com/companies-with-more-
| than-50-workers-m...
| astrange wrote:
| If you make the definition of fulltime worker 30 hours a week
| instead of 40 hours a week, it certainly does make more
| people fulltime employed, but it also seems like cheating.
|
| In the US underemployment was blamed on laziness, lack of
| training, etc etc for years but the actual cause is the Fed
| setting interest rates too high, and when they stopped we got
| more employment than ever (as of Jan 2020). If you simply
| make employers compete more to hire people, they will do a
| good job training them, making them more productive, ignoring
| minor criminal records and so on.
| tomcooks wrote:
| How else would you solve the unemployment problem? By giving
| more hours of work to those who already have a job?
| neilwilson wrote:
| Increase the number of jobs.
|
| Everybody needs something to do with their day. And those you
| really need to be working a full week to produce what we
| really need will only do that if there is something material
| for them to exchange for their efforts.
|
| We really don't want farmers on three day weeks.
| fidelramos wrote:
| Simple, remove or reduce all barriers to employment:
|
| - No minimum wage laws. - Reduce or remove taxes paid by
| companies. - Reduce or remove forced social contributions by
| companies on behalf of the workers. - Remove bureaucracy and
| taxes to start companies. - Facilitate capital investment by
| foreign firms.
|
| It's simple but not easy, because people vote for policies
| that _sound_ good but are actually either ineffective or
| directly give the opposite result.
| elktea wrote:
| Do you think this will reduce jobs? I think it would do the
| opposite
| eric4smith wrote:
| It seems that we're slowly heading to a place where salaries are
| going to be much lower, because of less working hours and loss of
| the kinds of jobs that paid a good living wage.
|
| Or those same jobs will just pay a lower salary.
|
| It could be good or bad.
|
| The good part is, less buying. Less shopping. Smaller homes.
| Lower needs. etc.
|
| The bad part, all of that part of the economy that was depending
| those incomes is going to have to transition to something else.
|
| Maybe it could lead to more people moving to lower cost
| countries... OR... more people living like how people live in
| Bangkok, Beijing or Bali.
|
| Either way, the end the middle class as we know it in America is
| quickly coming to an end.
| airhead969 wrote:
| There are more people because of population trends.
|
| Simultaneously, there are fewer jobs due to automation.
|
| Wages will continue to decline with an oversupply of labor.
| astrange wrote:
| Automation does not reduce jobs. It is impossible to run out
| of jobs, because 1. demand is infinite 2. jobs are based on
| "comparative advantage", and people have comparative
| advantage with automation because they're the same species as
| their customers.
|
| Also, this isn't even happening. It's mostly an artifact
| because productivity of e.g. computer manufacturing looks
| super efficient if you measure each 2020 computer as
| containing a million 1970s computers.
|
| > Wages will continue to decline with an oversupply of labor.
|
| This is called the "lump of labor" fallacy. Increasing the
| number of people increases both supply and demand, and
| therefore improves the economy, and therefore may raise
| wages.
|
| (Economists don't simply use supply and demand for the labor
| market anyway, they consider things like monopsony and search
| models.)
| andi999 wrote:
| It doesnt have to be. Overall productivity is increasing (or at
| least has been for the last decades). So only the product of
| work hours times productivity determines if salaries get much
| lower or not. (Of course if from one day to the next you work
| only 50% then your claim is true)
| jonplackett wrote:
| House prices not necessarily. House prices are driven by demand
| and by ability to borrow. If everyone takes a pay cut, everyone
| can pay less and house prices should go down. The only reason
| house prices have gone so silly recently is insanely cheap
| credit has let everyone bid against each other to drive house
| prices up.
| Rule35 wrote:
| Real estate rarely goes down, outside of a total bubble
| deflation. People just hold onto it longer, unable to
| profitably sell, further trapping others in a cycle of rent.
|
| The current bubble will drain money from producers to the
| value-empty mortgage sector for decades.
| refurb wrote:
| _Real estate rarely goes down, outside of a total bubble
| deflation._
|
| Detroit, Baltimore, Camden would like a word with you and
| your theory that housing never goes down.
| Rule35 wrote:
| > _rarely_
|
| > outside of a total bubble deflation.
|
| Detroit is rare, and Detroit's bubble popped hard at the
| same time as real-estate in general.
| astrange wrote:
| Your model that people can afford to hold onto an asset
| with maintenance costs forever seems like it can't be true.
| It's possible for your primary residence, but that's
| because homes have a use - you can live in them. If you're
| using it and paying the mortgage then it doesn't matter if
| you're underwater.
|
| Anyway, this can be solved by waiting for them to die, and
| in the meantime building more houses with more efficient
| land use.
| Rule35 wrote:
| It's almost totally true for homeowners who live in the
| "flooded" home, trapped and unable to move. For investors
| it depends if they can afford the loss from selling at
| below purchase, and how much profit they have to eat
| into. Large companies can afford to liquidate and leave
| the space temporarily, putting their real-estate funds
| into development or something other than retail rent.
| Small investors with only a few houses are the ones who
| most impact retail house rent (not apartments) and this
| is where the rent trap is, they aren't living in these
| homes (cancelling rent with ownership) but their
| reluctance to sell for a new reasonable price means their
| renters are denied a chance to get ahead.
|
| As for new builds, much of that money is held by the
| large rental companies and needs them to transfer out of
| the rental space, which they won't do until the market
| looks sane. Maybe not as long as waiting for people to
| die, but still painful.
|
| What a trap we built by trying to make our residences an
| investment.
| choeger wrote:
| That's only part of the story. Current house prices are so
| high that only the absolute top of the income class can
| afford to pay off a mortgage.
