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#32 hour work week
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In his op-ed for The Guardian, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders propels the American labor conversation forward by arguing for a 20% cut in the standard 40-hour workweek, without any loss in pay.
He points to the 480% increase in worker productivity since 1940, asserting that such gains have mainly enriched corporations while leaving the working class in a perpetual state of struggle.
Sanders' rallying cry resonates with the ongoing initiatives by labor unions, especially the United Auto Workers (UAW), which recently initiated strikes against major automotive companies such as Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis. The UAW is also pushing for a four-day workweek while preserving the pay for a five-day week, a demand that Sanders supports. This is part of a long-running struggle by unions to balance productivity gains against working hours that has seen little progress over the years as real wages in the auto industry have declined by 17%.
Research backs the concept of a reduced workweek, with a study led by Boston College Professor Juliet Schor indicating that efficiency can increase without requiring workers to cram more tasks into fewer hours.
International examples provide practical confirmation. In France and Norway, shorter workweeks are either in place or under consideration. A U.K. pilot study involving 3,000 workers in over 60 companies demonstrated increased happiness and productivity with a four-day workweek, prompting 92% of the participating companies to adopt the new schedule permanently.
Public opinion in the United States is also aligning with this idea. A Morning Consult survey showed that 87% of employed adults in the U.S. are interested in a four-day workweek, and 82% believe it could work on a broader scale. Likewise, a study by 4 Day Week Global revealed that none of the companies participating in four-day workweek experiments in North America have plans to revert to a traditional five-day week.
Despite these positive indicators, Sanders acknowledges the uphill battle to win these changes. Any benefits for the working class won't be "easily handed over by the corporate elite," he said.
Yet, as automation and technological progress, like the anticipated efficiencies in electric vehicle manufacturing, continue to threaten traditional work structures, they also underscore the feasibility of a reduced workweek.
The synergy between the voice of labor unions, the American working class, international examples and influential policymakers like Sanders makes the vision of a four-day workweek not merely a pipe dream but a realistic, achievable objective that could reshape labor norms for future generations.
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marzeydoze · 2 months
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Likes to charge reblogs to cast
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merelygifted · 2 months
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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., plans to introduce legislation that would reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week, without lowering pay.
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sock-puppetlife · 1 year
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Another thing that sucks about being a neurodivergent person in the US is the fact that if I work 40hours a week anywhere, I start to go insane. Not to mention the countless studies that show the numerous benefits of working a 32 hour work week over 4 days. But whenever I complain about working a 5 day work week (I will get insanely suicidal if I do this for more than 2 weeks straight), all I get are blank stares. And it's so insanely frustrating.
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Interesting news from the Valencian Country. They will implement an experimental 4-day work week (with a 3-day weekend), which experts believe will increase efficiency!
I’ve translated this interview in the newspaper Vilaweb with Enric Nomdedéu, the Valencian Secretary of Labour, where he talks about this:
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Enric Nomdedéu: “We’re doing something wrong if we work 100 hours more than in the European Union and we’re less productive”
Interview with the Secretary of Labour of the Valencian Government about the experimental plans to rationalize the working time and raise productivity.
Labora, the Valencian labour service, is starting an experience to encourage companies to implement a 32-hour work week, that is, 4 days of work. The institution will accompany the interested businesses and will advice them so they can maintain the same productivity. For three years, and while they readjust the production systems, Labora will pay the difference so that workers can keep the same wage.
Increasing productivity to reduce work days is an obsession that has worried Enric Nomdedéu - the regional secretary of labour and general director of Labora - for years. The start of this experiment will coincide with the organization in València of an international conference about the 4-day work week. It will be about knowing its successes, its failures, and the paths to follow to arrive to what seems inevitable: to reduce hours of work and commute, and keep the productivity or increase it.
In this interview, Nomdedéu reflects in this aspect, confesses that he works more than 40 hours per week, and talks about some matters that affect the Council.
