I deeply wish this would happen, but know it would never happen in my lifetime in my country.
I’ve been working full time, sometimes overtime, for almost five years out of college. I want to practice piano more. I’d love to volunteer. I want to go outside more. I’ve always wanted to spend a month backpacking in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been my lifelong dream to write a book.
I’m so exhausted after work every single day that I can only get myself to play piano for a half an hour, and then play video games or read until I pass out before my bedtime.
Okay i agree now what
This is just my personal opinion and I know the hyper liberal lemmy will hate it but based on the current economic structure, a 4 day work week and extra vacation weeks would probably cost me more money than just working.
While I’m at work I eat less food, use less utilities and stuff like that. Being home more causes me to spend money that I don’t have. I’m already living paycheck to paycheck working 5 days and barely eating. Having to eat 2-3 meals an extra day per week would be too expensive. An extra day off would just make me get a second job.
We need to pay people a liveable wage before we can talk about more pto.
32 hour workweeks AND lower the overtime threshold to match. And that’s just using my office job as a basis.
The threshold from part-time to full-time will also need to be lowered accordingly for grocery store/fast food type jobs.
Don’t forget keeping yearly salary the same.
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.
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.
came in to comment effectively this., but you phrased it better than I would have.
“But happy employees naturally work harder” yeah, but so do desperate employees, and that also satisfies corpo desire for abusable slaves.
Only 4 weeks? For an entire year? That’s brutal.
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.
Not true. The electricians in my area work 7 hour days and the sheet metal workers get every other Friday off.
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).
Not “won’t work”. Considerably harder. Big difference. There’s companies who have successfully implemented it in blue collar jobs.
But more put simple, it’s that unlike white collar, output has a direct relationship with how many hours are worked, up to probably nearly 50, more or less depending on the job.
So, in practice it turned out that slower service was one of the largest problems with it.
Half of the benefit issue costs would go away with universal healthcare anyways.
Sure you can get more employees, but people who work don’t magically appear
The mental gymnastics required to believe that hurt my brain.
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
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
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.
Don’t forget the healthy dose of salary and humane treatment.