|
| Just an example: In Berlin you will pay around 850.000EUR for
| a newly-built single family home of around 160qm on a 600qm
| plot. With realistic interest rates of around 1.5 to 1.8% it
| will take you around 4.8% per year to pay this off in the
| (roughly) 25 to 30 years you have left of working years if
| you are a mid-thirties professional. This (conveniently)
| gives you a factor of 0.004 per month to pay for this house.
| That's a whopping 3400EUR _per month_.
|
| Now normally you should not pay more than 33% of your net
| income for living. That means, such a house is affordable,
| even with the relatively low interest rates, for families
| with a _net income_ of _10kEUR per month_. How many mid-
| thirty families have that kind of income?
|
| So what drives these prices is actually inherited wealth.
| Inherit real estate and you can cut that price easily in
| half. 1700EUR a month is much more reasonable and that does
| not even account for the even better interest rates you will
| see. Notably you just _transfer_ your inherited wealth, you
| do not _lose it_.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> So what drives these prices is actually inherited
| wealth._
|
| This is so true for Germany/Most of Western Europe. Buying
| property is a pipe dream at this point, even for white
| collar professionals, if you have no help from the bank of
| mom and dad.
|
| Building has just not kept up with demand (can't build and
| dilute the value of established NIMBY property owners) and
| wages have not kept up with the rising property prices.
|
| And rent freezing for the established ones further
| increases the cost for those new to the market. So good
| luck building wealth for a mortgage when you'll be paying
| over half of your net income for big city rent.
|
| I feel like unless something changes, we're looking at some
| massive revolts in the next decades if things continue
| along this path of squeezing the middle and lower classes
| to further transfer their wealth to the rich, all carefully
| enabled by the ruling politicians.
|
| That's why so many desperate young ones are gambling their
| savings on GME and other memes, since they realized that
| unless you're born into wealth, the game is rigged against
| you building wealth no matter how hard you work. So then,
| why bother working hard as that just makes the rich even
| richer but not you.
| switch007 wrote:
| I definitely see lower wages due to less employment (as is rife
| in the UK with our zero hour contracts). House prices will rise
| unabated, compounding the cost of living issues.
|
| I'll only support reduced work weeks (because it'll inevitably
| be used to reduce wages eventually) if our housing problem is
| fixed.
| airhead969 wrote:
| By contrast, the FAANG workweek is 8-14 hours, 5-7 days a week
| with the possibility of being on-call for emergencies and
| contacted after hours.
|
| Working 72 hr/week while making $200k/yr is only $53/hour.
|
| To get to $80/hour would require a salary of $300k. $100/hr is
| $375k. Oh, and taxes because not an owner of capitalist assets.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Spanish workers earn closer to 6 $/hour.
| Rule35 wrote:
| My friends who work those hours make well over double what I do
| from their bonuses. They work these hours because they do
| datacentre builds and these cost the company a fortune for
| every day. Doing anything to shorten them is worthwhile and it
| encourages the type of people who'd work in the oil fields.
|
| There's no way a FAANG could hold onto staff requiring 72h/w
| without paying huge bonuses.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| I worked in one... engineers didn't work quite that much but
| about 60 hrs a week. Saturday a full day is standard all year
| around. The peculiar thing was that right next to our cubicles
| there was a level 1 phone tech support team. Those guys worked
| exactly 40 hour weeks. Or team of test engineers were paid
| $600/month. The tech support guys only $400. I would often ask
| the engineers if they were cool with the fact that they made
| the same pay as a phone guy but had to work much harder. At
| first they were all puzzled, then I'd point out their hourly
| wage. They all would respond that it didn't matter, it was
| about social status. Even some of the ladies working in
| designer bag stores made better pay than them, but didn't have
| the statis in their view. It kind of blew myind, status means
| nothing to me, but I am considered eccentric. Anyway,
| thankfully my base pay was higher than both groups due to
| nationality.
| krapht wrote:
| My friends who work at Google do not have such a workweek.
| Aren't you exaggerating a bit? At the very least, don't pass it
| off as universal.
| borjah wrote:
| I wish it would be the beginning of something but I doubt it
| will.
|
| Businessmen in Spain sees the worker as another machine in the
| factory and a lot of them work actively to fired the workers that
| try to unionize. I talk from experience having worked in 2 some
| what small (50 to 150 workers), family-owned companies, where in
| one, the union representative was the son of the owner and in the
| other there wasn't any union because 2 years before I entered,
| the person who tried to create a union office in the company was
| fired and reported to the police with false pretences.
|
| You have exceptions of course but the vast majority are very very
| conservative with ideas between right wing or extreme right wing.
|
| My opinion is that the wealth, like in any place, is very very
| bad balanced. Studies are viewed as useless, because they won't
| give you a good job or because there are some part of society
| that sees them as something not cool. We don't have a solid STEM-
| based industry like for example Germany or France. Also, We are
| highly dependant from tourism, being tourism the largest sector
| in our GDP (in some regions is the 25% )and we don't re-invesment
| that wealth in R&D, which is arround 1,25%.
|
| Plus political instability from various populism movements is the
| perfect mix for a country stuck in time. Without any project of
| future.
| teataster wrote:
| My feeling is: spanish business is a somewhat feudal system.
|
| I do not believe that business owners are trying to maximize
| the efficacy of their resources. If it were so, this kind of
| proposals would be accepted by the business community, given
| research on the topic. I believe this proposal is a tremendous
| opportunity.
|
| I believe business want to control people. As such, one less
| day is less control. In exchange for Business controlling your
| life you get different degrees of financial security.
| Feudalism.
|
| This attitude is reinforced by tradition and misconception. And
| both employees and employers are at fault. Gee, I am at fault!
| I haven't worked a 40 hour week in my entire working life. On
| my defense I would say that I have sent juniors and interns
| home... But still.