“Why do you work on reducing the work week?” From an environmental point of view, it’s obvious that reducing the work hours, from 5 to 4 days, has advantages. For the intensive consumption, for the traffic on the streets. From a social point of view, it also makes workers’ quality of life better. The World Health Organization says that 4% of deaths in the world are the result of excess in work. Obviously, it doesn’t talk about us, but of other places around the world, but here we have stress, burnout worker syndrome, work accidents last minute because we stop paying attention. And there’s still the economical balance.
“And what does the economical balance say?” That we [in the Valencian Country] work 100 hours more than the European average and, on the contrary, we are less productive. Therefore, something’s wrong in the equation. It’s not true that if you work more hours, you’re more productive. It’s not true either that if you work less, you’re more productive.
“And so?” The idea is to improve productivity, but this doesn’t necessarily mean producing more, because the planet is finite. We have to be productive using the least amount of hours and resources possible. Therefore, it’s a matter of organizational innovation. And this is what we offer to companies. We tell them: if you want to participate in this experimental programme, you have to agree with your workers and you have to submit to us a programme of productivity improvement. We make it easy for them if they’re a small business, we help them do it for free, through the IVACE [Institute for Small and Medium Industry of the Valencian Government]. If they accept, the business agrees to reduce by a 20% the amount of hours per week in the whole company or in a particular department. They can choose if they prefer a 4-day work week or if they keep it at 5, working less hours each day.
“The worker gets paid the same and Labora pays the difference to the company.” We have done the math and, in order for the accompaniment to be effective, the first year we pay 100% of the differential, the second year the 50%, and the third one the 25%. If the company sees that it’s not working, it can leave the programme at any moment.
“Will the administration monitor it?” It will be done in a very simple way, with an external organization that analyses them and will help us control it. Besides, with the contributions we will reduce the work day. It’s an experimental programme with very ambitious objectives, but very discreet economically. Labora’s total budget is 520 millions, and we will destine a million and a half to this.
“Is the ending goal of reducing the work day creating more jobs because companies need to hire more?” Not exactly, because this idea that has been going around the economy world for some decades sets off from an uncertain base, that is that there is an exact quantity of work hours that you can split among more or less people. History shows that this is not true. It could happen that, if a producer makes 400 chairs in a 5-day week and with our programme manages to improve productivity and makes them in 4 days, he could want to keep making 100 chairs on the 5th day. Then, he would have to hire workers. But this isn’t the objective.
“Who is your reference?” There are few. We are pioneering as an administration. The great litmus test will be the conference on May 27th and 28th. Experts and theorists from universities around the world are coming. The general secretaries of the main Spanish and French trade unions will take part in it. The German metal trade union is also coming. The German iron and steel industry has reduced the work week to 28 hours without reducing the wages. They have a good history to tell. We will listen and take notes because we want to do things well. And we also know that there is an example that we must not follow. In France it didn’t work. They established the 32 work week by decree, but with so many exceptions, that overtime and other effects have skyrocketed. It must be done out of conviction.
“After this conference, will you take decisions?” We hope to learn a lot in it. We didn’t go look for people who will necessarily agree with what we are proposing, but people who has given their opinions about it. The ex-minister Joan Majó will give the inauguration conference. The government of Iceland will come to tell us how they do it. This week, the SOC [trade union] called me saying that they’re also thinking about it and that they will come to hear what everyone has to say. We hope it will be a first step. When I commented it in 2018 in Alzira, the next day’s newspapers titles were saying I had gone crazy. Now there’s many of us, who are crazy. The proof is that we have 30 speakers from 13 different countries. And we have the feeling that this summit will be the first one, but not the last one, and they will have to invite us as experts in other conferences.
”Are companies ready to face this challenge?” There’s everything. In general, they aren’t, because it’s a very new matter and, in the end, what we need to take the most care for is that 85% are small and medium sized companies. It’s clear that Ford won’t come to ask us how to improve their productivity. Business talent isn’t inherited. Sometimes we find second and third generations that carry a way of working that worked very well for their parents or grandparents to start the business, but that doesn’t work any more. I insist. If we work 100 hours more than the European average and we’re less productive, it means that either they’re idle hours, which some are, or simply that production systems could be better. It doesn’t make sense that Mr. Henry Ford discovered over 100 years ago that he could make many more cars if he organized it differently and with a 40-hour work week. If Mr. Henry Ford rose up and went to Almussafes and saw the robots, he would say, what are you doing working 40 hours? You should be working 15 hours! This hasn’t happened in 100 years. We did something wrong.
