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    ‘Cruel hoax’ or ‘work-life balance nirvana’: whatever happened to the four-day work week? | Four-day week
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    ‘Cruel hoax’ or ‘work-life balance nirvana’: whatever happened to the four-day work week? | Four-day week

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    23 Comments

    1. Spirit-Truth-Light on

      and whatever happened to getting paid enough?

      whatever happened to one parent being able to care for their children – instead of both working full time just to survive?

    2. heisdeadjim_au on

      Or a house mortgage being able to be addressed on one salary? Or the buying in price for a house being a greater multiple of the average salary?

      What we are experiencing folks is end stage capitalism. Housing and food and existence are now commodified. Everything has a price and those who can’t pay die.

    3. Stellariser on

      Reminder that it took a long and sometimes bloody fight to get 8 hour days and 5 day weeks.

      There are plenty of people who’d be more than happy for you to work 14 hours a day 7 days a week if they thought they could earn one more dollar from it.

    7. geoffm_aus on

      I know a lot of people in professional occupations working 4 day weeks. It’s very common.

    8. enaud on

      A few companies trialled it, were successful then it had to be quickly buried unless the rest of us serfs caught on

    9. PossibilityRegular21 on

      These are artificial constructs. The reality is there are too many of us relative to the resources needed to support a utopian society. 

      Because of this, we individually compete for these resources through working second jobs and after hours, getting masters degrees and self promoting online, maximising investment property earnings and dollar cost averaging into stocks, and otherwise continuing to fight to get a slice of the ever more hotly contested pie.

      You can’t just tell people to work less if they are struggling to make ends meet. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

      If we had the resource security to work less, I imagine we would. It’s why most retirees don’t work.

    10. Transientmind on

      So many people in this thread misunderstanding what the ‘four day work week’ label is referring to.

      **It is NOT about working fewer hours and getting less pay as a result, or working more hours over fewer days in a ‘compressed’ model.**

      It’s literally ‘5 days pay for 4 days worth of hours’. Work less, earn the same. And while that sounds like it’s a net loss to the employer, it’s championed by many because almost every single study done on this has proven that the productivity (which includes unplanned absenteeism) of working 4 days for 5 days pay is actually higher than working 5 days for 5 days pay. It’s benefit to both workers AND employers.

      The pushback is for the same reason as demanding remote-possible-work be done in an office, despite all the evidence that it improves productivity. It’s not ABOUT the productivity. It’s about control, it’s about keeping workers tired and exhausted, it’s about related interests (eg: commercial real estate), and it’s about executive ignorance: deliberately ignoring the studies because it doesn’t gel with their gut feel.

    11. jolard on

      One of my favourite anecdotes is that President Nixon (yeah that crook) was talking about the coming 4 day work week in the U.S. because of productivity gains that would make it possible. Those productivity gains absolutely came, but instead of the benefits going to workers, they were sucked up by investors and CEOs

      In other words capitalism killed the 4 day work week. Capitalism that ALWAYS puts the interests of investors and the capitalists over the workers, and only ever gives anything to the workers when the workers demand it. Otherwise it will always be the bare minimum they can get away with.

    12. Vanilla_Princess on

      Here I am having just started a new job and was told that overtime is basically expected. To which I flatly said my contract is 38 so that’s what I’ll be doing unless it’s in writing. Fortunately my direct supervisor who signs off my time sheets doesn’t seem to mind but damn I got some flack from some of the other office people.

    13. mooblah_ on

      Well it disappeared when the big corporates started dropping between 5% and 50% of their workforce due to ‘AI’. It meant watch the fk out or you will be gone too. Work harder and longer to prove you’re still valuable.

      So the reality became pick one

      A) 4 day work week and being replaced by AI

      B) A job and money in the bank

    14. dirk-thunderthighs on

      Workers decided against it when they found out it came with only 4 days of pay. Outrageous! Said one worker!

    15. Lazy-Wind244 on

      The billionaire class once again pumping the cattle class for all we’ve got. They don’t care about us

    16. Additional_Clothes58 on

      Australians need to work more, not less. Work harder, get paid more. No handouts. No NDIS rort.

    17. australisaquarii on

      A fairer system is compassionate capitalism plus, where people earn a living wage, and profits are divided among those who earned them. No pseudo-slavery is imposed by shareholders who skim the cream off the top. You earned the money you keep it.

    18. OptimusRex on

      Today is four day work week day? we must be getting closer to having the post about high speed rail.

    19. Rush_Banana on

      The country doesn’t run 4 days a week is what happened.

      If you want to work 4 days a week, find a part time job.

    20. Successful-Good7364 on

      Heres the thing i never saw discussed when it came to 4 day weeks. When would the 3rd day off be? If it is meant to make the weekend a long weekend then nothing will change. Doctors and government offices (just two examples) will also be closed on that day too. So what is the point of the extra day? But if you make it 4 day week but people can chose their 3rd day then guess what. The third day everyone can do their stuff like docter visits or other chores that one would normally have to take the day or a few our out of your work day to do. Keep the weekend the weekend but call the 3rd day the get life shit done day.

    23. mediweevil on

      business doesn’t want to move to a four-day working week for the same reason it still wants people to sit in a concrete box in the CBD to work – **old management who have lost the ability to think flexibly about new things**.

      if you’re employed to produce 40 hours of productivity a week, then why does it matter if it’s produced in four or five chunks a week? who cares if the employee is churning out work at 2am because that suits their lifestyle, and who cares if that 2am corresponds to an afternoon on an island in a different timezone?

      all that matter is – **is the work getting done**. that’s all. and if old people can’t measure that without needing to be able to stand up at a desk and eyeball their employees, then they are the problem.