|
| I have also said that research on the topic is not solid, but
| of this proposal were to be properly implemented could help
| solve that issue.
|
| Politicians doing a proper policy implementation is a different
| can of worms. I was hoping that some progressive business would
| actually start doing 4 hour weeks, rather than a top down
| approach.
| borjah wrote:
| Can I steal the feudalism idea?
|
| I agree with you. I didn't know how to label it but feudalism
| sounds right. And I think that employees are greater at fault
| that employers. We must know when to say enough is enough.
|
| In the second company, I had a couple of interns and I saw
| that the first week they where doing like 1 or 2 hours every
| day more than they should by contract (4 hours/day contract).
| I invited them both to a coffee outside the company and talk
| about them about doing more hours for free.
|
| I still have contact with one of them and before this thing
| of Covid exploded, we talked and said that he had with his
| intern the same conversation I had with him about free hours.
|
| I think that we need a strong class / work mentality,
| something lost in recent years, and that it comes from
| education.
| teataster wrote:
| > Can I steal the feudalism idea?
|
| I would be honored.
|
| Other thing most people don't understand is that unpaid
| overtime is actually tax fraud. I have never seen paid
| overtime in Spain. I read someone in HN saying she got paid
| overtime tho.
| n_cusan wrote:
| Growing up in Spain, I am currently living back here after living
| over 14 years in Germany and spending most of my working life
| there. I am half Spanish and half German and have a good
| perspective on both mentalities in general. In my opinion the
| problem in Spain is definitely the mindset towards work and the
| way it is perceived. Here work seems to always be some tedious
| chore that keeps you away from social live. I do not know many
| people who truly enjoy their job.
|
| A couple of years ago my girlfriend came from Spain to live with
| me in Germany and got a job. After the first day she came home at
| 10:00 pm (work ended at 6:00 pm). I was worried that they were
| making her work to hard the first day, but when she came home she
| told me she just stayed late doing nothing for the new boss
| seeing her put in the effort... That really really reminded me
| why I left Spain to work in Germany. I just do not get that kind
| of attitude, when I confronted her about it she told me that this
| behavior was expected in all the places she worked at. Leaving
| early (or even on time), even if you are effective and have done
| you work is frowned upon by both coworkers and managers.
| Paradoxically people might even consider you lazy.
|
| So I am really expectant to see how this experiment turns out and
| if it achieves a change in mentality or if it is just a way to
| spend tax money and make some "friends of friends" rich as
| politicians like to do in Spain by subsidizing companies that
| once the state money runs out go back to normal.
| tumetab1 wrote:
| At least Portugal it's not like that /sarcasm :D
|
| I'm keeping on eye on the experiment because of that, maybe
| this is a better way to increase productivity in cultures like
| these.
| FullMetalBitch wrote:
| Plenty of assholes bosses in Spain, in my experience I have
| been very honest from the beginning I had sick people I have to
| take care of and sometimes I have to leave early or I can't
| just go to work I was always willing to work remote that day
| when the job allowed it.
|
| The worst part of working in Spain is the work is usually from
| 9 to 14 and from 15 to 18 or variations of that, instead of 8
| hours straight.
| lnsru wrote:
| Well, we have in Germany in a German company mandatory 42
| minutes long lunch break. So 8 hours straight isn't feasible.
| I would really love to ditch 42 minutes long break and have
| real 15 minutes meal break with punchcard sign out/sign in.
| Now we just have one hour long breaks taking a walk and
| eating afterwards.
| wizardofdos wrote:
| Can't have that in Germany as labour laws require a 30
| minutes break if working more than 6 hours and an extra 15
| minutes if working more than 9 hours (including the 30
| minutes break. So the best your company could do would be
| 30 minutes instead of 42.
| FullMetalBitch wrote:
| No one should work 8 hours straight but something like
| 7.00-15.00. Spain also has a mandatory break after 6 hours
| of work (15 mins and up) and it counts as working time.
|
| In the steel industry there are three working times, 6.00 -
| 14.00, 14.00 - 22.00, 22.00 - 6.00 much better than working
| from 9.00 to 14.00 and from 15.00 to 18.00.
| varjag wrote:
| Why 42, specifically? It can't be some HHGTG joke, it's
| Germany!
| zerr wrote:
| Is it the same in other southern countries as well? (Portugal,
| Italy, Greece)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I have one of the most exciting jobs one can have, being an
| academic, and still in Spain the system does as much as it can
| to make it a tedious toil.
|
| We are always swamped in huge piles of bureaucracy, it's
| difficult not to be caught in some evaluation or other that
| requires you to spend months devoting countless hours to
| mindless paperwork (for the last one, I literally submitted a
| more than 1800-page PDF. I'm not exaggerating, I just checked).
| There are so many evaluations (6-year research evaluations from
| the Spanish government, research complement evaluations from
| the regional government, evaluations of research centers,
| evaluations of the PhD program, 5-year Docentia teaching
| evaluations, accreditations for the countless positions in the
| scale, with the subsequent evaluation for the position
| itself...) that we are subject to several a year, each with
| their own CV format and their own forms incompatible with the
| rest and asking for different things. And then there is the
| day-to-day bureaucracy where buying a computer can mean filling
| 10-15 different forms.
|
| Paperwork takes most of our time and being able to do some
| "real work" feels like a reward that one has to earn. Still the
| real work is rewarding, but I wish it were like in other
| countries (say northern Europe, the US...) where real work can
| be _most_ of the time. (And why didn 't I migrate? Because of
| attachment to my place and my loved ones, like many people
| here. If work were my main driver in life I'd have been out of
| here long ago).
|
| As for the experiment, I hope it achieves success but I
| wouldn't hold my breath. Under the current political climate,
| I'm afraid even if it's an undisputable success, the moment a
| right-wing government is voted to office they will tear it down
| because it's "communism", "handouts", "will turn us into
| Venezuela" or something like that. It's difficult to achieve
| anything with the current political polarization (and the main
| party that was between both blocs, currently in danger of
| extinction).
