Does the 40-Hour Work Week Need Overhauling?

Compressed work weeks could solve a lot of our problems.

For the person saying him and his wife work 2 40 hour jobs, doesn't have a lot of spare time for the family, and pays a lot of $$ for day care. Compressed work week would solve a lot.

If you work Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed and she works Thurs-Fri-Sat (where I worked one week you would work Wed the next week she would, it would rotate, ya know), then someone would always be home, which means no day care. I don't have kids but I hear day care prices are outrageous.

You would both be working full time, combine overtime with no day care and your net income would see a boost. Their are downsides such as not seeing your spouse that often, but, at least where I worked, vacation time was plentiful, and if you take 3 work days off you get 10 straight days off.

If a family was able to do well on average with one parent working less hours forty years ago than most people work now, then today, a family with both parents working should be able to do as well, on average, with both parents working as many hours as the one parent used to work. With productivity having approximately doubled over the last 40 years, heck, two parents working ten hours each should be as productive as one parent working 40 hours 40 years ago. Clearly we are not getting our equity for our worth, and changing the standard for a work week in relation to productivity should be established.

If someone wants to work 80 hours a week, that should be their choice, hopefully they will only work those hours for a short time, and then enjoy a long time not working at all.

reply to post by Hastobemoretolife



Is 8 hours a day 5 days a week really that much? I mean there is 168 hours in a 7 day week and considering you get 8 hours of sleep 7 days a week that leaves 72 hours left.



do you work in marketing?????????????????

Yes. While services have been devalued along with products, it means we SHOULD work less, especially in the UK where we are over taked, overworked, and have statutory bloody heaven (few workers rights, apart from council workers and civil servants).

Civil servants whould DO some work instead.

S&F.

reply to post by poet1b


Exactly!!!!!!! I counted up all the hours that I have been forced to spend away from my family over the years and it is approx. 65,000 hours!! Life is too short!! Just like you said, we don't work for ourselves anymore, we are "slaves to the system" The working class could have anything we want, we hold all the power. If everyone stayed home just one day, the government would crap their pants!! Everything would just stop!! A nationwide worker strike could get us anything we demanded. What, are the fat cat ceo's going to step up and know how to do the work? NO!!! They don't have a clue what happens around them now. I don't have all the answers by any means, but I do know that living life and being with the ones we love is more important than making the rich richer. Someday, I will free myself from this tyranny!!!

Originally posted by da pickles
Is 8 hours a day 5 days a week really that much? I mean there is 168 hours in a 7 day week and considering you get 8 hours of sleep 7 days a week that leaves 72 hours left.



do you work in marketing?????????????????

I believe I've read that on average a person gets about 50 hours a week for leisure time. The rest of their time is spent preparing for work, traveling, working, preparing food, doing chores, etc.

There are many people who get far less free time. Also, it is too hard to enjoy free time when the stressful thoughts and worries carry over into your 'free time'. Or you are too tired to do anything other then lounge around the home. Most of my leisure time is more like 'recovery' time.

Work and money definitely needs to lose importance. The problem is a 40 hour work week is needed to afford life in today's society. We now have monthly charges for cell phones, internet, TV, cars, etc. As well people now want big flat screen TVs, IPods, etc....there are too many additional expenses.

Importance needs to be on family, loved ones, and enjoying life with each other. Unfortunately, things will just get worse and worse as more technology comes out that people feel they need in order to live with the rest of society.

I don't know anyone who works more than a 37 hour week... that is paid. I know many, many who put in more than that and don't get paid for the extra. The only way many people can get through their work is to take it home..... if you complain you could be out of a job.

Fortunately I enjoy my work and it is a sort of hobby too... so my employers are lucky... some of my colleagues don't see it like I do and feel exploited, which I can understand.

I think a point that many people miss when they say 40 hours a week is fine, is that as many others have pointed out, we could probably be more productive if we were working less hours. If we had more free time to concentrate on taking care of our family, our property, our investments, as well as our physical beings, that would most likely increase the productivity of most people.

In addition, cutting the standard week to 32 hours or so would also probably free up more jobs so that more people are employed, and less people are worried about losing their jobs, so instead of so many people concentrating on playing politics to hold onto their jobs, they would concentrate on being more efficient. The more people with jobs, the more people have money to spend, the higher demand goes up, the better the economy does. Let's face, we are not suffering from a shortage of goods and services, we are suffering from demand to buy up those goods and services.

I think instead of being paid by hours, I think we should all be paid on the actual work that we do.

I'm temping right now because the economy is so bad, but I graduated last year with a Bachelor's in Business Management from a pretty good school. Not Ivy League, but good enough to be accredited. I was hired this week by a religious institution to work on a manual for one of their new programs. I finished what I needed to do in a little more than half the time they expected and was rewarded with typing names into a database for two days, 8 hours each. I didn't get paid more for saving them time or doing more than was expected of me. I know this sounds bad, but I feel like I was being punished for being able to do things quickly.

