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Four-Day Working Week For All is a Realistic Goal This Century, UK Trade Unions Say (theguardian.com)
Advances in technology mean that a four-day week working week is a realistic goal for most people by the end of this century, the leader of the UK's trade union movement has said. From a report: Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), used her speech to the organisation's 150th annual gathering to insist that evolving technology and communications should cut the number hours spent at work. Speaking in Manchester on Monday, O'Grady said: "In the 19th century, unions campaigned for an eight-hour day. In the 20th century, we won the right to a two-day weekend and paid holidays. So, for the 21st century, let's lift our ambition again. I believe that in this century we can win a four-day working week, with decent pay for everyone. It's time to share the wealth from new technology, not allow those at the top to grab it for themselves."
A report by the organisation says postwar economists promised employees would be working a 15-hour week by now and that polls showed a four-day week would be most people's preference. "Instead, new technology is threatening to intensify working lives. For some, the on-demand economy has meant packaging work into ever-smaller pieces of time," the report reads. "This is a return to the days of piece-work, creating a culture where workers are required to be constantly available to work." More than 1.4 million people work seven days a week, with 3.3 million working more than 45 hours a week, according to the report.
A report by the organisation says postwar economists promised employees would be working a 15-hour week by now and that polls showed a four-day week would be most people's preference. "Instead, new technology is threatening to intensify working lives. For some, the on-demand economy has meant packaging work into ever-smaller pieces of time," the report reads. "This is a return to the days of piece-work, creating a culture where workers are required to be constantly available to work." More than 1.4 million people work seven days a week, with 3.3 million working more than 45 hours a week, according to the report.
George: "These one hour work days are killing me! Thank goodness it's only twice a week!"
I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me. After that I just sorta space out for about an hour. Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
We work and we make new technology. The wooden shipping pallet reduced shipping labor by 85%. We have all this computer tech. We have a lot more per-capita today, and we consume a great deal more than we did 20 years ago for each person.
We could trade some of that.
Technical progress lets us work the same and make 10% more. Why work the same 40 hours? Why not work 38 hours and have 5% more?
That's the direction. I want a 28-hour work week: 7 hours, 4 days. The unions seem to be looking toward that, finally.
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The way you say words matters! Plus, it's a rather generous estimate. Just like the ones I give to my project manager when she asks when I'll be done with my current ticket. ;-)
End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots. We program them to to do what they're told, they mine the minerals and build the machines to give us clean energy, transport us wherever we want to go, build gadgets to keep us from having to weed the garden in case we want to do it ourselves rather than letting personal robots grow food, etc. Nobody has to pay a robot because it too is served by other robots that supply its needs, and so forth. There will be no reason to study anything because the robots will be conducting the science and exploration, all we have to do is whatever we find pleasurable.
We should last about as long as the Krell that way.
I doubt it's going to work out for them, especially considering that the UK has been more than willing to bring in new immigrants that are quite happy to work five days a week. Maybe a few of the highly skilled trades could demand this, but I suspect that people will just start finding ways to switch to non-union labor. Even if they manage to force something into law, they'll quickly find that people will gladly outsource wherever possible. That's obviously a lot harder to do if you need plumbing work, but not all jobs are immune from being done somewhere else.
This notion of shorter work weeks is hardly new. Bertrand Russel opined about it almost a century ago. While it's certainly true that productivity has massively increased over the years, including even more from the time he wrote this piece, his conclusion that this would mean a reduction in the amount of time a laborer works has turned out to be wrong. Instead, what tends to happen is that when productivity doubles (and demand remains fixed) is that half of the laborers will be let go and the remaining half will use their improved productivity to produce the same amount as before.
There are also many people who already work 4 days a week. They just work 10 hour shifts.
It's a little hard to bargain when your working class job can be replaced in a minute with a worker in India or China willing to work a 60-hour week at a fraction of the cost you want for a 30-hour week.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This 40 hour work week is for the factory. When everyone had to be there at the same time for the assembly line and 40 hours was settled thanks to the unions. Because before that, factory owners wanted people there 12 hours a day - 6 days a week.
This attitude of "living to work" here in the States is just twisted. And we wonder why we have an opioid epidemic here. (Our lives suck and we're numbing out.)
