This is what I did at my company. Just better. Come and go as you please, no matter what. As long as the agreed upon work is somehow done. Come at 3am leave at 4am? Whatever. That plus profit-sharing made fucking happy employees who actually enjoyed working.
Why should anyone care if you’re here 8hrs? Most people just waste probably half of it with procrastination or just strategic incompetence.
That rule was for everyone of course, janitor “upwards”.
Also everyone got double market-average, free food and beverages.
Could’ve made a lot more money, but who needs that? Why me 99% and everyone else shares the 1%? That is an unsustainable model (for people, not for companies though), extremely unfair and unjust. How could I look into a mirror with dignity when ripping off everyone else?
Sadly I seems to be the exception, not the rule 😐
Im sorry but how will this increase shareholder value? hmm? Will anybody think of the shareholders?
Yeah right, and how many trillionaires does Finland have? How can I ever become a trillionaire if we waste money on things like work-life balance? Get that woke dei stuff out of here.
/s since you can never be sure
I indeed was not sure before the “/s”
So uh…what is the citizenship application process? Finland is worth dying for rn.
Former pm, this wouldn’t actually happen.
Former PM and future wifey for lifey
Why is it that the right ideas only happen before or after holding useful positions?
Awh!
FORMER…always nice when they come up with great ideas AFTER they’ve left office.
Achually she had this idea before she was PM.
Had this idea before, has this idea after, it seems the “during” part is the problem somehow.
Finland’s debt to GDP ratio is pretty high, they probably couldn’t actually afford this anymore without increasing taxes. 10 years ago maybe. At 86% debt to GDP they’re the 7th highest in the EU and I read a while ago that it it was projected to surpass 100% soon.
Now that 100% is an arbitrary number because GDP is an annual number and debt is not, but overall the ratio is still an useful number because it essentially measures how big a % of the entire GDP needs to be paid as interest on bonds and whatnot (multiply debt to GDP ratio by average bond interest)
The catch is that less work time actually INCREASES productivity.
Productivity, but not production. They would still produce less than now, how much less is just not a simple ratio calculation.
In some scenarios. Some types of office work in particular, and not for everyone. Some people work best in short spurts, some do not. Those of us who qualify are incredibly privileged, as are the industries we work for.
Now try this with manufacturing, healthcare, etc. 24 hour weeks means that to get the same output, you have to hire nearly twice as many employees, at the same monthly cost per employee. There probably aren’t enough qualified unemployed people around to do that, so it’s easier to just let productivity drop (and do hospitals REALLY need so many people around 24/7? At nearly 2x the cost, perhaps not - can’t just increase pricing to make up for the cost increase in a single-payer system).
Depends on the situation. Suddenly going to 60% of the work load isn’t suddenly going to make the country or it’s people more productive. You’d need to hire more people to get the work done and Finland’s unemployment rate is already at 13%. So this would be a pretty poor solution when it comes to economics for everyone, unless you pay people less because they are working less hours.
I am quite curious on what the science will say on this.
We need another experiment.
I have thought of this. Paying people less could work out alright if you bring down their living costs. Housing is most of that and a lot of that cost goes to profit for banks.
Bring the cost of housing down and a lot of people will probably be happy to reduce hours worked. If you have a high unemployment rate there should be plenty of people to cover those extra hours too.
Erm, this will either cut profits for the sellers, or the pay will go down way more than the housing price.
But I also see there being hidden economic benefits to having more free time.
More time to stitch, repair, learn, take care of yourself.
Less medical costs and damages.
Its not that simple
Even if people are more productive in less time, that doesn’t mean you can earn the same money. Many businesses operate on “hours spend” per task. As an example, let’s take hairdressers. If your hairdresser is now working only 6 hours instead of 8, that’s a potential 25% loss in revenue. And they won’t be magically faster now just because they work less. So if salary reduction is not an option, the only option is increasing prices.
What you’re saying is fine for office jobs, but just not an option for most service jobs. Waiters aren’t magically going to serve tables faster, cashiers won’t make customers move faster, etc.
You don’t see the long-term effects on Health, Education, and so on. Less mistakes are made. Yes, I understand that it’s harder for a small business to make up for the lost hours, but for a big business, the cost of an extra employee is nothing compared to the gains of extra productivity.
