The 40 hour work week - Society is changing. Should our work schedules change too?

[Time 4 Guillotines]

I think the primary issue is the wage, not the hours.
Five 8 hour shifts per week is less than a third of your time to pay for your entire life. It's a not a bad deal seeing as there were zero employee protections and people were literally worked to death by their employers only a few generations ago. Compared to that the "work shy" zoomer does indeed sound like a whiney little faggot.
If you had a job that paid say $50/hr, don't you think you might be more enthusiastic about working? If the answer is still no then you are absolutely a lazy bitch, not a pro-worker socialist like the average concave chested Redditor pretends to be.
But that's not where society is heading either way. We'll be lucky to get meaningful UBI after automation fully takes hold. I think within our lifetime today will be viewed as a golden age for a very large amount of people.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

If I can work, I'd be happy to work longer than 40 hours so long as I work for something other than the government and multinational corporations (someone I care for who cares about me). Something to keep me from being bored I guess. Because otherwise I make money from making Lo-Fi outsider music.

 

[Scipio Neomericanus]

I think that shitty work has always been a thing. In objective terms, I think we're FAR better off in terms of work than what we had a century ago. In objective terms, we have access to technology (and all the benefits that come with), better healthcare, better access to food (debatable though, I guess) and education. A lot of these developments came with a whole lot of negatives, but at the end of the day I think when you aggregate everything its still a net positive - compared to 1900.

What's changed in the last few decades is that everything else has become noticeably shittier at the same time. America's golden age is over and we're entering a time of crisis globally. Working a shitty job when you see everything around you get shittier and shittier is just a reminder of the times. It's one thing when one part of your life sucks and everything else is fine, but another when you see your surroundings decaying in almost every way at breakneck speed. The world has been turned upside down. I think its fair to blame boomers as a generation for a lot of what's going on, but ultimately it isn't entirely their fault. Every generation has played a part in what's happening right now.

Maybe things will get better. Maybe they won't. We live in interesting times.

Also, 40 hours a week isn't actually that bad as long as its only 40 hours. We aren't really talking about the 40 hour work week here. We're really talking about the standard of living, and a lot more than just work should get factored into that imo.

 

[Nitro!]

Zoomers aren't lazy, they have brain problems. If the answer isn't spoon-fed to them by Google then it might as well not exist. These are not the people you want advising you on the length of the workweek.

As far as "my job is hard/stressful/doesn't pay me enough", life isn't Stardew Valley, get used to it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Questions for the kiwis here who dislike their 40 hour work week:
* Do you waste more than an hour on commuting in traffic jams/public transportation?
* How much do you socialize with your coworkers?
* How much do you feel your work respects you and your time?

I have a feeling that the ones who are most against the 40 hour workweek are people who will have negative answers for at least two of the questions, which says more about how modern worklife sucks than the amount of hours in it.

 

[Audit]

I'll disagree with the zoomer notion of a 40hr work week being bad. Companies pay for your time, not your productivity. If you game the system right, you can put in the minimal effort and stay employed with little stress. Trying to be the best possible drone just leads to burn out and frustration because you didn't read the rules of the contract. They pay for your time, nothing more. The work you do just keeps them from laying you off. Companies rarely promote from within anymore, so you're better off just hopping companies if you want to climb the corpo ladder. Starting a business/startup is where the real money is, so even corpo ladder climbing is rarely a good plan if it involves too much stress. Go live your life. Have fun. Exploit the ninnies who ran the international economy into the ground as they exploit you. Just pretend you're in the final years of the USSR. They pretend to pay you so you should only pretend to work.

Tldr: Stop being the white/yellow monkey doing all the work while the pajeet/negro fuck around. Being marginally less useless than them is all you need to keep your job.

 

[FaXmachine]

I think the primary issue is the wage, not the hours.
Five 8 hour shifts per week is less than a third of your time to pay for your entire life. It's a not a bad deal seeing as there were zero employee protections and people were literally worked to death by their employers only a few generations ago. Compared to that the "work shy" zoomer does indeed sound like a whiney little faggot.
If you had a job that paid say $50/hr, don't you think you might be more enthusiastic about working? If the answer is still no then you are absolutely a lazy bitch, not a pro-worker socialist like the average concave chested Redditor pretends to be.
But that's not where society is heading either way. We'll be lucky to get meaningful UBI after automation fully takes hold. I think within our lifetime today will be viewed as a golden age for a very large amount of people.

