The Six-Hour Workday Works in Europe. What About America?

[Flurryfang]

Here in Germany for most jobs, at least industrial/office, you usually get half an hour off around 12 , maybe 15 minutes between 9 and 10 for .. I guess brunch would be the correct word, if you ignore the pretentious connotation, which usually messes with the "clean" 7 hours a day. I'm pretty sure there are even laws (or maybe they are just union rules) that require you to offer a (unpaid) 30 minute break after 6 hours of non-stop work.

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It helps if you enjoy your work and there is room for extras in case you finish early.

Most places just say, that you are pretty much your supervisor and that they expect you to use theat 15 min or ½ an hour over the day to eat your lunch, but most people just eat it at their desk while working

[Kezotar]

You're talking about the subject like a greedy individual mad at the competition, "survival of the fittest" nonsense instead of from a macro standpoint as if the nation itself needed to continue existing.

You think the poor people will just accept that they don't deserve to live, and starve off like they're supposed to? Is that what human history has taught us will happen?

Greedy? Poor? You think the "Poor" people are going to work 6 hours? Wake up.
And you're the one that talks about an economy without even knowing the basics of it. So I'm sorry for that.

1. You can't simply expect to increase your salary with 25% and reducing the labor spent by 25%. That's stupid.
2. This is not concerning most jobs in Sweden, only a handful of socialistic companies. And those have had their lunches and other breaks removed, if not much of their work benefits such as after x hours at work you're paid x more, and if you work more than x hours you're allowed to be paid double pay for certain days etc.

Unless you work 25% more efficient, you're still going to make 25% less.
How do you expect this to work?

Increase the cost of production, salary and everything but keep the prices of consumables and other goods at the same level? How! You're literally increasing the cost prices. That would end up with higher prices, so the higher salary would end up being non existing, you're simply working 6 hours rather than 8 hours. Which means you're essentially making less. No, you wouldn't have the same buying power with the 6 hours work.

[Halicia]

Unless you work 25% more efficient, you're still going to make 25% less.
How do you expect this to work?

Sure you can, if the workers had any voice for themselves, they could collectively say "Hey, we're not earning enough. We want 25% more. And we want to work 25% less."

Instead, the employers are free to dictate "!@#$ you. You're working 24 hours today, and if we feel compassionate we'll pay you for 4. But thats just out of the goodness of our hearts. If you don't like it, we'll find someone else."

[vindicatorx]

I mean I would be ok with it my job aries in how busy I am. I'm doing QA testing right now on my project and during a 2 week sprint I don't really do shit the first week. The second week for 2 days I will have to work 10+ hours the rest of the time I am goofing off. I built 3 gundam model kits at work so far.

[Vash The Stampede]

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[Caliph]

Well for it to work you'll have to get past the brain washed American worker/consumer. We're the same people that attacked several countries where basic human rights are non existent not to mention they hardly have shoes because they're going to destroy our "freedom". We're the same people who love the Patriot Act, NSA, and have Donald trump and the whore (corporate) Hillary Clinton as our front runners. We love that corporations don't pay taxes because "freedom" yet we pay high taxes with nothing to show for it. We adore a large military, all government, yet despise "big" government.

So for a shorter work week with same pay to work you'll have to get past the oxymoronic beliefs, values, and attitudes of the American people. The corporations simply need their mouth pieces in the media, and government to feed a few talking points to the American masses and the American people themselves will shoot down the shorter work week because "freedom, socialism, capitalism, Obama and muslims".

Just look how polarizing something as beneficial as a higher minimum wage is in the good old (boys) USA. Meanwhile several companies are now removing people and placing automation for everything from bank tellers to food orders. don't worry in a couple years there won't be any more drivers but driverless cars, trains, trucks.

So i'm sorry as good as a living wage from a shorter work week sounds the American people will desparately fight against it.

[Kallisto]

The nurse example.. no it doesn't work out, it might increase productivity but it will decrease quality (time spent) per customer.

In other jobs it could work fine, but service related jobs, very unlikely.

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The amount of hours you work is irrelevant, what matters is productivity, Greece is known to be very lousy at productivity. In fact the average workweek in Greece is long because people work slow, and in the rest of the EU people work fast and have much higher productivity to support lower hours worked per week.

Statistics in the past have shown that Greek workers averagely take 10 hours longer for the same amount of work compared to the average European country.

This is not an insult at Greece btw or Greeks, there obviously people who do work hard, but there's a lot of people that don't and that's the sole reason why your country is in this mess, because the government never encouraged productivity. Many of my Greek friends also find that Greeks have little to no productivity when they compare it to the Western and Central European countries.

The issue though with productivity also can be explained by technology in the workplace. Greece has never been a rich country post independence from the Ottoman empire. As such when everything in northern europe became industrial, greece was still agricultural... Now bring ourselves to late 20th/early 21st century. Northern and Western european countries have work places with the latest Tech, computers with help that allows people to do work quicker. While Greece lingers behind.

In short I guess it would be. Say 2 people were told to dig a hole 6 feet deep. Greece would be the one given a shovel while northern European would be given a tractor with a claw designed to dig holes.