Healthcare has its own problems, but the 12 hour shift model was adopted because it improved patient outcomes. Only having 1 shift change per day provided less opportunity for patient context to get lost in the shuffle. In short, overworked doctors/nurses were better (for patients) than uninformed doctors/nurses.
Moving to 6 hour shifts/4 changes per day would quadruple that risk.
Now, there are plenty of ways to imagine changing procedures, policies, and tooling to reduce this risk, but it would require planning.
You don’t see health care outcomes improve when you remove 40% of hours. Come on now.
Yeah just continue to overwork doctors and nurses, I am sure its fine.
Or just hire one extra, and cut their work hours.
but for a big business
I’m not worried about big business. They will survive. I’m worried about the small bakery around the corner, about the hair salons down the street, the flower shop in the mall and basically every small, independent shop that exists which is a crucial part of every community it’s part of. And those small businesses make up a significant portion of the job market.
A 6 hour day at the same pay would absolutely annihilate any retail consumer B2C business that exists anywhere in the western world.
Most of that can be fixed with scheduling. Are all of those bakers and barbers fully booked for 8-12 hours every day? They don’t have gaps where they sit around waiting for business? When you offer shorter hours, people will have to schedule within those hours or go without the service. This should translate to less wasted time babysitting an empty store. And it’s totally possible to still accommodate all the customers. I know a chiropractor who is open 6-12 three days a week and 12-6 the other two days. He doesn’t have to work 12 hours a day, and it’s still easy for customers to schedule when they want.
I think it’s worth us paying some tax to support a small business, at the cost of having less things, but more time for ourselves.
The market corrects to match the available income of the consumer, usually. They want you paying, not hoarding.
Less goods and less work is ultimately better, leaves us with more time for people, for self-improvement, for the things that really matter, not the cheap plastics.
This is however, an opinion, and a matter of consensus, the economics are what they are.
As for why I’m suddenly writting entire paragraphs and am more literate, it’s because I got some good news, and the kind of misery knocks your IQ down.
Is this the person whose big “scandal” was being photographed at a club?
I think that was the one where she was unreachable by the government (this was still the covid times, 2021) which is a no-no and was seen as dancing with/maybe kissing another man (a celebrity) while her husband was at home with their daughter. (They separated some time after) That soured a lot of people’s view on her. Of course her being a young woman was further incrimination to many of her opponents.
Another similar scandal was the house party video where she was allegedly doing coke. I don’t think anything was proven there. Someone on the video was yelling “powder gang” which is weird but not exactly solid evidence, but it became a huge meme and just solidified her reputation as a “party girl”, something beneath the position of a PM.
I think those were the bigger non-politics scandals.
I wish my leader were only an adulterer and cocaine user.
At least her extramarital affairs are with adults.
We have a different sort of bar here I suppose hah. Then again, she was judged extra hard for being a young woman in that position.
But it also genuinely wasn’t appropriate behaviour (to be videotaped doing) for a PM.
Nah the appropriateness or lack of it was invented. Worst she’s done is join the Tony Blair Institute, just another capitalist
I don’t know what you mean by invented. A lot of people thought partying drunk on video wasn’t really appropriate behaviour for the PM. People don’t mind (at least as much) if it happens behind closed doors, but Marin unfortunately had shitty enough friends that they posted that stuff online. That sort of stuff eroded a lot of respect for her and it was already an uphill battle since she was a young woman, she had to fight double as hard as a middle aged man in her position would’ve had to.
I didn’t really mind her partying and stuff, but it was just a bad look. Her fooling the voters later on was much worse imo than just being drunk on camera. That later thing really soured me on her.
I mean how you said
she was judged extra hard for being a young woman in that position
none of the topics, breakfast, dancing, etc were issues in any other case. Yeah younger generations live with phones and might have stupid friends. It’s not a national crisis without being forced to be one
It would’ve been a scandal with any pm if you have a drunken party on video, with the accusations of drugs and extramarital affairs.
She just got it harder because she was a young woman pm. But it’s wasn’t a thing just because of that
It depends on the culture I guess. It would be less of a problem in France (source : am French).