The thing is if you were paid $50 an hour, why wouldn't you just save up, invest then retire?

The problem from my perspective is, all the time wasting, work should be based on productivity not how long to stall your work out, its boring and mentally draining doing that. I don't want to be a brainless drone, I'd feel satisfied if working hard got me home sooner.

Everything just seems like a never ending hamster wheel with random shit thrown at you to trip you, the scenery of your cage barely changes bar the wall paper peeling and the mould creeping in, and maybe the food and water gets more toxic each year. I simply don't want to work until I die, I'd rather rope.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I don't mind 40 hours. In an ideal situation you'd have a 3 day weekend. Just add an extra 4 days to the month. What's the worst that could possibly happen?

 

[Time 4 Guillotines]

The thing is if you were paid $50 an hour, why wouldn't you just save up, invest then retire?

Why wouldn't you do that anyway?

The problem from my perspective is, all the time wasting, work should be based on productivity not how long to stall your work out, its boring and mentally draining doing that. I don't want to be a brainless drone, I'd feel satisfied if working hard got me home sooner.

There are jobs where that's a thing but you also have to account for people outside of your bespoke niche. A chef wouldn't be able to relate to this "well if I work extra hard I can go home early, right, mommy?" thing that hardly applies to anyone.
You have to step well outside of childish solipsism before you can effectively think about societies macrocosmic issues.

Everything just seems like a never ending hamster wheel with random shit thrown at you to trip you, the scenery of your cage barely changes bar the wall paper peeling and the mould creeping in, and maybe the food and water gets more toxic each year.

That's a trite attempt at being poetic, I guess. Doesn't mean anything though. Log off the retard gossip forum and focus on getting employment that doesn't make you do this melodramatic teenage girl shit.

I simply don't want to work until I die, I'd rather rope.

You talk like someone who has never experienced real struggle but you've heard enough people make some decent points so now you're able to parrot the words of the oppressed.
Most people on this planet are going to work until they die. A large number of them are going to die directly because of their work. You sound like an utter fucking faggot crying about having to stay on the clock until 5PM in an office environment.
Maybe you should kill yourself. Genuinely.
I mean your work is clearly meaningless monkey work, so it's not like you're contributing to the greater good. And you obviously don't have a family to attend to otherwise you wouldn't be in such a hurry to go home and jerk off and play vidya, so it's not like anyone will miss you. And if you do remove yourself from life and the job pool, that'll leave a position open for someone who isn't close to cutting their wrists over working 5 days per week.
Really, the most based and redpilled thing you personally could do is a flip. I want you to really think on it. If it's all a hamster wheel then the best thing you could do is get off it asap

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

If it's all a hamster wheel then the best thing you could do is get off it asap

Gee, I think his time would be better spent working out, getting fit, and becoming Richie Rich's bodyguard so he can kill Richie and some of his friends before killing himself, but targeting the people responsible for our awful society is never an option for some reason.

 

[Time 4 Guillotines]

Gee, I think his time would be better spent working out, getting fit, and becoming Richie Rich's bodyguard so he can kill Richie and some of his friends before killing himself, but targeting the people responsible for our awful society is never an option for some reason.

Naw, he doesn't have the balls to sit at his desk and pretend to be busy until 5PM, he's not going to do shit. But I do dig your line of reasoning

 

[newuser131]

i think when most people debate the 40 hour work week, they think 20 hours of work for 40 hours pay. that will not happen. why would corporate agree to that? 20 hours for 20 hours pay, i can see that happening. and most people do not think of the corporate side of the equation.

if anything, less than 40 hours a week is exactly what corporate wants. with ai and future technologies, the goal of working 20 hours a week will happen. this means less workers, automation to do all the heavy lifting, and less money the company will need to pay in health care and overhead for the workers.

the politicians will give lip serves to worker's rights but will do what their neoliberal leaders tell them. the democrats and labour are not the party of unions anymore.

it is the monkey's paw wish. the future will be less than 40 hours but not for the reasons most workers want. the future will be the gig economy.

 

[Swiss46]

Ideally people could work on daily tasks instead and if they finish they can go home early, though you can be sure it will be abused.

I did work at a place that did this once and it in was genuinely awful. You get the competent people being left with a half done mess because the lazy retards and junkies half assed all their tasks to go home early.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Work should be a function of the labor provided.

