No matter how valid the premise is, that headline kills this article. It should say, “Want More Productivity? Start with yada yada…”
I would literally take a life for that work balance.
40-50hrs a week isn’t a life worth living
Ikr. I can’t even find time to go to gym cuz of commute. That alone just drains whatever energy I had left from the day and so I just scrap by with the few things I can do later in the evening. Sucks man.
Start paying people enough that they can actually live instead of struggling just to keep their heads above water.
Lol. This country just voted to move in the opposite direction of this. We voted for less worker rights. Less power for the average person.
At this point, we’ll need to start utilizing our 2nd amendment right if we want to get anything better than what we have. People died to give us the 40 hour work week. Looks like that’s going to have to happen again for any further improvements.
Smarter countries did it without the bloodshed. America isn’t that smart.
My dipshit coworkers think trump will actually be good for unions. Mfers.
I’d like to add that 32 hour weeks is pretty much purely something that works for white collar work. It’s considerably harder to implement in blue collar settings.
Is the reason it wont work in blue collar settings that it’ll inflate prices of stuff too high? Possible making the country fall back in a global stance on pricing on exports, etc (not competitive)?
Only other reason I can see is if they need people at the workplace 24/7, but they usually hire more people to make that schedule work (which in return ig increases prices of whatever they are producing).
The mental gymnastics required to believe that hurt my brain.
Your premise is flawed in the first sentence - “Want happier employees?” No American employer cares about that in the least. Being happy at being allowed to keep their job and keep showing up to collect your meager pay is about all you can expect.
4 weeks is still not on par with other civilised countries. Living here in the UK now, 5 weeks is standard. When I was in the Netherlands I was getting six.
Know what really hurts?
Running into foreigners in your own city who tell you about how they’re on a multi-week vacation to America and they’ll probably do it again to another country again next year. I’ve had that happen multiple times while out at bars in my city.
Meanwhile, I’ve barely crossed state lines in my entire adulthood because it’s hard to even get a 3-4 day extended weekend.
America sucks y’all.
Join a union. I work part time in America. After just one year of working I had 3 weeks of vacation. After 3 I now have 4 weeks and am taking my 2nd international trip of the year and 3rd vacation trip of the year.
Or better yet, unionize your own workplace with vacations as the primary demand
Unfortunately the leading point of view from employers
Is that if an employee is happy with their job… THEY ARE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH.
They feel that ONLY those who hate their jobs … are efficient
Only 4 weeks? For an entire year? That’s brutal.
i dont WANT happier employees i want MONEY!
Pay enough for them to afford two kids, a house and a car without dual-income and don’t have them work so many hours they can’t enjoy them.
Lmao they don’t want happier employees they want more money
Don’t forget the healthy dose of salary and humane treatment.
That goal is too modest. We shouldn’t settle until Keynes prediction of a 15-hour workweek is fulfilled.
Wait,you guys don’t get that? Shit I’m.here in Northern Ireland and that would be less than standard. That’s what we give teenagers,hell,most teens would not take that deal. When did America start treating the worker so bad? Like 1865?
32h work week?
Legally, I get 1 hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked. And this is a pro-worker state, most states don’t mandate any sick leave at all.
1 hour of sick a week ? That doesn’t make sense, you can’t plan being sick. How does that work? What if your sick fir one hour and ten minutes
The way paid time off works in WA is that it goes into a fund that you get paid out of for missing work. So, a minimum of one hour of wages gets added to the pot for every full week of work.
I go to therapy weekly, so I can choose to either take my PTO to cover the hour I miss each week, or I can choose to save it for when I actually get sick. Hypothetically, I could also save it for a vacation, but I’m not bougie enough to take a vacation.
we never stopped. One week vacation per year is considered a perk at most jobs that offer it.
One week? Do you get like 46 days of bank holiday?
No, it’s usually somewhere between 5 and 12 and none of them are mandatory.
Edit: if I’m translating that right, anyway.
America was built on treating the worker badly. Most of the first people that came here were either slaves or indentured servants. Chinese people got exploited to build the railroads, and then banned from being citizens in the country. Now we have prison slavery and wage servitude. There are a million and one examples, but exploiting the worker is as American as apple pie.
The only thing that has ever really improved in American labor is actual safety standards for work environments, equipment, etc. We do a great job of prioritizing that. But actual workers are viewed as expendable, and many of the largest employers are just meat grinders even if they offer half-decent benefits. Walmart is a good example of that
It’s such a bummer when I hear about the burial lack of workers rights over there. How is there not mass migration to Europe?
Because, for many people, it’s not all that easy to get the requisite visas to go to Europe legally. As it stands now, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my household of 3 who has a few options to get skilled work visas based on my work experience. In another few years, when we’ve all finished our degrees, we’re looking at making the leap.
For other people, they might already have put down roots that hold them back before considering what a raw deal they’re getting. Even if someone can qualify to emigrate, significant others, kids or property can make it more difficult for them to decide to go for it.
And, of course, you have plenty of folks who drink too deeply of the Kool-Aid, and believe Fox News when they say Europe is overrun by communist governments that implement Sharia law in their gulags, and force you to be gay to hit the national quotas.
“But worker rights that is socialism! Socialism is evil because the soviets say they are that!”
Yea everyone knows how that great socialist state of ireland
You have 32h/week as a standard?
Well full time is 36plus i think
Yeah its slowly becoming the standard
That’s awesome! I was actually looking into moving to Ireland (not the TERF-island part tho). Sadly their trans healthcare is also sub par.
Your sexuality is not a personality
Cool. Didn’t talk about my sexuality. Weird that you would bring that up, are you well?
Also worth mentioning from the article,
I work fully in the office. But I think remote work is better for work-life balance. I don’t have the option to work remote
Well, why not? Covid showed how great this can work … but so many companies went back to 20th century norms as soon as the pandemic ended*
- AS per https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/who-pandemic-not-emergency-1.6833321 the global emergency ended on May 2023 - almost two years ago to the day, but covid itself still circulates.
My experience is that in person and remote favors different sorts of tasks. For me I have both so I think hybrid is the most ‘productive’, though I’m much happier with the ‘remote’.
So on pure productivity, I could see some roles favor in-person.
But if you want to more cheaply recruit and retain, favoring remote is certainly going to help.
I really want a new normal of shorter hours, though that might be a trickier discussion so long as we have very highly utilized labor pool.
Productivity has been universally higher on every job that moved to remote, tracks those metrics and makes them public.
Maybe he is a hardware toucher