“powder gang”
I would like to add that it’s very likely they were not yelling this, “jauhojengi”, at all but “jallujengi” which would be about drinking Jaloviina, Finnish cut brandy. Link to a wikipedia page. I fucking love Jallu and will always spread the Gospel of Jaloviina.
I don’t know about likely, most heard “jauhojengi” and at the time I listened to it a bunch too and couldn’t hear “jallujengi” myself. And I was her supporter so I had a reason to hear it that way hah
I couldn’t hear the “jauho” at all, did a blind hearing once the videos came out. Blue dress, gold dress I guess. :D
This is even closer
I was looking for that from my memory lol!
Yes!
I bet she probably even had an alcoholic beverage too!
Curious question, did she push for this when she was PM?
No
Fuck outta here with your bullshit. She just didn’t get the backing needed for it.
https://gpa.net/blogs/emea-1/finland-new-prime-minister-s-four-day-working-week-plan
She made a supportive claim in a party meeting, didn’t do action about it. Nothing bullshit unless the story is deeper behind public eyes
https://www.is.fi/politiikka/art-2000006208835.html
For this topic, native or primary sources are better
Also we could deep dive on the “during PM” slice. she said she supports it in Aug 2019, Cabinet forms in December. Believe me (or not) I tried to stay sharp if the topic gains any official action during the time
Edit: this I can’t get a link to because twitter but apparently: Finnish Government, using the handle @FinGovernment. January 7, 2020:
“In the Finnish Government´s program there is no mention about 4-day week. Issue is not on the Finnish Government’s agenda. PM @marinsanna envisioned idea briefly in a panel discussion last August while she was the Minister of Transport, and there hasn’t been any recent activity.”
They had to officially declare this because the urban legend was spreading.
After leaving office? Sure, she’s said she still supports the idea. Hope this helps
GOP: she’s basically Stalin.
Politicians can’t just pass laws to give us shorter workweeks. We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency, making goods and services cheaper to produce & allowing prices to drop.
However, big government programs drain the resources needed to develop an economy. When the government pays for massive spending by printing money & running up debt, it shrinks the value of your dollars and distorts the economy. Add in high taxes, government promises it can’t afford (like public pensions with runaway obligations), & red tape that makes it hard to produce goods, and society ends up poorer.
Instead of making life more affordable, printing money & discouraging investment force you to work longer and harder just to stay where you are.
When, WHEN did we actually see these efficiency gains translate in real life? They usually use it as leverage to force us to work MORE hours, not less.
They just take the difference as profit, then spend it lobbying anti-human laws again!
That just means we are getting less for more, which means the productivity gains are going somewhere…and I don’t think it’s just that we are making more different kinds of stuff, and that people are buying more.
I think it’s a combination of wage stagnation, price gouging, and tax dollar missallocation, leading to someone wasting precuous resources out of tax money, to build a data center.
I mean if you look at inflation vs productivity gains, those gains are completely erased several fold in the US and have been since the 70’s.
Erm, the US has 4 hour work days? I am not in the loop here.
We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency, making goods and services cheaper to produce & allowing prices to drop.
The problem we have in late-stage-capitalism is that instead of passing the time and money savings onto employees and consumers, the owning class passes these savings onto themselves instead and tell us to work twice as hard for half the pay.
I think your boogeyman, “the owning class,” is very similar to my boogeyman, “the borrower class.” Both are critiques of groups that benefit from particular economic structures. Although we think about economics in totally different ways, there is an interesting parallel between the two ideas.
I’m probably a handmaiden to the fascist class in your eyes, while I think you’re economically illiterate.
My borrower class - Refers to those who gain privileged access to newly created credit or monetary expansion.
Your owning class - Usually refers to capital owners (bourgeoisie) who own productive assets & employ labor.
We actually get more free time when businesses & voluntary associations invest in better tools & technology. This increases efficiency,
This is the same stupid train of thought every second manager has. Your tool can be amazing, als long as your processes are shit nothing will improve.
I do believe that if there aren’t artificial barriers to production or the supply of goods, humans will end up producing more. As more goods are produced and compete in the marketplace, prices will fall. Democratic socialists, however, tend to micromanage or take over production, which will slow the creation of goods and cause prices to rise.
An interesting digression/aside would be the Jevons paradox: when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource’s use, this can lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource. This is often used as a critique of capitalism by environmentalists.