“And us workers, are we ready?” One of the things that has accelerated this change in mental paradigm has been the pandemic. Suddenly, we discovered that reality isn’t always as we think it was, unmovable. Many new opportunities have been opened. And now there’s this very interesting and very worrying phenomenon of the great resignation: in the USA, people say “I’m going home, this job isn’t what I need. The pandemic has proven that above this, there’s life, there’s my family, there’s having the time to read a book”. We, every time we talk about reconciliation, we talk about being able to read a book or go to the theatre, not taking care of your mother or child, which also needs doing but it’s not only that. We are in a moment of historical change that the pandemic has accelerated, but from which we should learn some things.
"Such as what?” One of them is that face to face in companies isn’t the best idea and, on the opposite, the trade unions keep asking that people clock in... Excuse me, you’re in the 19th century, the parties had to do a perestroika and some day the unions will have to do it, too. This is very old. Clocking in is useless, [the bosses] will cheat with that, too. We must evolve towards working for objectives. Are we ready? Probably not everyone, but we also believe that experiments are useful for this reason, because if a company starts it and it works, the next one will copy it. And this goes for both the company and the workers.
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(The rest of the interview talks about other matters, so I won’t be translating it here)
What do you think?
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saydams · 2 months
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uaw president (united auto workers union) speaking in front of congress. (he begins at 0:38)
paraphrased, not exact:
working class people aren't lazy, they are fed up.
there are people who don't want to work. but they are not the blue-collar workers. the lazy ones are the wall street freeloaders, the masters of passive income. taking advantage of laborers' production.
the people who we never talk about for how little they work, how little they contribute to humanity are the wall street freeloaders. not blue-collar workers.
3 families control as much money as the bottom 50% of usamerican families. and it needs to stop.
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nosferatumadre · 6 months
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The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union will be live streaming for the next 32 hours. This fundraising is for members in Memphis who have been on strike since June and for the striking Mack truck workers in Florida.
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alwaysbewoke · 1 month
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Legitimately have spent more time playing Stardew this week than working at my job teehee
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tater-time · 13 days
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Some work bathroom selfies! Wishing you well 😘
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Bernie Sanders thinks you should work fewer days.
The progressive from Vermont chimed in on the four-day work week debate on Twitter, writing: "With exploding technology and increased worker productivity, it's time to move toward a four-day work week with no loss of pay. Workers must benefit from technology, not just corporate CEOs."
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Sanders was referencing the latest findings out of the UK on the four-day work week. A large-scale pilot program, spanning over 3,000 workers, found that workers slept better, firms made more money, and employees were less likely to say they did not have enough time to care for loved ones.
As the Washington Post reports, most of the companies involved in the pilot plan on continuing to use a four-day work week.
The concept of a four-day work week has increasingly caught on over the last few years, with firms and researchers alike taking the plunge to cut back hours without reducing pay.
As Insider reported in December, 4 Day Week Global — a New Zealand-based nonprofit — conducted a study involving 33 participating companies that employed 969 people based in the US, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, who adopted a four-day work week in a pilot program over a six-month period, and it found it was a "resounding success on virtually every dimension."
"Companies are extremely pleased with their performance, productivity and overall experience, with almost all of them already committing or planning to continue with the 4 day week schedule," the report said.
"Revenue has risen over the course of the trial. Sick days and absenteeism are down," it continued. "Companies are hiring. Resignations fell slightly, a striking finding during the 'Great Resignation.' Employees are similarly enthusiastic. And climate impacts, while less well-measured, are also encouraging."
Some US companies have started testing out the idea, as well. A Chick-fil-A owner in Florida launched a three-day work week in November, and he received 400 applications for just one job opening due to the popularity of a shortened workweek.