Because that is where automation would have allowed that, hadn't it been for the "profit" leeches stealing the money that belonged to those who actually did the wealth-creating work!
They call themselves "job creators", yet all they do, is tell others to do it, and add nothing of value. They are wealth stealers! And we are the wealth creators!
The same wealth that they then used to replace us with automation in the first place! *We* should own those robots! And *they* should be expelled from the country!
That is also, where an unconditional basic income would come from, by the way. From that automation, and it generating wealth. Which can be spread either by lowering prices, or giving an UBI. Which one does not matter, unless you leech off wealth via sneakily lowering wages via inflation.
Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Doesn't she already have a shorter workweek?
End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots. We program them to to do what they're told, they mine the minerals and build the machines to give us clean energy, transport us wherever we want to go, build gadgets to keep us from having to weed the garden in case we want to do it ourselves rather than letting personal robots grow food, etc. Nobody has to pay a robot because it too is served by other robots that supply its needs, and so forth. There will be no reason to study anything because the robots will be conducting the science and exploration, all we have to do is whatever we find pleasurable.
We should last about as long as the Krell that way.
When no-one works anymore the haves and the have-nots will be cemented in place. There will no longer be social mobility. Those who own the factories will have money. Those who don't will be considered in poverty by that generation. They will probably be given just a minimal amount to keep them from revolting and to keep them alive to feed demand for the goods from those on top.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
That's why I do strictly 9 to 5 and I'm pretty much always back home at 5:30 to do the fun side of programming on my own projects.
First problem is that humans have evolved to work. Like certain types of engine, if you don't put them under some load, they simply destroy themselves. This is what you see in humans who don't need to work, it's why the mega-rich are the most suicidal, most delinquent elements in society.
Second problem is that robots simply can't ever be made to do as good a job at some tasks. That's a serious problem. People of the future, if they've any brains, won't place themselves in a situation where they get inferior results.
Third problem is that this requires a stagnant society. An evolving society will always have new lines of work that robots/computers simply don't know how to do. The more people you have out of work, provided the education is any good, the more such lines of work will appear. The rate of change is a power function of the number of minds you have freed up to do the thinking, whereas robot development is strictly a linear function of the number of groups working on the problem. Stagnant societies are walking dead, so the only ones that matter are the progressive societies.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I've encountered several who were more productive when they didn't come in at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How would you be better off if everything and anything you want is obtained by simply asking a robot for it and it will be provided for free? Anyone can do that.
Won't work. Immigration actually reduces the strain, as shown by the collapse of the NHS due to the ban on health tourism and foreign doctors.
Immigration actually raises wages by producing a richer culture and thus greater diversity in employment and therefore a stronger economy, as demonstrated by Britain.
Protective tariffs actually hurt social welfare programs by raising costs and reducing the supply of skilled workers and necessary gear.
You heard that platform, yes, but not from anyone I would consider to be competent at business.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Those who own the factories will have money."
What would they do with money when anything and everything you could want would be provided by robots simply for asking for it?
I supposed people could ask for stuff beyond the capability of even the robots - everyone wants a Taj Mahal of their own, for instance, and it still takes so much time to obtain the materials and put them together that even the robots can't build it within the next few years - but still, how would money fix it?
Of course the society would eventually collapse with a near-total mortality when something finally happens to the robots - a solar flare wipes out their electronic brains, they all stop working at once, and humanity, devoid of even the most basic skills, would all starve, but it'd be a great existence until that happened.
Do you mean the data grew to not fit the original specification and thus the data needed to constantly be vetted? That's what I would expect from an aging app. The fact that the new app is web based should have nothing to do with the improvement. It's just that the newer app fits the latest model of the data better. Give it 10 years and it will have similar data quality problems.
Until you get a stroke from all that stress...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Years go I had a job where we could work longer hours for fewer days: 3 very long days a week (not popular), 4 long days a week (not popular either), 9 slightly long days every two weeks (very popular), or 5 regular days each week. Almost everybody (including me) worked a nine day fortnight. I liked it, a reasonable balance between long days and time off. Management hated it, and were trying to eliminate it. By now (nearly 30 years later) they have probably done so.
I'd love to work less, have more time for myself. I've felt my employers out on such things, and their answer amounts to "You kidding? LOL".