P.S. I don’t think I’ve talked to a single right-winger on this website yet. Maybe right-wingers are a dying breed, at least in the Fediverse. I don’t know. I’m so alone.
This is what we should be fighting for. That and 25 dollars minimum wage. Even fucking Bernie Sanders misses the boat on this. He fights for the minimum wage but 40 hour work week and the "return of overtime " fucking hate it when mentions that. No one should have to or want to work longer hours. Bullshit!
6 hour 4 day work week is the way and the fight that unfortunately America will never adopt.
$25/hr is not a livable wage if you’re only gonna get 24 hours a week.
One would still need to work 40-50 hrs a week, it would just be more livable due to getting OT sooner.
Why I believe in the work 6 hours 4 days a week but get paid as working 40 hours.
I mean I can believe in sky daddy as well, but doesn’t mean it’s reality. Know how we went from 80 hour weeks to 40 hour weeks? A lot of people died, and a whole lot of immigrants were needed to make up the hours, oh and women were now needed in the workforce as well, because pay certainly wasn’t going to raise high enough to keep up with costs. I’m not sure forcing more people to work ultimately for less is a great idea. Seems easier to push minimum wages up, or better yet, to unionize so minimum wages aren’t needed as companies wouldn’t be able to hire for less than the labor is worth (or simply wouldn’t exist as a business).
Works out to ~$42/hr
No minimum wage (at least in Oklahoma) can be $25 an hour. But you work 6 hours 4 days a week. But get paid as if you worked 8 hours 5 days a week. Roughly 1000 dollars a week gross pay.
If you want to work over 6 hours then you should be paid time and half for any work over the 24 hours you work.
That should be how it handled. And minimum wage should not only be tied to inflation, but should be higher depending on where you live. Example New York state should have much higher minimum wage the 25.
You’re suggesting the most convoluted system one can imagine lmao.
Pretty much every software that calculates and processes payroll would have to be rewritten. Just Intuit alone would instantly have that proposal taken out back and shot.
$25 is more politically palatable than $42 though.
Let’s tie it to c-suite wage-flation
Sounds like a plan, but no matter how we are paid we should be working less not more. Maybe a basic income to make up for short fall paid by Wallstreet and billionaires.
Plenty of jobs let you grab those hours.
Problem is the pay is dogshit
This comment misses the point entirely. The goal of society is to raise the quality and/or lower the cost of living. The goal of these “less than 40 hour work week” proposals is to lower hours and keep the net pay the same (effectively raising the per hour pay) at nearly every job .This would be an advancement as a society as the quality of life would go up for it’s citizens.
This is explicitly not suggesting people take different jobs with identical hours for less pay.
I’m not missing anything. Lower working hours won’t actually become widespread unless the framework is put into place to ensure wages remain at the level paid for a standard 36-40 hour week.
Many work contracts are salaried based on X hours, or straight calculated for x hours of work per pay period. Paying the same living wage for less hours is going to be the biggest hurdle as companies will immediately take the opportunity to “cut” their employees wages.
You seemed to miss the point entirely as well. The PM’s suggestion represents a 40% decrease in the labor market. You wouldn’t be able to make up that loss without hiring a whole lot more people, which would put most places out of business. Thinking gains would come from productivity increases, that’s simply not going to happen, as inflation has far outpaced labor productivity for the last 60 years. Finland’s Unemployment rate is roughly 13% currently, so even hiring all of those people to make up for missed labor will not come close to solving the gap.
As normal, great aspirational idea that has zero basis in reality.
That’s not what missing the point means but I understand where you’re coming from. You’re worried about the feasibility of this proposal, which is entirely separate from my comment and the comment I was responding to. So to be clear, you’re not actually talking to me or the original commenter, you’re talking at me. Which is fine, we can have this conversation - which is different than what I was discussing - at the same time if you’d like.
Yes, reduction of hours could theoretically means a larger volume of people are needed to cover those positions. That is likely true in some fields and likely not true in others. As an example, waiters or nurses or teachers would likely need more staff to cover those lost hours as those are services that are often open most days of the week at most hours. We can’t have hospitals closed on Fridays, for instance. So in that case your suggestion is correct.