The problem is we have built a monolith of labor laws around things such as minimum wages, overtime, salary employment vs. Contract and so on. Much of it based on gilded age era fights over things that don't translate well. A steel working union does not have the same issues as an actors union. But both are governed by the same labor laws that are applied uniformly.

I'm gonna single out the minimum wage for a hot second. The minimum wage doesn't help shit. Why? Because just having a pulse is enough to get minimum wage. But alot of minimum wage jobs require more then a pulse.

Consider a Convenience store clerk. When you walk into a.convenience store to buy beer, Jerky or Water, what so you NOT want to do? Stand in line for 5 minutes while Shaqueena does the bare fucking minimum. You want to be in and out. That means the clerk behind the counter is hustling. Counting money in their head, and bagging shit up quick like its a NASCAR pit stop.

If you owned a convenience store, you would happily pay an employee like that whatever was reasonable. But you can't. Because for every high speed employee you have, there is a Shaqueena. And you can't use better pay as motivation to get Shaqueena to work. You have to pay her the same as the valuable employee.

End result being your valuable employee does what they can to get a better job that pays more, quits, and them Shaqueena quits too because she is suddenly required to pick up the slack from the employee who did all the work and she ain't got time for dat.

 

[Monkey Sea Monkey Drown]

Work should be a function of the labor provided.

Yeah how do you value art though

People love arguing “the utility of work and its value is so easy to determine!”

What about artists

 

[mindlessobserver]

I suppose my point is it's impossible to define. But the government has spent a century trying anyway and it's starting to break down

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

i think when most people debate the 40 hour work week, they think 20 hours of work for 40 hours pay. that will not happen. why would corporate agree to that?

Why not? We're already there. We already have a huge section of society half-assing their work, doing 20 hours and getting paid for 40. Why not make it official and see where we can go from there?

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

But the government has spent a century trying anyway and it's starting to break down

Yeah, it has nothing to do with corporations doing everything possible against labour. It's all the government's fault. People would totally be paid better without those pesky laws in the way.

 

[BPD Gunt Rider]

Find a job you can stomach for 40 hours every week and have a fulfilling life outside of it. Start a family, have friends, have hobbies. Don't let your work define you, especially not today when most jobs are just meaningless timesinks you go to so you can maintain a living. We don't live in the same time our forefathers did, where working as a cobbler or blacksmith defined who you were. So we have to adapt.

We also live in times where starting a family and having safe shelter has become an impossible dream for many. There comes a point where you can no longer adapt.

 

[ShitLurker]

Keep in mind this comes from a codemonkey that gets to work from home.

OK, so the 40 hour work week I think is perfectly maneagable IF it's really 40 hours (and they don't fuck you with lunch hours, have heard of jobs where you have "2 hour lunch breaks" which completely ruin any expectation of doing anything in a day that is not fucking around for those 2 hours or just doing more work) and IF commute is 30 minutes at worst. The biggest thing I noticed when work from home became a thing was how suddenly I had 2 extra hours of life in my day, that was huge. But again, codemonkey, I have a certain flexibility on when I start and so on, I know most of the shit I'm saying doesn't apply for retail for example and something like construction I can imagine would take a very big hit as well on expected deliveries.

My "weariness" with reducing the 40 hour week to 32 or 30 or whatever (been a pretty popular topic in eurocuckistan) is first, what happens to the salaries, since I don't expect them to just stay the same and drop a 5th of the hours and second, we are already in a competency crisis, you and me can go from "wow, things sure have changed with going down to 32 hours" but I can see people once they get used to it feeling fatigued again or what have you and anybody that has only worked in a 32 hour world will probably be bitching and moaning like anybody else (good ol Reddit antiwork and his tough 1 hour a day dog walking job), because it's what they know and well, working for the most part always sucks unless it's for your own benefit or your passion.

Going deeper into point 1 it could reach a point where people suddenly need to get second jobs which defeats the whole fucking point of reducing the expected work week and with point 2, we are already in the middle of a competency crisis, I cannot imagine how bad it would get if you slice 20-25% of the expected work time as well and less time to learn, transfer knowledge or get good at what you are doing, though I'm also aware that the competency crisis is not something you will solve by shackling people to their desks for more hours. Also, that it's something that some governments are pushing immediately makes me be weary of it since there is surely an ulterior motive that will fuck everyone over sooner or later.