3 years ago I worked a 60 hour week.
I was losing a lot in tax as it put me into a higher tax bracket.

I lost that job and found another working reduced hours and although I wasn't earning the same salary, because I was in a lower tax bracket and paying less tax (pay as you go tax that is) per week, there was only a small amount lost in income for working a lot less hours.

I would never go back to being a slave/workhorse again.
Work smart , not hard is my motto these days.

No, the 40 hour work week does not need to be overhauled, the capitalist systems needs to be annihilated! Capitalism is the enarnation of uncontroled greed, with slavery being it's natural byproduct. You can not strip the wealth from the people without stripping them of their freedoms first. Plantation Economics 101-- never educate a slave, pump them full of religion and teach them to hate one another.

reply to post by CoffeeBeans


Welcome to the real world. What will even tweak your brain more is when you get a job somewhere, and find a lot of the people never get anything done, except complain about how busy they are. A lot of people's jobs seem only to revolve around justifying their jobs.

[edit on 28-3-2009 by poet1b]

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by CoffeeBeans

 

Welcome to the real world. What will even tweak your brain more is when you get a job somewhere, and find a lot of the people never get anything done, except complain about how busy they are. A lot of people's jobs seem only to revolve around justifying their jobs.

[edit on 28-3-2009 by poet1b]

I know. Although I've only really experienced it for a year, I've watched my mother go through it all my life. Call me an idealist, but we need a different system. I think it's a corporate culture problem - we're all expected to be "busy-bees" while logic and common sense goes unrewarded.

Originally posted by Rotwang17
No, the 40 hour work week does not need to be overhauled, the capitalist systems needs to be annihilated! Capitalism is the enarnation of uncontroled greed, with slavery being it's natural byproduct. You can not strip the wealth from the people without stripping them of their freedoms first. Plantation Economics 101-- never educate a slave, pump them full of religion and teach them to hate one another.

What else do you suggest then?

[edit on 28-3-2009 by CoffeeBeans]

This is why I started to work on the net a decade ago and never looked back...

Look, just thank g-d that we are at the dawn of the communication era and that this sick contrived miserable slavery system is dying...

everyone is scared about the economy, but really, we will work out a new method and this is just a sign that freedom is coming our way

You have to realize all of you that... Kids were sent to work in factories some died, just to usher in this sort of feudal existence that allowed us to make this week...

That wonderful invention the watch?

In Russia people were killed to get them to live by the clock...

This isn't normal

Normal was you woke up, worked around your kids, did things that directly benefited and improved your life, gre w food, made your home better etc, etc... you could grab a glass of water and make love to your spouse for an hr around noon when it was too hot outside...

2 week vacation prior to the 1800's in mainly agricultural times, you got a few months off for all intents and purposes

and now,

the faster we all move to get that back the better and we can thanks to the net

we can debate all we want, hrs and numbers

for a million reasons it's simply a sick life to get up and leave your family behind or send your wife to labor for some other guy LOL... over my dead body

I'd honestly be a bum before I submitted to it and if you ever talked to the homeless, you'd know...allot of these guys are nuts, but many are.... just like me, simply refused to participate in a life that has no value, in slavery, if I hadn't found the net... I'd be in the woods somewhere probably.

There is no debate...

Commute + Lunch + a Boss + social rules to follow all day + a pay rate that for most means not having enough money to break free = slavery

40 hrs 35 hrs... just doing something you don't love (and what Job do most of us love more than spouse and kids which gets taken away in a job you leave to go to) your energy is gone... come home to drama get a couple hrs, someone wife or kids gets left hanging and go to bed, wash rinse repeat

It's Hell and because "everyone does it"

we all mostly go along with it...

DISEASE is what I call it, Slavery

The Live/Work run your own life route is the only escape...

Heck i'll work 60 hrs a week from home more... and never feel like i'm working so long as my loved ones are around and No one is giving me orders

Let me add

Fluorescent Lights suck

People rise to their level of incompetence and you can never win, there is always someone who has FAILED holding on to dear life to the position above you

The nutrition and food in office courts is evil for your health

Disease spread seasonally around the office and you bring them home

Loneliness for family and love wrecks marriages very often

Kids have no parents

your not in charge of your life

You risk your life driving that much daily



Really if you seriously stop and think about it rather than accept it...you'd want to fight a revolution....

But...

I guess on some level, we all knew all along that... the road out of helplessness, the path to building a brighter tomorrow would be paved with our blood no matter how we did it...

we did try actual slavery first after all and when that failed it was everyones time to pitch in...

The reality though is... thankfully

Technology has surpassed the need for us to Toil

That's the real reason "there are no jobs" and our elected officials blow... running around promising factory jobs and better wages lol

won't happen... Robots CAN build almost everything now

No One has thought up a viable new system

and the banks and industrial era giants don't know what to do

so it will end (the industrial era) very poorly... but the best of times are yet to come

reply to post by poet1b
America is ruled not by the people but by "the corporations" and the elite hand few of people who own them. many of these elite few have a bloodline (DNA) that can be traced back to ancient "rulers".