| outime wrote:
| I'm yet another spaniard abroad for close to a decade and
| couldn't agree more, it's like night and day.
|
| The only way to have a decent job in Spain is by working for a
| foreign company (as a remote worker or FTE if they have a
| spanish office) from which you can get a decent salary and work
| conditions or creating your own company if you're successful.
| Otherwise, working for spanish companies in Spain is most of
| the times a death sentence and may as well make you hate your
| job forever.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I'm Spanish and I've lived in Germany, the UK, and in short
| stints in the US, and some of what you say resonates with me.
| In particular:
|
| > Here work seems to always be some tedious chore that keeps
| you away from social life
|
| This is just one manifestation of what's more generally a very
| poor work culture, in what amounts to a giant, self-reinforcing
| negative feedback loop. Management often lacks professionalism,
| salaries are poor, and employees are demotivated and must
| therefore look to anything but work for fulfillment.
|
| To be clear, I don't believe this is inherently Spanish, due to
| our genes, the climate, or our love for fiesta: similar
| phenomena could be observed locally in the US or Northern
| Europe. The problem in Spain is how widespread these attitudes
| are, in a macro context where good opportunities have been
| scarce for decades, probably due to the lack of a vision for a
| national productive model and any effective policies in this
| regard.
|
| Personally I believe any permanent solution will need to come
| simultaneously in a top-down and bottom-up fashion, with both
| effective state policies and a change in attitudes from
| individuals. The catalyst would likely need to be a multi-
| partisan, national and universal social pact rallying
| institutions (politics, education, unions, businesses, etc.)
| around a well-defined vision. Anyone who follows Spanish
| politics knows that unfortunately at present that possibility
| is extremely remote.
| sbacic wrote:
| I don't think this issue is specific to Spain - judging by
| the rest of the comments and my own personal experience
| (Croatia) this problem seems endemic to much of southern
| Europe.
|
| I suspect at least part of the issue is due to climate. I
| wonder if there is a similar trend in the US?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I've thought about this and discussed it a few times with
| friends, but every conclusion I've ever reached seems quite
| unscientific, so I've never held on to any of it.
|
| There are quite a few counterexamples of thriving economies
| with warm climates: California, Miami, Texas, Singapore off
| the top of my mind. Historically, the Greeks and Romans
| achieved splendor in the classical era in Southern Europe.
| In the modern era, the Ottomans and some Italic kingdoms
| did as well. Spain and Portugal most certainly did as well,
| but maybe these are all too similar to oil-rich countries
| nowadays in that they held quasi-monopolies over valuable
| resources of their time, so I'm not sure they would qualify
| as much as the others.
|
| Conversely, there are quite a few examples of really bad
| economies in cold climates.
|
| There may be some correlation between climate and the
| _odds_ of success of a nation or region, but I believe the
| counter-examples prove there is no definite causation. It
| 's too easy to fall into the fatalistic idea of "we're
| fucked because it's warm and cozy here" but I will refuse
| to accept that until I see unequivocal scientific evidence
| to back it up.
| thefz wrote:
| > To be clear, I don't believe this is inherently Spanish,
| due to our genes, the climate, or our love for fiesta:
| similar phenomena could be observed locally in the US or
| Northern Europe.
|
| It is more or less the same here in Italy. Jobs are so scarce
| that one has to be grateful for anything better than straight
| unemployment thus enabling a whole ecosystem of low pay,
| asshole bosses and coworkers, and toxic work attitude all
| around.
| joaodlf wrote:
| > The problem in Spain is how prevalent these attitudes are,
| in a macro context where good opportunities have been scarce
| for decades
|
| This really nails it. I'm originally from Portugal (now
| living and working in the UK). Staying late and maintaining
| presence was a really big thing in Portugal. You really are
| looked down on when you leave early, it's a really terrible
| work culture, it genuinely felt like people would either
| overwork themselves or just generally do nothing with that
| extra time.
|
| I tell my friends this story all the time: When I first
| arrived to the UK and started working, I asked my company
| about having my work email on my phone, my manager just had a
| completely blank face - "why do you need your work email on
| your phone?". I have been happily employed with this company
| for nearly 8 years now, never once feeling the need to stay
| late or go beyond the contracted hours. If I put in overtime,
| it's because I want to (most of the time because I actually
| enjoy the work). Oh, and I am paid for overtime. Completely
| unheard of in Portugal.
|
| I know a lot of these things might be company culture
| specific, but there is definitely a level within geography -
| The lesser opportunities available, the more is expected out
| of you. As if having the opportunity to work should be seen
| as some sort of blessing.
| mattmanser wrote:
| The irony of this and the parent comment is the UK
| regularly come up as a country that the exact same problem
| happens in.
|
| The UK has notoriously low productivity compared to Europe
| and the US, and longer average work hours than the rest of
| Europe.
|
| These are larger aggregate studies. I wonder why both your
| experiences of the UK seem so at odds with the observed
| studies? Is it just the field you're in?
|
| Some examples:
|
| https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/british-workers-putting-
| longest-...
|
| https://www.businessleader.co.uk/uk-employees-work-the-
| longe...
|
| EDIT: Downvoted for actual studies vs anecdotes. Fabulous.
| Not only that, these studies have been coming out for
| _years_.
| vidarh wrote:
| Indeed, this from Eurostat includes Portugal and Spain,
| both of which have lower average working hours than the
| UK.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-
| news/-/D...
| brmgb wrote:
| > The UK has notoriously low productivity compared to
| Europe and the US, and longer average work hours than the
| rest of Europe.
|
| You should be very wary of productivity statistics coming
| from Europe.
