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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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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.
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.
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."
Productivity and profitability skyrocketed and accidents plummeted when factories moved to the 40 hour week because it's much closer to the total number of hours the human brain and body can work at something without fatigue totally destroying any value in that work.
A lot of this was discovered by people like Sir Titus Salt, Joseph Rountree, Robert Owen, Samuel Oldknow and other such thinkers of the time, but practical understanding of both the strengths and limitations of various work weeks through modern formal experimentation has produced a clearer picture.
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)
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
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.
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.
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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