We are having to work more, earn less and many of us that do have grueling jobs feel luckier than those that are now "unemployed".

Our work loads have increased yet we are told, If you worked "smarter" you could get it all done". BS

We have smaller "cubes". We are almost elbow to elbow with no privacy.

Cameras everywhere to watch your every move, no privacy - you are being watched and filmed at the store, at the bank, in the parking lot, driving on many streets and people keep accepting this like compliant sheep.

Everyone is made to watch "manage" everyone else hoping to earn enough "brownie points" to "become management".

The entire planet has become much different than it was 30 years ago.

and I feel it's going to get worse.

We were warned but most people choose to remain asleep and let the matrix build up around them.

Rioting and revolution isn't the answer, that is exactly "what they want".

Who is "they", perhaps reality is stranger than fiction.

We are an enslaved species and not even aware of our "masters".

Our food is genetically messed with.

We're taxed without true representation

We have to work very long very hard hours just to barely afford food and shelter.

Many of us have no medical care

Some of "the elite" can buy $20,000 pair of boots (one pair of cobra with a diamond crown was bought by some actress for $150,000) this is ludicris, pure madness where actors make more than heart surgeons and some people have so much money to piss and others that work hard don't have enough for the basics in life.

Who choses and changes the rules at a whim, not you not I.

AIG executives had resorts and who is paying for their bs - you and me the common tax payer that is who.

We're all being kept "really busy" so we can't or don't want to see the stun guns coming towards our foreheads.



[edit on 28-3-2009 by ofhumandescent]

IN a sense yes it does..in terms of more hourly wages, and bad management should be toned down. I work in retail mangemnt, i cannot tell you how mych anger ive built up, wanting and trying to do a Damng ood job, while everyone who has a friend of a friend, in a higher position alughs at me and lays back to drink on the job or other tings go on..and the sates boardds fo lbaor dont give a rats ass, neither does the company (CVS phamracy) human resources give a rats ass either.
Loko at that executive who quit his job form AIG other day..his letter of resignation..how he was saying the entire place was full of the wrong people and disfunction...
making money is NOT a fair person job , nor is it really ethical, thats what ive learned..

reply to post by ziggy1706


Id love to work ONLY 40 hrs a week

Business ownership has its drawbacks

Originally posted by poet1b
Shouldn't technological advancement of our society lead to people having more leisure time to spend on relationships, raising their children, improving themselves.

There is no technological advancement. This is the U.S., not China. Get over it. We're going to have to work longer hours "just to maintain the same lifestyle" if we want to stay competitive. There's nothing we can do about it if we continually fail to produce meaningful science, to allow our federal government to plunge our society into stagnation due to the increasing power of liberal democracy and the expansion of government bureaucracy... Innovation is important so that we can maintain an upper hand over our trading competitors so that we might demand more goods than they can. That's how the world actually works. Those who have desirable products can demand more of the Earth's limited resources. The U.S.'s only "product" is the dollar. There is high demand for the dollar so that countries can trade their goods to the large U.S. consumer market.

From what you have written it seems you don't understand how the global political economy operates. Life isn't a child's game. People aren't rewarded depending on how much "effort" they put into their "work". Wealth follows productivity, which at this point in time encompasses technological innovation. In the 18th century manufacturing was as high-tech as it got, but that's not the case today. If U.S. firms continue to be subsidized despite their clear deficiency in technological innovation then people are going to have to keep working harder for less. This will only last as long as the U.S. has a stranglehold on the rest of the world through their hegemony over global currency reserves. Why does the world hold U.S. dollars? Well, they invested at one point for a good reason. But they waited too long to pull out. In the past the world had not need fear an unproductive, liberal, aggressive America. They made a bad investment and it's too late to pull out.

[edit on 28-3-2009 by cognoscente]

reply to post by cognoscente
That is what you are told by the few ruling elite and you have bought into their bs.

Brains, logic and hard work are not rewarded as much as looks and being able to manipulate other people.

Part of the reason this world has become so crazy is that the people running the show don't know what the huck they are doing.





[edit on 28-3-2009 by ofhumandescent]

reply to post by ofhumandescent


No, the people running the show are "the people running the show" simply because the opportunity presented itself for them. I'm not going to budge from my original position. We're not working very smart as a country. We're falling behind in science, technology and productivity.

Brains, logic and hard work are not rewarded as much as looks and being able to manipulate other people.

Because there are relatively few brains to reward. Apparently we've come to a point where all we have left are a bunch of crafty, good-looking college graduates to pull all our weight for us. It just so happens they feel entitled to a large share of the pot. Why invest in education when 40% of our GDP is coming from a financial sector developed and manipulated in order to pay the only people still holding us by our tails? Yes, I'm talking about the CEOs.

[edit on 28-3-2009 by cognoscente]