|
| I have worked most of the past decade in France. Like
| most highly educated employee in France, my contract is
| in days and not in hours. Officialy and legally, I have
| no set hours but for accounting purpose I have always
| officialy worked 37.5 hours a week. In reality, I have
| never worked less than 42.5 hours and weeks above 45
| hours are both common and expected.
|
| This is the norm not the exception.
| vidarh wrote:
| People in the UK "officially and legally" have much the
| same situation, and in reality most people still work
| longer than the officially stated hours.
|
| Most of the numbers I can find for Europe is from
| _surveys of employees_ , not gathered from data on labour
| _contracts_.
|
| E.g. pretty much all of the EU numbers draws on the
| European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS)
| brmgb wrote:
| > Most of the numbers I can find for Europe is from
| surveys of employees, not gathered from data on labour
| contracts.
|
| Then you are looking at it extremely poorly without
| obnoxious quotes.
|
| Most of the _official_ stastics on productivity like the
| one published by Eurostat are derived from the total
| amount of hours worked which is estimated based on
| contracts.
| mattmanser wrote:
| You're just making stuff up, here's a study that
| contradicts you directly:
|
| https://www.employment-
| studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/...
|
| See page 14 of the executive study:
|
| _- However, simple international comparisons can be
| misleading. In particular, the UK position (mid-range) is
| distorted by the fact that, compared with most other EU
| states, the UK employs a high proportion of part-time
| women workers (working fewer than 30 hours a week).
|
| - Amongst full-time employees, the UK shows high levels
| of long hours working (over 48 hours a week), especially
| amongst men where the UK has the highest level of long
| hours working in the EU. Just over one-fifth (22 per
| cent) of UK men working full-time work long hours
| compared with an average of one tenth (11 per cent)
| across the other EU member states.
|
| - Full-time male managers work the longest hours in the
| UK and across the EU member states as a whole. However,
| (on average) UK managers do not work longer hours than
| their EU counterparts_
| vidarh wrote:
| EU-LFS, which I referenced, is published by Eurostat, is
| a core part of the official Eurostat data, and is survey-
| based, not derived from estimates of contracts.
|
| Here is Eurostat's EU-LFS data browser for "hours worked
| per week of full time employment":
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00071/d
| efa...
|
| You can find the actual questionnaires used for carrying
| out these surveys here:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
|
| You'll note they include asking for the same information
| (estimates of hours worked) several different ways (with
| and without overtime, and asking separately for the
| overtime) and that they include instructions to the
| interviewer for confirming that the result is internally
| consistent.
|
| EU-LFS is _the_ main source of data on those aspects for
| the EU. Measuring overall productivity then comes from
| matching economic indicators up against hours worked.
| joaodlf wrote:
| Tech, more than likely, contributes towards personal
| experience. I can safely say this about Portugal: this is
| a country where companies do not want to invest in a tech
| department. There is a culture of outsourcing all tech
| related work. This has caused the birth of manyyy
| "outsourcing tech companies" - the sort of companies that
| hire tech talent just to shift them over to "projects",
| where you go to work for someone else and are at the
| complete mercy of the client (who demands the world since
| they have an expensive contract with the outsourcing
| company).
|
| This has been my woe, and the same can be said about many
| of my friends and uni acquaintances. I suspect other
| fields might not have it this badly.
|
| I have found a completely different culture here in the
| UK, there is so much demand for tech workers, combined
| with a much better approach towards companies investing
| in tech - it feels like the worker has that much power,
| if I'm not happy I can just go get a job somewhere else,
| probably within a week of quitting. It's a very different
| dynamic when compared to Portugal: Jobs are scarce and
| the pay isn't great. Tech is non-innovation driven,
| you're not there to think about the future, just to fix
| present issues that are very specific to some random
| company.
|
| I don't miss Portugal at all when it comes to work.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| To clarify, I said I lived in the UK just to lay out my
| bio, but didn't want to imply that everything is dandy
| there.
|
| When I was there I lived in London, but occasionally
| travelled to an office in Peterborough. I therefore saw
| two worlds, one where opportunity abounds and another
| which was, in all honesty, pretty grim. I loved the
| people there to bits but their degree of dejection was
| very much comparable to what you see in Spain, if not
| worse in some regards (as many lacked, in my observation,
| the strong familial ties that support Spanish society).
|
| I will say however that despite this very poor outlook
| for some regions in the UK, even in the worst of cases
| many British people seem to hold on to a certain
| optimistic national outlook and to an entrepreneurial or
| "trading spirit" that is much more rare in Spain. The
| culture, laws and economic structures seem to still
| support this, for example the conditions for sole traders
| are infinitely better in the UK than they are in Spain.
|
| But otherwise yes, I know from both personal experience
| and from studies I've read through the years that the
| situation is far from utopian.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > and employees are demotivated and must therefore look to
| anything but work for fulfillment
|
| It is a sad state of affairs that people are looking for
| "fulfillment" in work _at all_. Why are we still forced to
| work 40 hours a week or more to barely survive?
| sverhagen wrote:
| People should make living wages, without forced overwork,
| burnout, and other sorts of abuse. But if I get fulfillment
| out of my work, could I please? It's not for everyone, but
| for me it's everything.
| fidelramos wrote:
| We don't need to work 40 hours a week to "barely survive",
| these 40 hours give people a standard of living that was
| unthinkable centuries ago. If you accept the lower
| standards of living of the past you can work much fewer
| hours. On the other hand if you want modern housing,
| electricity, water, gas, Internet, a modern house, a car, a
| smartphone, a computer, fridge, freezer, washing machine,
| dishwasher, etc., then of course you need to work to afford
| them.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Note how I never said that work should be your main source
| of fulfillment.