...laura
Ding ding ding! You hit the nail on the head for why overworking is immoral! People who value their own life and freedom are disadvantaged by selfish workaholics who want to make someone else rich at their own expense.
Those guys don't stress, that would require self awareness.
They're net negative workers, but they sure put in the facetime. The stress falls on the people fixing GPs mess.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots. We program them to to do what they're told, they mine the minerals and build the machines to give us clean energy, transport us wherever we want to go, build gadgets to keep us from having to weed the garden in case we want to do it ourselves rather than letting personal robots grow food, etc. Nobody has to pay a robot because it too is served by other robots that supply its needs, and so forth. There will be no reason to study anything because the robots will be conducting the science and exploration, all we have to do is whatever we find pleasurable.
We should last about as long as the Krell that way.
When no-one works anymore the haves and the have-nots will be cemented in place. There will no longer be social mobility. Those who own the factories will have money. Those who don't will be considered in poverty by that generation. They will probably be given just a minimal amount to keep them from revolting and to keep them alive to feed demand for the goods from those on top.
Those who innovate and optimize in practical and effective ways will have work because they provide value. As long as true AI doesn't take over this will be true and that's not even in a sub-infancy stage if even possible. We're just starting to see the side effects of endless make-work jobs that aren't really needed and only exist to give people that aren't needed something to do. It's not like this direction is a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for decades. If you aren't capable enough to adapt with the times then you simply aren't useful and I'd much rather you just get out of the way.
PS: Your own dystopian prediction contradicts itself. If the plebs are given all they have and don't work then they aren't buying anything from these factories nor providing any direct value to anyone. Factory owners don't make money from things given away. Money has no value in a society where people don't buy things. The only logical long term outcome to Capitalism is complete collapse which is bad for workers and their overlords.
We're already somewhat there. You can live quite comfortable at 30k/year. You can raise a family relatively comfortably on 50k/year. If you are making 100k/year there are plenty of places even in the USA that you can live like a king with a large yard, housekeeper, large house, multiple vacations a year. If you are one of those people at 100k/year and struggling then find a freind or neighbor who makes 30k/year and let them show you their budget. I guarantee that you are upscaling a ton of stuff that you don't need whether it is an expensive car, an expensive neighborhood, or some habit that is consuming all your "excess" money. Most peoples expenses naturally grow to use up whatever money is available whether it is with a larger house, a nicer car, or a more upscale neighborhood.
Wouldn't a 4 day work week just start making people romanticize a 3-day work week?
And why not? If we can automate stuff and still get the stuff needed to survive, why should people be forced to work just to live? There will still be plenty of other stuff to do if you didn't have to work all the time. You could teach your kids, you could learn a new skill, you could exercise more, you could volunteer more. I have tons of projects and ideas and desires that I could follow if I could work less.
If we lose 50% of current jobs to automation that doesn't mean there will only be enough work for 1/2 as many people. New Jobs come into existence all the time. More importantly some occupations get shifted priority as the increase in societies productivity increase the resources that can be spent on previously less important jobs. Maybe something like hiring people to clean up litter in city parks, government regulation compliance officers, elder care of an increasingly order population, it seems like YouTube is paying more movie reviewers than worked at every newspaper combined. Or most likely of all a job that I can't even think of now.
And remember the US is currently experiencing a labor shortage, it is a great time to be looking for a new job. But as the population starts to level off some of the working population may not be able to retire not so much because we don't have the financial resources to pay them, but we don't have the productivity to not encourage them to keep working.
The short term effect of the fear of automation is more interesting. It is very difficult to find new truck drivers. It is a specialty skill set that everyone says is the next thing to be fazed out so no one is entering it. This results in things like two NJ towns that didn't get their fireworks for Independence Day, because the company couldn't find a driver.
it's not about being better off, it's about controlling how well off everyone is. That way you can make them do what you say (because you control how much of everything they have). It's especially effective if you control their access to food, shelter and healthcare since in that case you literally hold the power of life and death over them. At that point they'll do anything you tell them...
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or suffered from Ennui. Their problem was they lost control of their machines and were killed by them. So long as we don't hook out machines up to our brains while we sleep I think we'll just do fine.