[zenkai]

Yeah, the lazy ass Waltons. Making billions every year sitting on their asses not working just mooching off corporate welfare to their companies and public welfare to their employees to pad their profit margins straight into their pockets all while paying lower interests rates.

And don't even get me started on General Electric or the myriad of other companies paying little to know taxes while forcing the government to give welfare to their workers.


Oh... I am sorry, did you mean the poor who are collecting welfare whom generally ARE working? Sorry, but they earned a living wage for their labor, not their fault that people think that only prestigious jobs deserve livable wages.

a handful of lazy rich people vs thousands who refuse to better themselves or get off drugs

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Yeah, the lazy ass Waltons. Making billions every year sitting on their asses not working just mooching off corporate welfare to their companies and public welfare to their employees to pad their profit margins straight into their pockets all while paying lower interests rates.

And don't even get me started on General Electric or the myriad of other companies paying little to know taxes while forcing the government to give welfare to their workers.


Oh... I am sorry, did you mean the poor who are collecting welfare whom generally ARE working? Sorry, but they earned a living wage for their labor, not their fault that people think that only prestigious jobs deserve livable wages.

a handful of lazy rich people vs thousands who refuse to better themselves or get off drugs

[Kezotar]

Sure you can, if the workers had any voice for themselves, they could collectively say "Hey, we're not earning enough. We want 25% more. And we want to work 25% less."

Instead, the employers are free to dictate "!@#$ you. You're working 24 hours today, and if we feel compassionate we'll pay you for 4. But thats just out of the goodness of our hearts. If you don't like it, we'll find someone else."

Ehm. You're wrong. Because you can say that. The problem is that you'll be replaced. And it's not the companies fault it's that there's someone that want to replace you.

[Aggrophobic]

Can it work? Sure.
Does it work everywhere, in every business? No, of course not.

[Deleted]

Six hour workdays? That's 2 hours less than we have here now.

I would have to hire more people to get the same amuont of work done if that would happen, so no thanks?

[Deleted]

Six hour workdays? That's 2 hours less than we have here now.

I would have to hire more people to get the same amuont of work done if that would happen, so no thanks?

Your job is to exploit other people for personal financial gain. Nobody is asking you.

[Deleted]

Your job is to exploit other people for personal financial gain. Nobody is asking you.

Employing people is the same as exploiting them in your book?

Pfft what a way to think

[Deleted]

Just look to history. Whenever it is up to the industry to set wages and working hours they invevitably work their labourers to death and sometimes outright don't pay them and this leads inevitably to a labor revolt.
Self interest is the most powerful motivator we have and industrious people will always act in their own self interest. They always find a way to justify their greed. "The workers are just lazy" "At least with my factory job they get food on their plates, they should be thankful" "If they want a better life they should work harder" You get the picture.

[Orlong]

6 hour days are for lazy people, and let me guess, they want an increase in their hourly wages so that they make just as much as they did when they worked 8 hour days

[Fugus]

a handful of lazy rich people vs thousands who refuse to better themselves or get off drugs

Those handful of lazy rich are bigger mooches and take more of your tax payer money than those thousands (still a statistical blip on the radar) who refuse to better themselves and get off drugs combined.

You forget, that a great deal of those on welfare are working and their employers just refuse to pay livable wages. And the general rate of drug abuse in the welfare community is actually lower than that of the general population because, as it turns out, drugs cost money.

And you neglect just how much public welfare is actually nothing but corporate welfare in disguise to subsidize their payroll.

You are actually trying to hand wave away a huge issue to focus on a minor one.

[Jibjub]

To be fair, 8 hours days are pretty arbitrary. I assume it was supposed to be 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of personal time. But that isn't really how it works.

I think a 6 hour day would work if people were willing to actually be productive instead of checking facebook and replying to threads on MMO-Champion :P

[Deleted]

Employing people is the same as exploiting them in your book?

Pfft what a way to think

That is essentially what you do. Your goal is to maximize profit while paying your employees as little as possible while still getting the quality of work you require out of them. They are working hard to make you rich.

If you could get away with paying your employees half of what you do now you would probably do it even if it put them in to a bad financial position. It might in fact make them even more depentant on you thus being willing to work harder and longer because they can't afford do quit. For arguments sake lets pretend ALL wages was cut across the nation so that they didn't have any other options. As a business man you wouldn't lower the prices of your goods and services but rather happilly accept the massively increased profit margins.

[zenkai]

Those handful of lazy rich are bigger mooches and take more of your tax payer money than those thousands (still a statistical blip on the radar) who refuse to better themselves and get off drugs combined.

You forget, that a great deal of those on welfare are working and their employers just refuse to pay livable wages. And the general rate of drug abuse in the welfare community is actually lower than that of the general population because, as it turns out, drugs cost money.

And you neglect just how much public welfare is actually nothing but corporate welfare in disguise to subsidize their payroll.

You are actually trying to hand wave away a huge issue to focus on a minor one.

Yeah it's Walmarts fault that my friend doesn't work and lays around all day and plays video games and watches TV on the governments dime

[Paladin885]

America is too materialistic to work less in fear of less pay. Will never happen.