|
| But yes, I whole-heartedly believe that people should
| derive _some_ meaning out of work, as they devote ~40 of
| their waking hours to that activity, and it can be a
| cornerstone of a person 's identity. And meaning can take
| many forms: that you're doing something for yourself, for
| your family, for your community or your nation, that you
| intrinsically enjoy the task at hand, or a combination
| thereof.
|
| This is a common characteristic of thriving nations I've
| observed in my travels and readings, and conversely, I
| think that nations that do not have this trait are bound to
| decline or even crash.
|
| Note how I also do not entirely blame Spaniards for a
| problem that is clearly systemic; on the other hand, I do
| believe that we as individual citizens should remain strong
| in the face of adversity, and not succumb to providential
| fatalism, as this will also inevitably lead to national
| misery.
| astrange wrote:
| Well, you don't want to design work to be anti-fulfilling,
| do you? I suppose it's OK if it's neutral.
| permo-w wrote:
| To me, that attitude sounds like a good thing. It sounds like
| the Spanish, or at least the Spanish that you've come across,
| haven't been sucked in by the unforgiving ideals of capitalism.
| It pleases me that they'd find ways to enjoy their life that
| don't involve economic efficiency
| Temasik wrote:
| china and india is trialling 7days a week
| smel wrote:
| I left my job and created a software consulting company two years
| ago just to be able to work 3/4 day per week it turns out to be
| more profitable than my previous jobs. I kept even a smaller
| salary.My company has enough funds to pay my salary for 4 years
| without working or revenue. The more this number is bigger the
| more I become happy. I'm trying also to build products to have
| more revenue streams (no success so far)
| spyrefused wrote:
| Spain is a country where most of the people work in the service
| sector, I see this reduction complicated for this sector. And
| with the loss of competitiveness and industry in recent years, I
| think this measure would only be applicable to civil servants
| (For those who do not know, Spain is a special case, there are a
| lot of civil servants, well paid, and besides, it is almost
| impossible for them to lose their job unless... they assassinate
| their boss for example). And coming from where the proposal comes
| from, I would not be surprised if this were the case. They seem
| intent on destroying any private initiative...
| dalbasal wrote:
| "The Workweek" is, surprisingly, a really deep topic.
|
| Keynes' 15 hr work week prediction, for example, is a fascinating
| rabbit to travel down. The typical economics professors' "why it
| failed" explanations (at least circa 2005) are tellingly evasive.
| They preserve all Keynes' premises^ with a " _what "happened_"
| scenario that threads a tiny needle.
|
| IMO, regardless of which rabbit hole you follow, it turns out
| that workweek is a very culturally defined thing. It isn't very
| reactive to economic forces at all. People get rich. Societies
| get rich. Women join the workforce. Efficiency rises by N000%.
| Workweeks remain similar.
|
| Where quantity of work does change, it tends to be outside the
| workweek paradigm. Retirement became a big thing. Children don't
| work. Young adults do a lot of college. Women join the workforce,
| or don't. IE, we might work fewer years. Fewer people might work.
| Shortening workweeks rarely happens.
|
| IMO, empirically, workweeks seem to be mostly a social
| institution... not an "economic" one. IE, economic explanations
| have very little predictive power because "out-of-theory" stuff
| is more important.
|
| ^[1]advancements in efficiency, [2] substitution effects, [3]
| income effects.
| vidarh wrote:
| When my grandparents entered the workforce in Norway, the
| working week was typically 54 hours. When my parents entered
| the workforce it was limited to no more than 45 hours, and a
| couple of years later it was down to 42.5 hours. By the time I
| was born it was 40 hours. Before I entered the workforce, it
| was down to 37.5 hours for most employees (it is legally
| limited to 40 hours, but 37.5 has been the norm since 1986).
|
| While you have a point that other factors like retirement age
| (and in recent years, a growing fear of an aging population)
| has certainly been part of the reason why it hasn't dropped _as
| fast_ as some expected, in countries with a strong labour
| movement it certainly _has dropped significantly_ , and even in
| countries with a weak labour movement it is still lower than it
| used to be.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I think you may be misunderestimating the original
| prediction.^ He predicted those drastic reduction in working
| hours within a generation or two, writing in 1930... It was
| supposed to happen _by_ 1980.
|
| The prediction was widely head, and relied on two non
| controversial ideas: income effect and substitution effect.
| Higher hourly wages make working more worthwhile, so people
| work more; Higher overall wages allow people to trade work
| less opt for leisure. It also relied on efficiency and gdp
| growth predictions which did really come true.
|
| The orthodox reasoning for why the prediction failed is
| basically: We invented all this awesome new stuff. People
| prefer to work more, and buy more of this new stuff rather
| than work less. I don't believe this holds up, but it's what
| I was taught at uni.
|
| Anyway... _my_ point is that looking at the history of
| employment, it doesn 't seem like these "economic" (in the
| literal sense) explanations have any predictive power. Actual
| changes in working patterns seem to be governed by "outside
| factors." Women joined the workforce. Children exited the
| workforce. People go to uni more. Retirement became
| statistically more common. Laws change. Norms change. Culture
| changes. Those things do affect how much we work. Economic
| factors like efficiency don't.
|
| Norway is a small-sih country, and often an outlier, so IDK
| if it makes a good example. That said, I imagine that these
| changes in working hours were caused by rule changes: labour
| laws, union demands or somesuch. They aren't economic.
|
| My point is that the model of the economy and the model of a
| worker used by Keynes to make the prediction, and by most
| commenters on the topic since are clearly bad models.At the
| margin, it doesn't even make sense to most workers. We (most
| of us) don't choose our work hours. We don't work 8% less
| because 92% of the money is enough. That marginal choice
| doesn't even exist. We work a job, and job hours are defined
| by convention.