Also, you're entire post is predicated on the idea that if people aren't working to survive they don't know what to do with themselves. That couldn't be further away from the truth if it tried. People can and will keep themselves busy with hobbies, family life, researching their own interests, etc. The only reason why we have this notion that if you don't work you're life is worthless is that it was instilled in us by our ruling class. Given enough education and critical thinking we can get over it when the time comes.
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End of century ought to see so much robotization that we will live like the ancient Romans, with slaves to do all the real work, and for us those slaves will be robots
Only if you read too many science magazines, which are typically more like science fantasy. I used to read those as a kid and now I can first hand track that towards reality in 1988, 1998, 2008 and 2018. Have we made a lot of progress? Yes. Are we on track for utopia in 2100? Hell no. Take for example medicine, is the general health better? Yes. But we are also finding a near bottomless hole of rare diseases, complex and extreme treatments, unique medication and so on. And we still get old and die, making it to 100 is still rare and exoskeletons don't make you young again. I don't remember when I first read the idea that you could upload a brain to a computer, but it seems more far fetched in 2018 than it did back then. That and cryogenics and nanobots and all the other things that'd soon make us immortal fizzled out.
And in a few years the free ride Moore's law gave us is over, which has been the basis for so many other advances. We can maybe get one last death gasp from EUV, but by 2025 it's pretty much game over for silicon-based physics. It's far from certain that computers in 2050 will have improved substantially past that. Of course they can get cheaper and better in other ways, like say air travel... but the Concorde died and we're still doing about 0.9 Mach and it seems likely that's where pretty much all commercial jets will stay. Of course so many people have announced the end of Moore's law and been proven wrong that it's become a belief that we'll always find a new twist to keep it going. There's no such thing as infinite growth though, sooner or later you will run into some constraint you can't work around.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Four-days week is desirable, but we should focus on decent pay first, because this is what is under attack now.
A four-days week job is meritless if you need to have two of them to get decent income.
Your comment is very apt, but for the wrong reason.
In ancient Rome, slaves were cheaper than free men that were too poor to own them. So the slaves made the free Romans unemployed. This was a real source of discontent.
Also, in the ancient world, slaves often revolted, usually unsuccessfully. But hyper intelligent robots that can control every aspect of our lives might have an easier job.
When I (and most slash dot readers) was 'lad long ago, people were already talking about the 4 day week. If 5 day weeks were enough for our fathers, and productivity has been increasing about 1%pa for decades, then a 4 day week should be ample now.
It is cultural. Just like Europeans can afford 6 weeks holiday, but the USA can only afford 2.
What part of "I love it" do you not understand?
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We get up at twelve and start to work at one.
Take an hour for lunch and then at two we're done.
Jolly good fun!
J
by the end of this century,
This is what we call a U-Boot. Next time someone proposes it, then will say "yes, of course... just later".
We could move to a 4-day working week right now. There is enough unemployment, especially in the low-paying service sectors that need constant running, that the hole would be filled immediately.
I've lived a 4-day working week for a few years of my life, and the impact is massive. It is one of my personal goals right now to return to such a schedule as soon as I can afford to do it. You cannot imagine how much it improves your life, health and well-being.
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The sheeple could vote for them instead of seeing them as the fools they are?
The center right could rapidly move towards a more totalitarian, authoritarian state, based on violation of personal privacy and rights, forcing people to vote for the other crowd?
No, sure that could never happen, not in Great Britain.
Hmmmm...
We can see how this is going to go, from John Deere claiming ownership of the software necessary to run tractors to Microsoft's subscription models with Windows 10 and Office 365.
First off, the poor wont be able to afford any functioning robots, even used ones. Cars have been around for well over a hundred years, but every poor person doesn't have a car. And if you can't pay the monthly subscription for your miracle bot, it ceases to function until you've paid up.
And how are poor people going to afford their robot fees when said robots take all the work that poor, unskilled workers can do?
Shorten the working week by 25% means 20% of the old week is paid overtime at time-and-a-half rates, i.e a 10% pay rise. You do the math.
"Those who own the factories will have money."
What would they do with money when anything and everything you could want would be provided by robots simply for asking for it?
Why would someone build a robot to help you and provide you with goods and services if it wasn't going to provide them with something in return. There are some generous people in the world, but most expect to get something in return for helping you. There will always be an economy and a trading of goods and services even if money itself may change forms.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There have been all sorts of studies that show that 4, tens makes more sense than 5 eights especially if you can stagger the odd day.