This isn't the first time a four-day work week has caught the attention of lawmakers — the Congressional Progressive Caucus previously endorsed the "32-Hour Workweek Act," with Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal saying in a statement at the time that it's "past time that we put people and communities over corporations and their profits — finally prioritizing the health, wellbeing, and basic human dignity of the working class rather than their employers' bottom line."
Rep. Mark Takano, a Democrat from California, proposed that legislation. He previously told Insider that a 32-hour work week — which would become the new standard under his proposal — would help Americans craft the new normal of work that they've been demanding.
"I think there was a Great Realization among a lot of Americans — how hard they're working and that they wanted to move on from the jobs that they were working at," Takano said. "So a four-day work week is something that connects a lot of Americans."
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sneepy cozy....
#cats#(medical stuff mention for tags)#poasting confortable image of boye for peace and serenity and such forthe#I have little weird episodes sometimes where I get shaky (but like violently like 'would spill a drink if you were holding it beacuse#your hands are moving so much' type shaky) and weird and sick feeling but usually it passes in an hour or less. but last night I just#literally couldnt sleep I was shaking so much and my heartrate was up a ton and wouldn't go down even after like 6 hours plus super nausea#so I went to the hospital and now shall wear a heart monitor for a week. which hopefully it's just some weird drastic low blood sugar#event or something and there's nothing actually going on. ekg + ct scan for blod clots + virus panel + almost all of the blood work seems#normal so... aa.......#Though me being so privacy focused hrggh... I basically have a constantly bluetooth connected device around me#since the monitor comes with a cell phone that is constantly transmitting data to the place. which they said they'll call you#if they see anything weird which is also scary. random phone calls... but definitely better than letting an issue go unadressed lol#the phone is also not meant to be more than 10 feet away from the monitor at any time so I put on this old tactical fishing#vest thing thats like navy green with 100 pockets and im just using one of the giant pocketson the side as a phone holder#my enormous silly vest just to keep one little phone#ANYWAY... because I got up early the morning before and didn't sleep at all and spent nearly all day in waiting rooms and such#I have been awake for like 32 hours striaght. which I'm sure also does not help with an elevated heartrate lol#feeling shrimp emotions or whatever people talk about unlocking at a certain level of stress and sleep deprivation#and also no food or water. after a while they brought me like 3 saltines and some ice water but I basically also haven't eaten since 3am#last night and it's 2pm now..#thus............ bapy............. baby boye....... he will help ease all ailments with his baby powers...#And no I dont drink energy drinks or anything with caffiene really I'm afraid of all substances on the planet essentially#My body just likes to become shaky and weird randomly even when I'm not conciously anxious about anything/have had no caffiene/etc#and I guess I'm always more nervous about getting anything heart related checked out because of my arm/shoulder/chest area injury stuff#... i literally have constant chest pain all the time. it moves around but i nearly always have some sort of pain or pressure in my chest#so when people are like 'oh well a little weird heartrate is fine but watch out if you have pain!' it's like... i always do lol.. how am I#supposed to tell the Bad Pain apart from the Always Pain when the descriptions of Bad Pain are very very similar#AAAANYway.... hrghh... i wanted to be very productive and finally post drafts and wrok on things today. but alas..#I can at least post small image of soft boye.. though he recently got into stuff in the bathroom whilst left#alone and knocked things into the toilet.. So perhaps not an innocent and NICE boy.. but still.. a soft one .. beautfile....
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maudiemoods · 1 year
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I think my job is not paying me everything they're supposed to 🧍🏼‍♂️
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dykefaggotry · 6 months
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went from a 12 hour week last schedule to a 32 hour week this schedule girl can we find a happy medium 😭
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ambitusk · 7 months
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Why does the weekend have to be over? WHY? 4 Day work week 4 day work week 4 day work week 4 day work week 4 day work week 4 day work week
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froggierboy · 3 months
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how does my chronic fatigue continue to get worse as i'm treating my sleep apnea? i'm more or less pretty able bodied working a 40 hour week should not put me in a position where i can barely get out of bed when i'm off
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