|
| Efficiency, GDP growth and such, over the last 91 years,
| haven't affected the number of hour we work. Work hasn't been
| static. It's just governed by other things.
|
| If you met Keynes in 1930, you would be right to say " _No.
| How rich we get, how technologically advanced or how
| productive our industries are will have no effect on how much
| we work...._ " You would have been correct. Keynes, and every
| economist from austrians to marxists would have been wrong.
|
| Even today, after the prediction has long-failed empirically,
| economists have a hard time facing this.
|
| http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm fully aware of the original prediction. The point is
| that while it was overoptimistic about the pace of
| reduction, working hours _have_ declined, and have done so
| substantially.
|
| I don't think you can suggest that economic factors like
| efficiency has not affected this - increased efficiency has
| been an enabler that allowed these reductions in working
| hours to happen without according income reductions.
| Without efficiency improvements, demanding these kind of
| reductions would not have been viable.
|
| > Norway is a small-sih country, and often an outlier, so
| IDK if it makes a good example.
|
| There is not a single country in Europe that hasn't seem a
| similar pattern of reductions. I used Norway as an example
| because I was familiar with the reductions, but this is not
| isolated by any means.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I see.
|
| I don't think it's a question of pace. 20% over 90 years
| instead of 70% over 40 years isn't "pace." Also, Keynes
| predicted that people would _choose_ fewer hours. I
| assume that what you are describing about Norway is an
| advancement of worker rights. That 's not really the
| Keynes prediction.
|
| It is a question, to some extent, of definitions. Does
| average workweek increase because more women joined the
| workforce? Decrease because children left the workforce?
| Does college count as "work? Does unemployment factor in?
| Should we consider Norway's average workweek shorter than
| Spain's because of unemployment rates? etc. There are
| lots of definitional issues. I'm interested in this,
| honestly.
|
| The definition I'm interested is a the common sense one.
| What does "full time," generally, mean? Is there a
| normative choice, at scale, for a 15 hr workweek that is
| normative. The answer to this is no.
|
| >> increased efficiency has been an enabler that allowed
| these reductions in working hours to happen
|
| This why looking at old predictions is interesting. It's
| easy to narrate things that have already happened in ways
| that don't challenge our views.
|
| Maybe there is a direct relationship between efficiency
| and working hours. It's just 50X weaker than Keynes (and
| current microeconomic theory still) predicts. That's it's
| an uninteresting theory. The difference between true and
| false is unimportant.
|
| >> _There is not a single country in Europe that hasn 't
| seem a similar pattern of reductions_
|
| IDK... European countries are pretty different from
| eachother. Here in ireland, I think _average_ workweek
| has increased just based on labour force participation.
| Historically, unemployment has been high here. In our
| generation it is very low. Female participation also went
| from very low to very high here. We also went from mostly
| self employed to mostly employed in that period.
|
| Ireland was never very industrial, so the "standard" or
| union normative working conditions are not as
| specifically defined as it is in Germany, for example.
| te_chris wrote:
| We had to go to 0.8 FTE due to trimming costs when covid hit -
| along with furloughs etc (UK based). We're all back up to 1FTE
| pay now, but we're basically still working 0.8.
|
| Fridays are now "flexible". This means that you should check
| slack/email for fires, get your house in order for the next week,
| and, if there's something urgent you're working on (actually
| urgent, we haven't just reclassified all work as urgent) then you
| should probably be progressing it. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of
| the day.
|
| It's brilliant.
| Rule35 wrote:
| > "The only red lines are that we want to see a true reduction of
| working hours and no loss of salary or jobs."
|
| And there it is. (The proposal is the government pays a fraction
| of this for a few years before sticking the companies with this.)
|
| It's basically just a minimum wage law but written the other way.
|
| This always sticks the bill with the only person actually paying
| to begin with, the business owner. If society thinks people
| should be paid more perhaps it should mandate paying more for the
| company's products to compensate for making them pay their
| employees more per hour.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The reality is that wages have never kept up with productivity
| increase. Companies are extracting more and more productivity
| out of their employees, which translates to ever increasing
| profits.
|
| But this is not an economical law. It's absolutely possible to
| sacrifice ever increases in growth for more worker time.
| choeger wrote:
| Not everywhere. There are many professions that do not take
| part in the growth of productivity. Medical Doctors for
| instance (even though some radiologists try hard to) are
| limited by interactions with their patients. The same holds
| for employees at points of sales, they only take part
| indirectly by selling more higher-priced goods.
|
| So a shop owner that wants to stay open sees a 20% reduction
| in attendance by their employees. This _is_ going to cost
| some people real money.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Medical Doctors for instance (even though some
| radiologists try hard to) are limited by interactions with
| their patients
|
| Strongly disagree, productivity increase is everywhere,
| surgery recovery times have been drastically decreased in
| the past decades, and recovery protocols accelerated across
| the board.
|
| Just because doctors have a limit throughput of how many
| patients per day they can see, it doesn't mean that
| hospitals and clinics aren't increasing their productivity
| as a whole. If you are seing less of the same patients per
| week then your productivity has increased, as simple as
| that.
|
| The key point GP is highlight is that productivity has
| basically decoupled from salaries since the 1970's, i.e. we
| are all collectively producing more value whilst
| collectively getting payed less in proportion to the value
| generated.
| vidarh wrote:
| As a concrete example of doctors practices increasing
| their productivity: Video consultation preceded with
| automated triage to push more people to consultations
| with nurses, pharmacists etc. instead of going via a
| doctor first. The triage itself reduces the number of
| doctors consultations by removing a step in the process
| whenever the triage is successful.
|
| Several companies does this (disclaimer: My employer is
| an investor in one of them).
| astrange wrote:
| > The key point GP is highlight is that productivity has
| basically decoupled from salaries since the 1970's, i.e.