A four day work week can increase productivity and reduce traffic, stress, etc.
No one will do them though because why would execs want to pay for a 10 hour day when they are already getting more than that for free out of most workers in the US.
A lot of people have no idea what to do, besides working. And I live in Europe where we have ree time.
e.g. ask when people say what they would do when they would win the Euromillions lottery (15MM as a minimum). Most will say: "I would still work". The thing is that they have no idea what to do with the time that becomes available to them.
I have seen it with people going on retirement as well. No idea what to do with their free time. Now obviously there are plenty of people who are not like that.
I have been unemployed for a longer period once. Timewise, I had no problems with it. There was plenty of things to do. The main issue was the money.
Not having a job does not mean you sit at home and watch a screen and do nothing. For people here: you can volunteer in some open source project. Not even as a main developer, if you do not want the preasure, but as a tester or bugreporter or whatever.
Did some of that when I felt like it. Not work, yet still feeling a part of society and contributing to it.,
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You claim to work 90 hours/week.
I've seen many like you, you were once good, now you're crispy and produce negative work, but are too burnt out to see it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
when we don't need them to work to advance the overall goals of a decent civilization what the hell difference does it make if they faff about all day? Do you suggestion we create miserable toil for them just so our society can be "awesome"? Also, citation needed. We're only just now entering a phase where there's going to be more people than work to do.
There's a dozen other reasons why you're wrong. One man's idleness is another's fulfillment.
Judging by your sig you're neck deep in right wing, puritanical propaganda. That's not going to work anymore. We can't just forge ahead and hope for the best. We're heading for a post-work world whether you like it or not. Our options are to let folks do their own thing, create phony (probably military) jobs for them or let them live in abject, horrifying poverty. Well, there's one more option, we could go full Amish and put a stop to tech. But if you think the ruling class is gonna let that happen you really haven't been paying attention to anything that happened post WWI.
Also, funny how we rag on the working class for being idle but never on the rich....
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48% of the doctors WERE immigrants. You've halved the number of doctors by eliminating them. Congratulations.
The money coming in from health tourism exceeded the cost of the care, releasing more money into the NHS for actually PROVIDING that care.
These are established facts. Your fiction is of no interest to me.
Let me guess, England - you know, the country that invented English - is not your home country. I'm British, going back to before the Romans, not these Anglo-Saxon foreigners. They can go back to where they came from, in Scandinavia! They never assimilated, neither did the Norman French. Yes, FRENCH!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Someone" isnt going to build robots. Other robots are going to build robots and there's no need to pay robots
48% of the doctors WERE immigrants. You've halved the number of doctors by eliminating them. Congratulations.
Congratulations, you could have been graduating the children of fishermen and factory workers into careers in medicine. Instead you kept them in low paying and economically hard niches that pissed them off enough to vote BREXIT.
Why would someone build robots to build other robots to help you with nothing in return?
In order for this utopia of no work to begin; someone (many people) has to be willing to be giving something very valuable away for free. The resources to build the robots- the raw materials have to come from somewhere too. The people that own the iron mines aren't going to give iron away for free. Unless there is some world-wide revolution where people take over and force a communist utopia.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
One has to assume a point that eventually, the procreation of robots would be complete, and all we have to do is make sure they're on our side, and serve us. After that, nobody has to lift a finger. So, there would be no work, no currency, no trade. Just ask a robot and you get what you want. Limits? Sure, there's going to be resource shortage and so not everyone can have their own private yacht, there's just not enough raw materials to go around. And, since they're just a status symbol anyway, there would be no need for them - everybody has pretty much whatever they want.
Now, if an iron mine "owner" wants to hold his product off the market, he could, but... why? He's not going to attain any money, since there isn't any. And, if his resource is essential, maybe there will be 1 or 2 people with jobs, they'll be politicians, and the politicians would pass a law that anyone witholding essential resources could not participate in the robot utopia, and would be unable to ask a robot for anything. They can then make their own clothes, wash them by hand by beating them on a rock down by the river, hunt / grow their own food, etc. Maybe the Amish would be untouched by this. Most of the rest of us would quickly see the advantage in "sharing" their essential resource.