The element you’re not considering past the simple math of the problem is whether or not we need 40 hours to stay profitable. The counter example to the nurse would be most white collar jobs who reportedly don’t need 40 hours a week to complete their work and be successful. These people are forced to work 40 hours because of cultural expectations but, because of the “productivity” boom of the last century, don’t actually need to work 40 hours. This is the situation that the PM’s suggestion would be most feasible.
If someone can complete their work in 32 hours but is paid to be at their desk for 40, 1 of 2 things happen. (Reminder, this is the expected amount of work to keep the business profitable.) They either notify their boss that they can do more work, and thus increase their responsibilities until it hits 40 hours, which nearly always results in neither higher pay nor higher recognition long term. Or they don’t, and they make what use they can of those 8 hours, which is always less efficient than if they had “free time”. This is where the government, unions, or any regulatory body is necessary for the improvement of society. Businesses of a certain size or profession grow inefficient in using their employees time as their productivity goes up, which again can be converted either into more work and higher sales or more free time and better benefits. (This is ignoring what happens too often which is that extra time gets converted to meaningless meetings and micromanagement and time around the water cooler etc).
So I disagree with you in saying, as a blanket statement derived from napkin math, that the PM’s proposal (which I imagine both of us have just read the title comments on instead of an actual, ready to implement policy proposal) is not based in reality.
Why you seem excited to defend the forced labor hours of the working class is beyond me. Surely you’re not rich, and surely you’d prefer to work less than you do and have the same quality of life. So I have to assume you’re either afraid of someone messing up “the economy” by being too progressive or you’ve taken the conservative propaganda to heart and believe things must only get worse for the working class if the rich are to get richer and therefore through market magic improve everyone else’s lives maybe (trickling down or some other illogical and indirect process). Tell me, if you can be so introspective, why you decided to talk at me. Why do you think something that several studies have shown, at least to my knowledge, to not only be feasible but also beneficial? Why are you against the topic at first mention of societal progress?
That’s cool but, what is she doing as a former politician to further this goal?
Using the power of celebrity which is probably the most useful thing to do in that situation.
It would’ve been useful to stay to lead the social democrats but she bailed on that right after the elections. A lot of people voted for her, leaving them feel like they’ve been cheated
Im not familiar with the governmental structure there.
Is there legislation or a reform that she’s pursuing?
Or is this like a general statement on spending more time with family?
I doubt there’s some legislation, I haven’t heard about her in quite some time. It seems she’s largely left national politics
She was treated so shitty by the media and all, that I do not wonder why. Comparing how she and how our PM right now are talked about, is like misogyny laid bare. Her “scandals” were being filmed partying, and that considered inappropriate, and using breakfast bonus thing, other PM’s were using before; he is in the middle of a big corruption scandal right now (involving 35 million €).
I understand why she left but I do hate the way she did it. A lot of her and social democrat supporters overall felt pretty betrayed, me included
Nothing, she does not even live in NZ any more.
Why would a Finnish politician live in New Zealand?
I mean… technically they are not wrong…
Not the reddit yellow text posts, I beg thee
Does it even fit the me_irl theme too?
While we’re at it, let’s also add “What is your resppnse to her?” at the end of the title to boost engangement for the shareholders
I will never not find it funny that most of us are on Lemmy because we agree that Reddit is a cesspool, yet a very goodly portion of our content it just Reddit reposted to Lemmy.
I guess, but the problem with reddit isn’t the format or a good chunk of the content.
It’s not like this stuff originates from reddit either, it just ends up there. It’s a bit like blaming the beach for having trash wash up there.
I brought a meme folder with me when I migrated that I slowly repost from so on a level I get it but stuff like this is just straight from a content farm. I get that maybe it’s good for motivating normies to not start down the bro podcast pipeline or something but this has got to be the meme equivalent of pregnant spiderman/elsa videos. Why bring it here?
former
The People Have Spoken
Double their hours, halve the pay, murder their parents, and castrate them before they have any kids.
Nonononono, the kids yearn for the mines.
How about three eights
I honestly would do one 24
I used to work a job that alternated between 3x12 and 4x12 work weeks. They also prorated your first paycheck to accommodate that.
That works out to 84 hours every two weeks. I don’t recall how that was addressed.
That job turned out to kinda suck and the company no longer exists, but I always appreciated consistently having either three or four days off in a row.
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