| we are all collectively producing more value whilst
| collectively getting payed less in proportion to the
| value generated.
|
| This thread is about Spain (which certainly has a lot of
| economic problems along with the rest of the EU), but
| wasn't that research mainly about the US?
|
| My impression is some but not all of the cause is because
| "productivity" numbers are very confused because of how
| much exponentially more efficient computers have gotten.
| If you measure in 1970s computers, someone building a PC
| in 2020 has a million times more productivity.
| wwupt wrote:
| On the question of MDs, here (in Europe, YMMV) we have
| doctors who have either have their own practice, and
| therefore work as little or as much as they want, or are
| part of hospital staff which is under its own separate
| legal regimen for work time (with more work hours than the
| average person, usually). In either case, I think they are
| not likely to be affected directly by changes to the
| "typical" work week.
| astrange wrote:
| Employees manning cash registers often also have other
| tasks they can do instead of operating the register for you
| - for instance fast food workers also make the food, and
| clothes workers stand there looking fashionable and tell
| you how good you look.
|
| These are often things we'd all rather they be doing, in
| fact. Which is why McDonald's is still popular in Australia
| when the national minimum wage is ~20USD/hour and they have
| automated ordering stations.
| dd_roger wrote:
| The argument about increased productivity is a fallacy. Only
| the primary and secondary sectors have a long track record of
| increased productivity, in services on the other hands -which
| represent an ever growing share of the working population in
| western countries- productivity has been stagnating for
| multiple decades (in some industries it's actually receding,
| thankfully compensated by the few industries that have good
| growth).
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Some economists in Spain say that starting from this premise,
| and trying to apply it universally for the economy may have
| disastrous results.
|
| The problem here is the effect on productivity. While there are
| some jobs where decreasing 20% of working hours while keeping
| productivity constant may be perfectly feasible, there are lots
| of jobs in Spain's precarious service-oriented economy where
| this is not possible.
|
| For example, take all jobs depending on tourism: how is a
| waiter going to produce the same in four days of work than in
| five?
|
| The same applies for Spain's public sector. Many public workers
| already have very good working conditions, but more
| importantly, the same effect described above also applies to
| them: it is not clear whether their working hours can be
| compressed without a significant loss of productivity.
|
| To be clear I'm not against the idea, as there may be some
| merit to it if applied reasonably and on a tactical level, as
| part of much greater economic reforms. But I fear this is not
| what will happen; rather, populist politicians will take it and
| run with it because it sounds good, without any regards for its
| real implications, and without addressing the much harder and
| endemic problems of the Spanish economy such as the eye-
| watering unemployment levels and the lack of opportunities for
| our youth.
| teataster wrote:
| > how is a waiter going to produce the same in four days of
| work than in five?
|
| By not being tired on the fifth, not taking wrong orders and
| not dropping glasses. Same as a software engineer would.
|
| I see your point tho, and it is very valid. I am just playing
| angels advocate here.
|
| But, iirc, earliest research on the topic was conducted in a
| hospital, which is a services business, same as a restaurant.
| Increases in production (I said production and not
| productivity) were found. Research is not solid.
| yiyus wrote:
| > By not being tired on the fifth, not taking wrong orders
| and not dropping glasses
|
| This is not an actual problem that needs a solution.
| neilwilson wrote:
| "The problem here is the effect on productivity."
|
| If you make labour 'reassuringly expensive', then the only
| way to maintain output is to invest in capital deepening.
|
| Which is the only place productivity comes from.
|
| Capitalists need to start doing some capitalism.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I'm not sure your comment addresses anything I've said,
| except nitpicking a single sentence and taking it out on a
| tangent.
|
| What kinds of capital deepening can one do for our tourism-
| oriented and increasingly public-sector-dependent service
| economy?
| darkwater wrote:
| FYI communist Spain /s has a already minimum wage law and also
| an universal income one.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| "communist Spain" I assume you are being ironic here
| neilwilson wrote:
| " If society thinks people should be paid more perhaps it
| should mandate paying more for the company's products to
| compensate for making them pay their employees more per hour."
|
| If you pay people more, then you can. Basic Henry Ford.
| Rule35 wrote:
| If people pay you more, then you can. Ford's money came from
| products and they have to be priced to cover his higher
| salaries. That helped his workforce but made cars more
| expensive for everyone else.
|
| It also only worked because he had a huge first-mover
| advantage and wasn't facing price-pressure from competition.
| His grand plan could have bankrupted him in a week if the
| market hadn't been right for it.
| astrange wrote:
| > This always sticks the bill with the only person actually
| paying to begin with, the business owner. If society thinks
| people should be paid more perhaps it should mandate paying
| more for the company's products to compensate for making them
| pay their employees more per hour.
|
| You just said the business owner is the "only person paying"
| and then contradicted yourself by saying "people" pay more.
| Everyone pays for things because the economy is a cycle.
|
| Intervening in the economy (eg with minimum wages and just
| giving people money) can improve the health of the economy by
| increasing money velocity; economists don't think it's strictly
| bad to do this anymore*. It can lead to inflation but that's
| fine, most developed economies don't have enough of it.
|
| * https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-15-minimum-wage-is-
| pre...
| dalbasal wrote:
| The immediate implications of reducing workweeks varies a lot by
| job type.
|
| Doing 8 hrs of work done in 5 is not possible for a dental nurse,
| waiter or an air traffic controller. Those jobs literally need
| asses in seats for N hours. The hour reduction game is almost
| 0-sum. Do less work. Hire more employees. Pay less. Charge more.
|
| This is a lot of jobs.
|
| For a software developer, hr executive, or user happiness
| advocate... reduced working hours is not necessarily 0-sum. What
| we think of, when we think of reduced work hours depends on which
| of these is our anchor.
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